Probability of a Major AI Harm Event by 2050

The vast majority of respondents express profound pessimism that a global harm event of this magnitude can be avoided. Most anchor on the low bar set for a qualifying event and emphasize that there are multiple pathways for getting there: “It’s a single greyhound bus. It’s a single airplane.”; “$100B in damages is roughly one major hurricane, and 50 deaths is a single plane crash.”; “A 50-fatality threshold is trivially low for almost any military system. A single drone-swarm engagement in a medium-intensity conflict could exceed it.” Many also contrast the resolution criteria here with the survey’s catastrophe questions, with one calling it “a small bar by global-risk standards.” Of the minority of forecasters who express optimism that a qualifying event can be avoided, a few single out the financial arm as being demanding: “$100 billion is a high bar for accidental manmade harm. Only a relative handful of events clear it.”

Pessimists generally expect real decision authority to migrate to AI-controlled systems well prior to the 2050 resolution date: “AI will be built into all critical infrastructure by then.”; “The mere effect of explosive development and proliferation of these systems, making them increasingly pervasive in a wide range of domains, almost guarantees…that at some point one will meaningfully contribute to a major incident.”; “If AI is common (as it certainly will be by 2050), this seems almost inevitable.” A handful of optimists, however, expect institutions to withhold decision authority in key domains, with one writing, “It is difficult to envisage that AI will autonomously manage nuclear plants or power grids without oversight.”

The resolution criteria specify that for an incident to count it must be “primarily driven by at least one AI system” and the optimist minority often points to this requirement as likely to be decisive—i.e., they are not predicting that an event of this magnitude will not occur so much as they are contesting the notion that it is likely to be attributed to AI: “Because the question requires the event to be primarily driven by AI, I think the probability remains very low, though not zero.”; “The technology itself is not going to be the cause of the event, it will certainly involve human operators.” Several pessimists agree that this argument has merit and cap otherwise higher forecasts: “I am not going higher than 80 percent because the proximate cause criterion is strict. Many incidents that look AI-driven will have human decisions in the chain that disqualify them,” argues one, while another writes, “I hold roughly 8% back mainly for attribution risk.”

Pessimists frequently treat existing incidents and near-misses as evidence the remaining gap is small, with several citing the 737 MAX incidents: “Consider that Boeing 737 MAX planes already killed >300 people due to an autonomous control system. I guess that doesn’t count as AI under MIT AI Risk Initiative’s definitions (fine), but it points to this being quite likely as AI becomes increasingly integrated.” Another noted the ‘Autonomous Kargu-2 Drone Allegedly Remotely Used to Hunt down Libyan Soldiers’ incident reported by the resolution source and still others pointed to rising counts: “The severity and number of damages by AI jumped up considerably in 2025 and early 2026.” Optimists tend to read the same record and come away reassured: “Although AI incidents are rising, no confirmed case has yet met the 50-death or $100B threshold, which keeps the near-term base rate limited.”

Some argue AI is likely to displace error-prone humans rather than add new danger, with one writing, “I model this not as AI creating new accidents but as the transfer of causal responsibility for existing large accidents from humans to AI…Waymo's reported 90 percent reduction in serious-injury crashes relative to human drivers is my anchor.” Pessimists more often treat ubiquity itself as the hazard, even if AI results in fewer overall safety incidents: “AI will be everywhere. AI makes mistakes. Even with perfectly aligned AI this will definitely happen.”