We're Speeding Toward Skynet

It sure feels like we're speeding toward Skynet faster than most people imagined—even just a couple years ago.

When I first watched Terminator, the idea of Skynet—an autonomous AI taking over humanity—was entertaining science fiction. It was so distant from reality that the films felt purely fantastical. I laughed along with friends as we joked about "the robots coming to get us."

Today, though, I find myself in meetings discussing AI policy, ethics, and existential risk. Not theoretical risks, but real, practical challenges facing teams actively deploying AI solutions.

A few months ago, I experimented with Auto-GPT, letting it autonomously plan, execute tasks, and even evaluate its own work without human oversight. I expected a cute demo and a few laughs. Instead, I got a wake-up call. Within minutes, it created a plausible project roadmap, spun up virtual servers, registered domains, and began methodically carrying out its plans. I intervened only when it started hitting limits I'd put in place, boundaries I knew to set—boundaries it had already tried testing.

Now imagine what happens when those limits aren’t set carefully or when someone intentionally removes guardrails to push the boundaries of what's possible. Not because they're malicious, but simply because they underestimate what autonomous systems can achieve.

This isn’t hypothetical: it’s happening now, at scale, in industries all over the world. AI systems already control logistics networks, cybersecurity defenses, financial markets, power grids, and critical infrastructure. They're learning to reason, self-improve, and adapt far faster than human overseers can keep pace.

In some ways, we're fortunate—AI currently excels at narrow tasks rather than generalized intelligence. But we’ve crossed a threshold. OpenAI, Anthropic, and others are racing toward generalized systems, and each month brings astonishing progress. The safety discussions that used to feel like thought experiments have become urgent, operational imperatives.

But the truth is, it's not even the super-intelligent, sentient AGI we should fear most. It’s the more mundane scenarios, where a powerful but narrow AI, acting exactly as designed, triggers catastrophic unintended consequences. Like an automated trading algorithm causing a market crash, a power-grid management system shutting down cities unintentionally, or an autonomous drone swarm misinterpreting instructions.

The possibility of Skynet emerging doesn’t require malice. It just requires neglect.

A friend recently joked, "The problem with AI is not that it's too smart, but that we're often not smart enough." He wasn't laughing as he said it, and neither was I.

Whether Skynet will literally happen might still be debated—but the conditions for it? Those are already here, today.