This UChicago lab studies nuclear weapons risk in the AI era
This UChicago lab studies nuclear weapons risk in the AI era
Publish Date: 2026-03-16 08:15:00
Source Domain: www.marketplace.org
Choices we make today will inevitably impact the future. And some of those choices may not lead to such rosy outcomes.
Existential risks lie around every corner. The good news is they aren’t being totally ignored. Across the country and across the world, there are institutes studying and finding remedies for existential threats.
Scholars at the University of Chicago may have good reason to study the risk of nuclear weapons. It is, after all, where the first self-sustaining, controlled nuclear chain reaction was achieved. But they’re also studying other existential threats that risk humanity’s existence, like climate change and artificial intelligence safety, all in hopes of mitigating risks that face human civilization.
“Marketplace Morning Report” host David Brancaccio spoke with Daniel Holz, director of the Existential Risks Laboratory at the University of Chicago, and professor of physics, astronomy, and astrophysics. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.
David Brancaccio: Given your University of Chicago connection with Fermi’s first sustaining atomic pile under the old stadium there, I wanted to focus on the existential threat of nuclear annihilation. Now, we’ll talk about that, but AI again. AI also encroaches into the existential threat conversation, if it were to trigger nuclear annihilation. How do you think about that?
Daniel Holz: This is a pretty unique moment because of all these different threats. And so, as you said, the nuclear threat is growing over the last few years. And then AI is also, in and of itself, a threat. And then these two intersect. AI is starting to insinuate itself into all sorts of military command and control, and there’s this sense that it’s kind of inevitable that AI will essentially will have its finger on the button, as it were.
Brancaccio: I mean, you. Dr. Holz, also chairman of the science and security board at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, famed for your doomsday clock, that clock…
