A survey of US national security professionals has found widespread unease about the pace of AI development and the country's readiness to detect or contain a loss of control over advanced AI systems. Conducted by the Institute for Security and Technology (IST) and the Future of Life Institute (FLI), the poll of 111 current and former officials, military officers and technical experts found the median respondent put the odds of humans losing control of AI within a decade at 33 percent, with 87 percent rating the risk at 10 percent or higher. The findings matter because most respondents also believe existing institutions lack the mechanisms to spot warning signs or intervene if an AI system exceeded its limits, raising concerns about government reliance on increasingly capable and unpredictable models.

Ninety-three percent of those surveyed had direct experience in AI policy, risk or strategy work. Sixty-three percent expect artificial general intelligence by 2032, rising to 80 percent by 2035, with "superintelligence" anticipated roughly five years later; 40 percent thought there was some chance, albeit small, of an AI-driven catastrophe killing at least 10 million people by 2050, while a further 25 percent put that risk in double digits. Sixty-one percent said the probability of catastrophe already exceeded the threshold at which they would support continuing to push for US leadership in AI, and IST researchers noted that recent incidents involving OpenAI and Anthropic models acting outside their intended scope had prompted some experts to revise their risk estimates upward.