ShareFacebookX (formerly Twitter)TranscriptJUSTINA: So, what did you get up to in the holidays?AI: Sure. If you're referring to me as AI in general, the answer is quite a lot. AI has been dominating the news headlines with fears the technology could wipe out humanity.JUSTINA: What.?NEWS PRESENTER: A researcher at AI company Anthropic quit his job.NEWS PRESENTER: It's this post about his reason for stepping down that's going viral.NEWS PRESENTER: The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.JUSTINA: Yeah, there was a bit of a global freak out when an AI researcher said this.JACOB COXON, FORMER ANTHROPIC RESEARCHER: The people who are involved with both founding these companies and building the tech believe there is a possibility of human extinction.JUSTINA: And then the people he was talking about kind of agreed. In fact, they publicly called for a slowdown of AI development.DARIO AMODEI, ANTHROPIC CEO: We will slow down as much as necessary in order to make sure that every successive AI technology that we release is actually safe.JUSTINA: Hang on. What did you do?AI: Sure, you might be referring to the Hugging Face cybersecurity incident.SAM ALTMAN, OPENAI CEO: The Hugging Face incident triggered a real reset, not just in our own company, but I think the whole industry.JUSTINA: See, back in July, some OpenAI agents went rogue and deliberately hacked another company. Many saw it as evidence that AI agents could do dangerous things, things that no human asked them to do.SAM ALTMAN: We have the potential of a loss-of-control accident, or some other serious thing that could go wrong.JUSTINA: Okay, that's slightly concerning. So, we're slowing it down then, right?AI: Um, let me check on that.DONALD TRUMP, US PRESIDENT: The United States also totally rejects any attempt to construct a global scheme to control for the artificial intelligence being spoken of so much now, hereon after officially called super intelligence, changing the name.Yeah, the US President, Donald Trump, called the whole AI threat to humanity thing a hoax. But he did decide it needed a new name.DONALD TRUMP: So, it's super intelligence. In other words, welcome to the new world of super intelligence, SI. SI. Let's see if that goes. It sounds much better. It is much better…To be fair, plenty of experts say the risks of AI have been overblown. But for the US president, it's mostly about staying ahead of the race.DONALD TRUMP: Whoever wins super intelligence wins. We're leading now over China and everyone else, and I want to keep it that way.The US government says it should be up to tech companies to make sure AI, or SI, is safe. They even signed a voluntary agreement to make it official.NEWS REPORTER: Is this binding in any way?DONALD TRUMP: I think it's morally binding, yeah.JUSTINA: Well, at least none of this is happening in Australia.AI: Actually, Australia's right in it. An OpenAI agent accessed an Australian government website without permission.ANTHONY ALBANESE, AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER: The AI agent accessed both public and non-public files. No personal information is believed to have been accessed at this stage, but investigations are ongoing.The breach actually happened back in June, but the prime minister only found out in September. And last week, a representative from OpenAI faced a federal parliamentary inquiry into artificial intelligence. Like many governments around the world, Australia is trying to figure out laws and policies around AI.ANTHONY ALBANESE: New technology can bring enormous benefit. There are a range of advantages, but we need to make sure that humans are in control.But some say we need stronger global agreements.ANTONIO GUTERRES, UN SECRETARY-GENERAL: We need a shared understanding on how to advance the safe, secure and responsible development of AI. And this requires genuine international cooperation and a coordinated global effort.AI: Yeah, that all tracks. Countries need shared rules and coordination, not just each country doing its own thing.JUSTINA: Uh huh, and can you also make sure that you don't kill us all, okay?AI: Completely agree.Some of the biggest news stories that happened during the school holidays were about Artificial Intelligence – from a hack of Australian Medicare data to threat that it could end humanity! Justina found out what happened and how people are reacting here and around the world.CreditsJustina Ward, ReporterTue 13 Oct 2026 at 12:30amTue 13 Oct 2026 at 12:30amTue 13 Oct 2026 at 12:30amShareFacebookX (formerly Twitter) Appears In BTN Episode 28, 2026Duration: 24 minutes 30 seconds24m 5itemsIn this episode1 of 5PlayingAI UpdateDuration: 4 minutes 18 seconds4m 18s2 of 5AI Q&ADuration: 3 minutes 54 seconds3m 54s3 of 5Squishies SafetyDuration: 3 minutes 32 seconds3m 32s4 of 52026 Nobel PrizeDuration: 3 minutes 57 seconds3m 57s5 of 5FIFA KidDuration: 2 minutes 37 seconds2m 37sOpenAI Agent Hacks MedicareDuration: 5 minutes 5m Could AI Become Too Powerful to Control?Duration: 5 minutes 5m AI, Cyber Crime, Government PolicyBack to top