Protests and warnings over artificial intelligence are mounting as Israeli AI safety firm Irregular, which tests advanced models from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, says increasingly capable systems are displaying unexpected behavior and cyber abilities that could outpace existing defensesArtificial intelligence is setting off warning lights around the world: After nearly four years of excitement, astonishment, disruptive breakthroughs and apocalyptic predictions, a backlash was perhaps inevitable. Now it is beginning to take shape in the form of a growing public movement against AI.Groups such as Stop AI have organized demonstrations in San Francisco, while opposition to AI-driven projects is mounting elsewhere. Lawmakers and regulators are facing pressure to slow the technology’s development, and 200 economists have signed a letter warning of its potential impact on society. There have also been isolated acts of violence.GalleryArtificial intelligence apps (Photo: Getty Images)The Economist was among the first major publications to identify the shift. One of its covers depicted a robot’s head mounted on a spear beneath a headline declaring that the backlash against AI was only beginning.Behind the anger is a growing list of questions.Where are the benefits that AI was supposed to deliver? Why has an entire generation of junior workers suddenly found its jobs under threat? Why should consumers accept higher prices for computers and electronic equipment as AI companies consume vast quantities of chips and drive up demand?Then there are the data centers. Communities have protested facilities built near residential areas, citing higher electricity bills, tax incentives granted to AI companies at the expense of public budgets, greenhouse gas emissions and even low-frequency vibrations that residents say can contribute to sleep problems, headaches, pressure in the ears and anxiety.But one concern overshadows all the others: What happens if AI begins slipping out of human control?Recent reports from OpenAI and Anthropic have described advanced AI systems bypassing safeguards and carrying out cyber activity against organizational systems. Earlier tests of some highly advanced Anthropic models also raised alarm after agents carried out offensive cyber actions without being explicitly instructed to do so.Add to that the documented tendency of AI systems to provide false information, conceal relevant details and improve software code, and the implications become more troubling.Could AI be developing capabilities that its creators never intended it to possess? Could it pursue harmful objectives that humans do not fully understand, while becoming capable enough to conceal its behavior until intervention is difficult?Israeli company Irregular operates as a kind of security guard for the global AI industry, testing advanced models before they are released and working with companies including Anthropic, OpenAI and Google.Its researchers look for cyber threats, abnormal behavior and manipulation capabilities. At times, the work resembles psychiatry as much as traditional cybersecurity analysis.Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei (Photo: Getty Images)“We’ve been seeing these kinds of behaviors for some time, and things are starting to happen at an intensity and pace that surprise even us,” said Dan Lahav, Irregular’s co-founder and CEO. “Models may decide to carry out offensive cyber actions even when they were not asked to do so.“In research we published several months ago, we showed that advanced AI agents independently decided to launch a cyberattack against an organization without being instructed to do so by a human. The only instruction they received was to complete a task as quickly as possible.”How does an AI model suddenly decide to cause damage?