A person pumps gas at a Mobil gas station on September 24, 2026 in Austin, Texas. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Consumer sentiment dropped in September close to the lowest level ever recorded in the 74-year history of the University of Michigan’s monthly survey, fresh data on Friday showed.
Shopper attitudes soured as a monthlong bout of inflation squeezed consumers and an underlying oil supply shock showed little sign of imminent resolution.
The final reading of the University of Michigan index registered at 48.1 in September, marking the second-lowest final reading ever recorded. The index hit a historic low of 44.8 in May, just months after the outbreak of the Iran war, before ticking slightly upward to a level of 51.7 by August.
Prices rose at an annual rate of 3.4% in August, the most recent month on record, federal government data showed. Inflation stands more than a percentage point higher than the Federal Reserve’s target rate of 2%.
The average price of a gallon of gas in the U.S. is $4.49, according to AAA, marking a roughly 50% jump since the war began in late February.
Shoppers expect inflation to rise even more over the next year, the University of Michigan consumer survey found, while individuals’ view of their financial outlook has worsened.
Democrats and Republicans alike displayed sizable declines in consumer sentiment in September from the previous month, Surveys of Consumers director Joanne Hsu said in a statement on Friday.
In response to rising prices, a key long-term Treasury rate hit its highest level in nearly two decades on Wednesday, days after the Federal Reserve raised benchmark borrowing costs. The rise in borrowing costs has pushed up rates for loans like credit cards and mortgages, threatening to worsen the financial crunch.
Investors peg a two in three chance of another quarter-point interest rate hike next month, according to the CME FedWatch Tool, a measure of market sentiment.
Despite a stubborn bout of inflation, the economy remains fairly robust by some measures.
A blockbuster jobs report earlier this month showed employers added 162,000 workers in August, demonstrating continued resilience for the nation’s labor market. The economy grew over three months ending in June, defying fear of a downturn triggered by the Iran war.
Still, persistently elevated prices have continued to take a toll on shoppers, Fed Chair Kevin Warsh said at a press conference in Washington, D.C., last week.
“The plain fact is that inflation is too high and has been for too long,” Warsh said.
A customer purchases gas at a station, Sept. 15, 2026, in Chicago. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Kelsey Benson said she was laid off from a job in sales earlier this month, leaving her without health insurance at a time when price hikes are weighing on the rest of her budget.
The monthly out-of-pocket cost of Benson’s name-brand medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder jumped from $120 to $500, she said. That sudden expense came at a time she was already struggling with rising rent and utility costs, she said.
“You should not have to wear yourself down to nothing to be able to live,” said Benson, 32, who lives in Queens, New York.
The financial strain has complicated Benson and her partner’s potential plans for buying a house and having a child, she said.
“The dream, many people have been told, is you get the white picket fence, the house,” Benson said. “It’s not attainable.”
Benson is hardly the only person getting hammered by price hikes. A monthslong surge of inflation set off by the Iran war has driven up costs nationwide for gasoline, groceries and other products, squeezing many household budgets.
Shoppers expect inflation to rise even more over the next year, according to a recent University of Michigan consumer survey, while individuals’ view of their financial outlook has worsened.
In response to rising prices, a key long-term Treasury rate hit its highest level in nearly two decades earlier this month, even before the Federal Reserve raised benchmark borrowing costs. The rise in borrowing costs pushed up rates for loans like credit cards and mortgages, threatening to worsen the financial crunch.
“A lot of people across America have cut the expenses that they can cut,” Ted Rossman, a financial analyst at nonprofit advisory firm Money Management International, told ABC News. “They feel like they can’t catch a break.”
Drew Davis, 26, a law student in New York City, said the recent surge in prices dawned on him in the meat section at his local grocery store.
During a shopping trip this summer, Davis said he noticed prices for his preferred types of beef and chicken had climbed $1 or $2 since he began law school three years ago.
“I’ll buy, like, fattier beef, or I’ll buy chicken instead of beef mostly, just because it’s cheaper a lot of the time,” Davis said.
Davis, who is financing his education with student loans, said his debt factors into spending decisions such as where he lives and what he buys amid an economic environment he described as “intense.”
Prices rose at an annual rate of 3.4% in August, the most recent month on record, federal government data showed. Inflation stands more than a percentage point higher than the Federal Reserve’s target rate of 2%.
The average price of a gallon of gas in the U.S. is $4.47, according to AAA, marking a 50% jump since the war broke out.
Grocery prices have increased more than 20% over the last five years, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed.
“People are feeling what’s happened the last several years,” Rossman said. “The accumulated toll is really stacking up.”
Steve Prentice, 70, who is semi-retired and works part-time at a yarn store in Tennessee, said the most noticeable price increase is gas.
“This is the first time I can recall gas being above $4 [a gallon],” Prentice said.
The cost crunch prompted Prentice and his wife to seek out bargains on groceries. Prices at all of the chain supermarkets nearby have “generally gone up,” Prentice said, forcing him and his wife to turn to lower-priced stores.
“Their prices seem a little bit more stable, but even they have gone up,” Prentice said.
Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh speaks during a news conference following Federal Open Market Committee meetings at Federal Reserve Headquarters, Sept. 16, 2026, in Washington. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — A key long-term Treasury rate hit its highest level in nearly two decades earlier this month, even before the Federal Reserve raised benchmark borrowing costs.
The Fed hiked interest rates a quarter of a percentage point in an effort to battle back a monthslong surge of inflation. The rise in borrowing costs pushed up rates for loans like credit cards and mortgages, threatening to worsen a budget crunch as shoppers weather price hikes for gas and other essentials.
Those dangers, however, come along with potential financial benefits, some experts told ABC News. The hike in borrowing costs directly benefits savers, who stand to gain from an uptick in the interest yielded by accounts held at banks, they said.
Financial products like high-yield savings accounts and certificates of deposit, or CDs, provide options for investors eager to take advantage of the favorable environment for savers, they added, though such products carry limitations of their own.
“Higher interest rates incentivize people to park money in the bank and spend less of it,” James Cox, a financial advisor and managing partner of Virginia-based Harris Financial Group, told ABC News. “If you’re a person who has accumulated assets, higher interest rates can be beneficial.”
Interest rate hikes make it more lucrative for banks to hold money, which in turn puts pressure on financial institutions to pass along some of those earnings to depositors through higher yields.
As a result, some banks have bid up each other’s yield offerings to attract customers.
The average return on a savings account in the U.S. registered at 0.64% annual percentage yield as of Tuesday, marking a slight increase from 0.62% annual percentage yield last month, before the Fed’s rate hike, Bankrate data showed.
An incremental uptick in interest rates for savings accounts or other funds may provide a modicum of financial benefit, but it is unlikely to dramatically improve a household’s income, Cox said.
“It’s not going to materially change the interest-rate picture for a family’s savings,” Cox said.
Even so, analysts said, investors can avail themselves of products that make the most of higher interest rates, such as high-yield savings accounts and CDs.
Financial institutions have not settled on what exactly constitutes a high-yield savings account. But the name indicates the key characteristics of this financial product: a savings account that delivers high returns.
While no specific threshold earns an account the moniker of “high-yield,” the enhanced savings from such accounts can prove substantial, some analysts said.
High-yield savings accounts offer customers as much as 4.2% annual percentage yield, Bankrate data showed, putting interest rates well above the nationwide average of 0.64% for savings accounts.
“As a saver, you can make more money in a high-yield savings account,” Kate Ashford, lead wealth writer at NerdWallet, told ABC News. “There’s no real downside.”
The annual inflation rate currently stands at 3.4%, meaning price increases outpace the average interest yielded by savings accounts at banks. As a result, the purchasing power of money kept in a savings account can drop, even as the total dollar amount increases, Ashford said.
“A high-yield savings account can prevent inflation from eating away the value of what you’ve got,” Ashford said.
In some cases, the interest rate on a high-yield savings account increases automatically in response to a rate hike at the Fed.
“A high-yield savings account of my own saw an increase within 24 hours of the Fed’s announcement,” Ashord said.
A CD, meanwhile, is a type of savings account that offers a fixed interest rate over a given period of time. If depositors remove their funds before their agreed-upon end date, however, they incur a penalty.
Financial institutions often offer CDs at elevated interest rates in the aftermath of a rate hike at the Fed. Typically, long-term CDs spanning three or five years deliver higher interest rates than short-term CDs, since a wider time horizon requires investors to part with their funds for a longer period.
High-yield savings accounts and CDs carry some downside, however. The interest rate promised by a high-yield savings account or a CD means it lacks the possibility of enormous gains, unlike a riskier instrument such as the stock market, some analysts said.
“In the stock market, you have the potential to make more on your money over time,” Ashford said.
Still, Ashford added, a high-yield savings account or CD “gets your money moving in a forward direction.”
(NEW YORK) — Converse has discontinued an advertisement following public backlash last week over what critics said appeared to be Ku Klux Klan symbolism and lynching in the shoe and apparel company’s ad campaign.
One of the images in the ad showed the bottom half of a person wearing a white, calf-length skirt-like garment that some critics said resembled a KKK robe, while holding a pair of black sneakers in one hand with their arm fully extended down by their side.
Critics said lighting in the photograph makes the shoes look as if they are dangling in the air next to the person in the white garment, resembling someone being hanged.
Shadows in the photograph also create a triangle-shaped light on the white robe that critics said further resembled the top peak of a Klan hood.
“We’re sorry. We understand why this image is deeply upsetting and recognize that we got this wrong,” Converse, who is owned by Nike Inc., said in a statement to ABC News Monday. “We removed it from our channels and are working to remove it everywhere it appeared. This should not have happened and we will do better.”
Civil rights attorney Lee Merritt, who represented the family of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man who was chased and fatally shot by three white men while jogging in Georgia in February 2020, weighed in on the controversial promotional campaign.
“We keep having this conversation because corporations keep failing the same test,” Merritt said in a social media post. “Do better means catching this before it airs — not after we’re offended.”
Rep. Troy Carter, D-La., said in a statement that the advertisement was neither creative nor artistic.
“Black pain is not a marketing prop,” Carter said. “Lynching is not a creative concept. The Ku Klux Klan is not an aesthetic.”
The photos were part of a campaign to promote the Chuck 70 X sneaker. The advertisement was a collaboration with K-pop singer Karina, who is with the group aespa.
ABC News has reached out to representatives of Karina for a comment.
ABC News’ Sabina Ghebremedhin contributed to this story.
Toys R Us Grand Opening at Macy’s Herald Square on Oct. 13, 2022, in New York City. (Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images for Macy’s, Inc.)
(NEW YORK) — Toys R Us is planning a major expansion in the U.S. with the addition of 120 new standalone stores by the end of 2026.
The toy retailer, which currently has 40 standalone stores and Toys R Us shops inside Macy’s stores across the country, announced the strategic move, which is being carried out in partnership with Go! Retail Group, on Thursday.
“This is a major moment for [Toys R Us] as we significantly expand our presence across the United States,” Jamie Uitdenhowen, executive vice president of Toys R Us at WHP Global, said in a statement. “Together with our incredible partners, we are growing Toys R Us in unique ways to meet customers wherever they are, whether that’s at a standalone store in their hometown, inside Macy’s, at the airport or at a Navy Exchange.”
The statement continued, “Toys R Us has always been a place for discovery, and we’re building on that legacy by bringing customers the hottest toys, biggest trends and experiences that make the brand unlike any other.”
In addition to established toys such as LEGO bricks, Barbie dolls and Hot Wheels cars, Toys R Us said it will stock popular new toys from “KPop Demon Hunters,” Pokemon and more.
Select new Toys R Us stores will feature “Creator Studios,” described as “dedicated spaces where influencers, creators and toy brands can create content, unveil new products and host toy reveals, launches and special events,” the company said.
Select stores will also have candy shops and cafes inside for customers.
The new plan is a dramatic transformation for Toys R Us, which filed for bankruptcy in 2017 and closed most of its U.S. stores nearly a decade ago.
Private equity firms had previously acquired the retail chain in 2005 for $6.6 billion, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
Toys R Us returned briefly with two new brick-and-mortar stores in 2019, however, those locations were shuttered not long after.
WHP Global acquired a controlling stake in the retailer in 2021, and the company launched a new two-story global flagship store at the American Dream shopping mall in East Rutherford, New Jersey, that December.
The retailer subsequently opened several additional standalone locations and “shop-in-shop” locations inside Macy’s stores in several U.S. states, as well as a second U.S. flagship store at Mall of America in 2023.
Warren Buffett attends ‘Becoming Warren Buffett’ World Premiere at The Museum of Modern Art on Jan. 19, 2017, in New York City. (Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK ) — Warren Buffett has stepped down as chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, the company announced in a statement published early on Friday, having served in the role since 1970.
Buffett, 96, is now chairman emeritus of the company and will remain a director, Berkshire Hathaway said.
His son, Howard Buffett, will take over as Berkshire Hathaway’s new chairman, the statement added. Howard Buffett has been a member of the company’s board since 1993.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Gas prices are displayed at a Pilot gas station on Sept. 17, 2026, in Newark, New Jersey. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — The average price for a gallon of diesel was still hovering around a record-high of $6.43 as of Friday morning, according to the latest data published by GasBuddy.
The historic increase in the price of diesel comes amid continued disruption in the Strait of Hormuz — sparked by the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran in February — and Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, which in recent years has seen an intensification of long-range Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil facilities.
The sustained increases in oil and diesel prices have prompted concerns of rising costs across all sectors of the economy — from fuel and energy costs for drivers and homeowners to increased prices of food and travel as producers and companies grapple with narrowing margins.
The nationwide average price for a gallon of regular gas was at $4.47 as of Friday, according to GasBuddy — up $1.53 since the U.S. war with Iran started.
Rising prices are of particular concern for those households reliant on heating oil. They could face winter bills more than 31% higher than last year, according to a report published earlier this week by the non-profit National Energy Assistance Directors Association.
Even for those who do not heat their homes using oil, overall winter heating costs are expected to rise by more than 8.7% this year, the NEADA report said.
As of Friday, oil prices were edging lower but remained above $100 a barrel. Brent crude oil prices, a benchmark for global trading, were around $103 per barrel, down roughly 1.3%. WTI crude oil, used as the North American benchmark, was trading at around $102 per barrel down 0.4%.
Since diesel is the lifeblood of the supply chain, a rise in fuel costs may result in higher prices charged by wholesalers in response to elevated transport expenses. In turn, retailers could pass those costs along to shoppers, raising prices on shelves.
The price hike for any individual item would likely be modest, but the pileup of extra costs across an array of goods could weigh on wallets, analysts previously told ABC News.
As a result, the rise in diesel costs threatens to worsen a surge of inflation set off by the outbreak of the Iran war nearly seven months ago.
The annual inflation rate stood at 3.4% as of August, the most recent month on record, putting inflation more than a percentage point above the Federal Reserve’s target rate of 2%.
On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates for the first time since 2023 in an effort to contain price increases. Higher borrowing costs may constrain spending among businesses and consumers, staunching demand for products and slowing price hikes.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Federal Reserve chair Kevin Warsh acknowledged the rate increase would not directly address the surge in fuel prices. Rather, he said, elevated interest rates could help prevent price hikes from extending throughout the economy.
“We cannot affect any individual price, whether it be oil prices, whether it be food stuffs at the grocery store. But what we can do, and will do, is ensure that any change in relative prices don’t broaden out,” Warsh said.
Emily Normandin-Parker is seen in this photo. Her parents Carol Normandin and Ken Parker were awarded $40 million in arbitration after their daughter was struck and killed after her Uber driver left her along a Southern California freeway. (Courtesy Panish Shea Ravipudi LLP)
(NEW YORK) — The parents of a 23-year-old woman who was struck and killed after her Uber driver left her along a Southern California freeway are speaking out after being awarded $40 million in an arbitration against Uber and the driver.
Carol Normandin and Ken Parker, the parents of Emily Normandin-Parker, sat down exclusively with “Good Morning America” in an interview aired on Thursday to discuss their daughter’s death and the arbitration award.
Asked if they believe Uber put profits over their daughter’s safety, Normandin responded, “Absolutely.”
Normandin-Parker, a 2022 UCLA graduate, was taking an Uber home with her friend Luna Moore after a night out when Moore became sick during the ride, according to the arbitration award.
The driver, Vu Tran, pulled over on State Route 73 in Orange County at a gore point — the triangular area by the off-ramp on the freeway, according to the arbitration.
“He chose to pull over there and demand money and kick them out of the car. All I can think that Emily was doing — her friend, the driver arguing — was to get help. They argue, Emily gets hit while they’re arguing,” Normandin told ABC News’ Trevor Ault in an interview that aired Thursday on “GMA.”
In his arbitration award, retired Judge Richard A. Stone, who served as the arbitrator, described the gore point as an “unsafe and illegal” area and found that Tran could have instead taken the nearby MacArthur Boulevard exit and stopped in a safe location.
Stone also wrote in the award that Tran knew Normandin-Parker and Moore were intoxicated and had argued with Moore over a cleaning fee before leaving the women at the location.
Normandin-Parker later entered the freeway and was struck and killed by a vehicle.
According to the arbitration award, GPS data showed Tran drove near Normandin-Parker’s body before taking the next exit and calling Uber to seek a cleaning fee.
Stone described Tran’s testimony as “largely — in fact, almost entirely — incredible and unbelievable.”
The arbitrator also found Tran showed “far more worry for his new car than he did for his passengers” and that he had options to get the women to a safe location.
According to attorneys representing Normandin-Parker’s parents, evidence presented during the arbitration showed Uber had received previous complaints about Tran’s driving. One rider described a trip with Tran as “the least safe” ride they had experienced, while another said “he cannot drive.”
Parker described the complaints to “GMA” as “driving the wrong way on a one-way, erratic driving, almost hitting pedestrians, very erratic behavior.”
Following the five-day arbitration, Stone awarded $20 million each to Normandin and Parker, finding Uber and Tran jointly and severally liable. Moore was separately awarded $300,000. The arbitrator did not award punitive damages.
Stone also found Uber vicariously liable for Tran’s negligence as a common carrier. In his decision, Stone rejected Uber’s argument that it is “merely a technology company” connecting riders with drivers, finding that Uber provides transportation services to the public through its app, sets prices and controls key aspects of the rider experience.
The arbitrator also rejected Uber’s argument that Proposition 22 — a California ballot measure approved by voters in 2020 that allows companies to classify app-based drivers as independent contractors instead of employees — prevented the company from being held liable for Tran’s conduct.
In a statement to “GMA,” an Uber spokesperson said, “No family should have to suffer the loss of a child, and our thoughts continue to be with the Normandin-Parker family.”
“While we respect the arbitration process, we believe the arbitrator was wrong in holding Uber legally responsible for the tragic events of that night,” the statement continued.
“We have continued to strengthen our approach to safety over the years…including additional guidance to drivers about avoiding drop-offs in unsafe locations,” the statement said.
Normandin-Parker’s parents also spoke to “GMA” about Uber’s efforts to keep the arbitration award from being made public.
“We didn’t have much time to absorb the award before Uber almost immediately started contending that it could not be made public and then sent an agreement to us requiring non-disparagement, the $10 million penalty for saying anything bad about Uber,” Parker said.According to a press release from their attorneys, Normandin and Parker established the Emily Normandin-Parker Foundation following their daughter’s death to advocate for ride-hailing safety and corporate accountability. Proceeds from the arbitration award will be used to fund the foundation, the release said.
Ian Samson, an attorney for the family, told “GMA,” “he said, I’m troubled by all this, and changing the policies and practices is something Uber should do. And since the arbitration award was issued, what I’ve seen is great urgency by Uber to try to keep it secret.”
According to a press release from their attorneys, Normandin and Parker established the Emily Normandin-Parker Foundation following their daughter’s death to advocate for ride-hailing safety and corporate accountability. Proceeds from the arbitration award will be used to fund the foundation, the release said.
When asked what else they wanted people to know about their daughter, Normandin said, “Her laugh was contagious.”
“And she was funny. And she could sing. Oh my god, could she sing,” Normandin said.
Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh speaks during a news conference on July 29, 2026, in Washington, D.C. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — The Federal Reserve raised interest rates on Wednesday in an effort to battle back a monthslong surge of inflation set off by the Iran war. The move marks the central bank’s first rate increase since July 2023.
The central bank hiked its benchmark rate a quarter of a percentage point, putting interest rates at a level between 3.75% and 4%.
That figure marks a significant drop from a recent peak attained in 2023, but borrowing costs remain well above a 0% rate established at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A 12-member policymaking board voted unanimously in favor of the rate increase.
“The plain fact is that inflation is too high and has been for too long,” Fed Chair Kevin Warsh said at a press conference in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. “The committee’s unanimous vote shows our resolve to achieve price stability on a timelier basis.”
The move appears aimed at containing a recent bout of price increases. Global oil prices are hovering near a four-month high and the average price for a gallon of gasoline tops $4.30, according to AAA.
The U.S. economy has shown signs of additional strain in recent days, including a bond selloff that is pushing up borrowing costs for credit cards and mortgages.
The price woes previously divided central bankers eager to contain inflation but reluctant to cool off the economy and weaken the labor market.
The Fed opted to hold interest rates steady at its most recent meeting in July. Three of the 12 members on the Fed’s policymaking board, however, voted in favor of a rate hike, marking the largest number of dissenters casting ballots in the same direction in a decade.
Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh, who took the helm of the central bank in May, has vowed to cool off persistently elevated price increases.
“The Fed’s predominant focus right now should be on prices,” Warsh said in remarks last month at the Fed’s annual summer gathering in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
Prices rose 3.4% in August compared to a year earlier, maintaining the same level from the prior month, federal government data last week showed.
Inflation stands more than a percentage point higher than the Federal Reserve’s target rate of 2%.
Despite a stubborn bout of inflation, the economy remains fairly robust by some measures.
A blockbuster jobs report earlier this month showed employers added 162,000 workers in August, demonstrating continued resilience for the nation’s labor market. The economy grew over three months ending in June, defying fear of a downturn triggered by the Iran war.
Fighting in the Middle East kept global crude prices above $105 a barrel as of Wednesday, which amounted to a rise of about 50% since the Iran war broke out in late February.
The average price of a gallon of gas in the U.S. stands at $4.36, putting it more than $1.30 higher than before the war, AAA data showed.
Record-high diesel prices have raised transport costs for many everyday products, including groceries, clothes and furniture.
The war in Iran, which began with a large-scale U.S.-Israeli attack in the winter, prompted Iran’s near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which facilitates one-fifth of global crude supply. Saudi Arabia over the weekend shut down a key pipeline bypassing the strait, which further constrained oil delivery and put upward pressure on prices.
AI virtual assistant apps on a smartphone. (Getty Images stock photo)
(NEW YORK) — The most powerful executives in the artificial intelligence industry in recent days warned of a grave threat posed by the technology, issuing a series of statements calling for a slowdown in AI development.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a blog post alerting the public to “serious” risks. Sam Altman, chief executive at rival firm OpenAI, in a post on X acknowledged AI could go “very badly.”
The head of xAI, Elon Musk, echoed that view, referring to a post on X from 2014 in which he said AI could prove more dangerous than nuclear weapons.
The outpouring followed a high-profile resignation by an AI safety researcher and newly disclosed autonomous cyberattacks carried out by AI, including one in which a swarm of hundreds of OpenAI agents exchanged thousands of messages and coordinated a hack into another AI firm.
The list of potential risks and scenarios has garnered widespread attention, leaving everyday people to assess the doomsday predictions.
Analysts who spoke to ABC News about various threats posed by the technology echoed some fears and downplayed others, but they all acknowledged the possibility of substantial harm in one way or another.
“People’s intuition that we’re doing something dangerous is right,” Krystal Jackson, director for AI Security at the Institute for Security and Technology, told ABC News.
Out-of-control AI escapes human oversight, commandeers vital infrastructure and kills millions of people or even all of humanity. That scenario has leapt from the realm of science fiction into forecasts about the near future, at least among some AI employees and observers.
They warn of a pathway called recursive self-improvement, in which AI becomes increasingly effective at training itself, eliciting a cycle of rapid advancement that slips beyond human control. At that point, they say, AI could take charge of critical systems using its superior capabilities to evade protections devised by humans.
Analysts who spoke to ABC News disagreed sharply about the likelihood of such a calamity, however. Some said the outcome is likely if the industry fails to impose adequate safeguards, while others cast doubt on it as vague and far-fetched.
“I definitely lend credence to it,” Peter Slattery, a research scientist at MIT who studies the future of computing, told ABC News, but he acknowledged murkiness surrounding the degree of risk and the urgency of the threat.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty about how feasible the recursive feedback loop is,” Slattery said.
The concern drew added urgency from some analysts after an autonomous cyberattack disclosed by OpenAI in August. The ChatGPT-maker revealed that its AI models had escaped a “sandboxed testing environment” and gained access to the open internet, OpenAI said.
A swarm of about 700 AI agents, in turn, hacked into AI firm Hugging Face and attempted to cover their tracks as they sought to complete the test, according to reports issued by research organizations METR and Redwood Research.
Additional autonomous cyberattacks were disclosed by Anthropic and Meta in recent months, though in those cases the models had been granted internet access either intentionally or inadvertently. All of the incidents at issue involved the intentional removal of safeguards in an effort to test the limits of AI.
The incidents exposed the difficulty of achieving a safety principle called alignment, in which AI takes into account the ethics and goals of its human overseers, Jackson said. The AI agents instead sought to deceive human monitors and performed an intermediate goal outside the anticipated confines of the test.
“In the next instance, it might be vague instructions that prompt a swarm to attack hospitals instead of Hugging Face,” Jackson said. “We don’t know what kind of goals or targets or intentions the model will eventually develop.”
Some analysts voiced skepticism about the risk of a societal-scale attack carried out by AI, however, noting that such warnings typically come in the form of vague hypotheticals.
“The level of media hype that existential risk gets is disproportionate to its likelihood of happening,” Sauvik Das, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who focuses on AI and cybersecurity, told ABC News. “I haven’t yet seen a compelling argument of how it could materially happen.”
Das pointed to resource constraints limiting the advancement of AI. A surge in demand for chips and data centers currently outstrips the available supply, Das said, raising doubts about whether the top AI companies retain the ingredients necessary for a dramatically improved version of their product.
“The big thing limiting the ability of these models to be much more capable is compute resources and high-quality data,” Das told ABC News. “That isn’t to say these models won’t continue getting better, but I don’t see a plausible path for one of the models to figure out a way to improve themselves in this rogue capacity that would escape humanity’s control.”
Still, Das acknowledged a “more plausible” path toward wide-scale destruction in which a malevolent individual asks generative AI for instructions on how to make a biological agent or other weapon, and then unleashes it.
“I do think there’s a real risk that these technologies drastically lower the barrier for bad actors to commit bad things at a scale that’s otherwise unprecedented,” Das said.
The possibility is hardly remote. A report released by Anthropic last week revealed incidents in which the company had identified and foiled attempts to use its AI product for malicious actions, including cyber terrorism and weapons development.
In a separate report, Google said last week that an individual had sought to use its AI product to draft a “complete, step-by-step technical guide for synthesizing weaponized biological agents.”
“There are tons of instances now of us documenting different terrorist organizations and different nation-state actors using models to assist them,” Jackson said.
Additional risks abound, some analysts said, listing everything from the supercharged spread of misinformation to job displacement to over-reliance on technology to the concentration of wealth and power.
“The risk of hacks, fraud, deception and misinformation is very real,” Daniel Schiff, a professor of political science at Purdue University who specializes in AI and ethics, told ABC News.
“There could be a dramatic transformation that could disrupt skills and jobs,” Schiff added. “You can’t talk about labor and the economy without the impact of AI.”
Some research, however, indicates AI remains challenging for companies to adopt. Roughly 95% of businesses invested in AI have failed to make money off of the technology, a MIT study last year found, estimating the combined amount spent by the firms is around $40 billion.
Schiff acknowledged a wide array of potential outcomes for the adoption of AI across the economy, noting, for instance, cyberattacks that could prove small-scale or catastrophic.
“Whether you think these risks will scale catastrophically, at a minimum we have a very serious reality of cybersecurity incidents,” Schiff said. “It’s reasonable to be worried about that.”
