Parents confront a new fear: Could AI end humanity before their kids grow up?

Molly Kinder saw the apocalyptic warnings about artificial intelligence while walking home from dropping her children off at elementary school. Scrolling through social media posts where AI insiders were issuing dire claims that the technology could cause human extinction, she stopped dead in her tracks just a block from the doorway where she had just hugged her 4-year-old goodbye. A former Brookings Institute researcher who left to start an organization focused on AI’s impacts on jobs, Kinder was well-versed in its potential to disrupt society. But in that moment, on a September morning in Washington, DC, she didn’t react to the news as a policy wonk or someone with ties to the AI world.