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They are 22 words that could terrify those who read them, as brutal in their simplicity as they are general in their meaning: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.” That is the statement from San Francisco-based non-profit the Center for AI Safety, and signed by chief executives from Google Deepmind and ChatGPT creators OpenAI, along with other major figures in artificial intelligence research. The fact that the statement has been signed by so many leading AI researchers and companies means that it should be heeded. But it also means that it should be robustly examined: why are they saying this, and why now? The answer might take some of the terror away (though not all of it). Writing a statement like this functions as something like a reverse marketing campaign: our products are so powerful and so new, it says, that they could wipe out the world. Most tech products just promise to change our lives; these ones could end it. And so what looks like a statement about danger is also one that highlights just how much Google, OpenAI and more think they have to offer. Warning that AI could be as terrible as pandemics also has the peculiar effect of making artificial intelligence's dangers seem as if they just arise naturally in the world, like the mutation of a virus. But every dangerous AI is the product of intentional choices by its developers – and in most cases, from the companies that have signed the new statement. Who is the statement for? Who are these companies talking to? After all, they are the ones who are creating the products that might extinguish life on Earth. It reads a little like being hectored by a burglar about your house’s locks not being good enough. None of this is to say that the warning is untrue, or shouldn't be heeded; the danger is very real indeed. But it does mean that we should ask a few more questions of those warning us about it, especially when they are conveniently the companies that created this ostensibly apocalyptic tech in the first place. AI doesn't feel so world-destroying yet. The statement's doomy words might come as some surprise to those who have used the more accessible AI systems, such as ChatGPT. Conversations with that chatbot and others can be funny, surprising, delightful and sometimes scary – but it's hard to see how what is mostly prattle and babble from a smart but stupid chatbot could destroy the world. They also might come as a surprise to those who have read about the many, very important ways that AI is already being used to help save us, not kill us. Only last week, scientists announced that they had used artificial intelligence to find new antibiotics that could kill off superbugs, and that is just the beginning. By focusing on the "risk of extinction" and the "societal-scale risk" posed by AI, however, its proponents are able to shift the focus away from both the weaknesses of actually existing AI and the ethical questions that surround it. The intensity of the statement, the reference to nuclear war and pandemics, make it feel like we are at a point equivalent with cowering in our bomb shelters or in lockdown. They say there are no atheists in foxholes; we might also say there are no ethicists in fallout shelters. If AI is akin to nuclear war, though, we are closer to the formation of the Manhattan Project than we are to the Cold War. We don’t need to be hunkering down as if the danger is here and there is nothing we can do about it but “mitigate it”. There's still time to decide what this technology looks like, how powerful it is and who will be at the sharp end of that power. Statements like this are a reflection of the fact that the systems we have today are a long way from those that we might have tomorrow: the work going on at the companies who warned us about these issues is vast, and could be much more transformative than chatting with a robot. It is all happening in secret, and shrouded in both mystery and marketing buzz, but what we can discern is that we might only be a few years away from systems that are both more powerful and more sinister. Already, the world is struggling to differentiate between fake images and real ones; soon, developments in AI could make it very difficult to find the difference between fake people and real ones. At least according to some in the industry, AI is set to develop at such a pace that it might only be a few years before those warnings are less abstractly worrying and more concretely terrifying. The statement is correct in identifying those risks, and urging work to avoid them. But it is more than a little helpful to the companies that signed it in making those risks seem inevitable and naturally occurring, as if they are not choosing to build and profit from the technology they are so worried about. It is those companies, not artificial intelligence, that have the power to decide what that future looks like – and whether it will include our "extinction". Read More Opinion: Age gap relationships might seem wrong, but they work. Trust me Hands up if you trust Boris Johnson | Tom Peck Boris’s ‘ratty rat’ rage against Sunak could bring the Tories down | John Rentoul Opinion: Age gap relationships might seem wrong, but they work. Trust me Hands up if you trust Boris Johnson | Tom Peck Boris’s ‘ratty rat’ rage against Sunak could bring the Tories down | John Rentoul

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As a two-time Formula One world champion and current championship leader, we all know how impressive Max Verstappen is in an F1 race car... But how would the Oracle Red Bull Racing driver fare at drifting? Ahead of the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, Verstappen got to fulfil his lifelong ambition of learning how to drift on Thursday 6 July at Millbrook Proving Centre, under the guidance of professional drift driver and Red Bull athlete ‘Mad’ Mike Whiddett. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter While Verstappen is used to being in the driver’s seat, the 25-year-old was a passenger at first as he watched a demonstration from Whiddett who is an established drift racer and record-breaker with a career spanning 16 years. After getting shown the ropes, Verstappen told indy100 how the demonstration was “pretty crazy.” “I didn't know what to expect and it was already pretty wild,” he said with a chuckle. “I just didn't expect to have that much grip you know? In the drift cars so yeah I'm curious to see how I will do it but it probably takes a bit of time.” Since this is Verstappen’s first time learning to drift, he revealed how much he has seen of this particular kind of racing before today. “I mean I've seen that clips and I've seen my friends do it a bit online you know virtual world doing a bit of drifting. “Yeah it's crazy, it’s something very different of course to what I'm doing.” Being an F1 driver, Verstappen is no stranger to racing but what makes drifting different is that drift cars are designed specifically to lose traction and slide to pull off manoeuvers. In contrast, F1 cars use advanced aerodynamics to create downforce (5gs at maximum speed, meaning five times the weight of the car will press down on the surface) to get the maximum grip on the track. He explained further why learning to drift is different from what he is used to. “I mean already just steering lock, the way the car is set up. It's really about just being able to throw the car around so the way that breaks are implemented in the cars - there are a lot of different things.” Verstappen added the reason why drifting would not be beneficial for F1 drivers. “It's just not fast,” he said. “You can drift it but the car is definitely not built for it already just to the steering lock we have, how stiff everything is made that the car really doesn't like to slide at all.” Given the differences between F1 and drift racing, Verstappen provided a modest answer when asked how confident he felt going into the challenge. “Not so much at the moment. I don't know maybe once I start driving I feel quite comfortable it comes a bit more natural but at the moment I really don't know how it's gonna go.” This challenge came ahead of the British Grand Prix in Silverstone and the Red Bull driver shared how was “looking forward” to the race weekend because “the track is great to drive,” and believed it would “suit [his] car.” Verstappen has had quite the year so far, as the two-time champ went into Silverstone with an 81-point lead in the world championship (229 points) over nearest rival and teammate Sergio ‘Checo’ Perez (148 points). Off the back of the Austrian Grand Prix, Verstappen had won five races in a row, taking his overall number of wins this year to seven and from this excellent form, he revealed his highlight from the championship so far. “I mean we had a lot of great races I think but for me probably Miami was a good race you know coming from P9 I think it was never going to be a straightforward race but I think we really manage that race well,” Verstappen said. “Of course then to win it as well was great at the time and actually since then we have been in a good flow and we had a lot of good results.” This dominant form only highlights Verstappen’s hunger to win as demonstrated at the Austrian GP. Verstappen was leading the race by more than 20 seconds and convinced his team to let him pit for soft tyres with two laps left in order for him to win the extra point for the fastest lap – and the risk paid off. “I love winning and that's what motivates me so the more I can win the more motivated I am,” he said. “I think it works the opposite for me so yeah I'm enjoying it and the more faster we are the more interested I am and at the moment of course we have a great crowd so it's really not hard to come back to a race weekend and be on top of it.” Before heading off to try his hand at drifting, Verstappen shared some of the advice he had been given by Whiddett. “I mean he was explaining to me of course what to do with brakes the clutch and the handbrake.” He added: “The weird thing for me already is that it’s on the right-hand side so everything is opposite that probably will take a bit of time for me to get used to – normally you sit on the left-hand side. “You have the gearshift for at first and then the handbrake – here it’s the opposite. So I think I just first have to get comfortable with doing it the other way around in your mind and then just see how that goes.” It was then Verstappen’s turn to get behind the wheel of Whiddett's custom-built ‘MAD BUL’ – an FD3S Mazda RX-7 with 600HP (just over half the HP to an F1 car - 1050HP) which makes performing manoeuvres while travelling sideways more difficult to execute. Plus, this challenge makes Verstappen the first person other than Whiddett himself to give this particular drift car a spin, to which the F1 driver jokingly admitted there’s “a lot of pressure on [him] to do well and not to destroy the car.” Everyone then watched on as Verstappen attempted a series of manoeuvres that put him out of his comfort zone while also testing his driving abilities, these included: high-speed doughnuts and figures of 8, before flying through a Scandi-flick. But the highlight had to be with the finale which saw Verstappen take on the ‘Horner Corner’ where he saw a familiar face in the form of life-size cardboard cutouts of the Red Bull team principal Christian Horner (with a rather enlarged hand) around the corner of the track to add an extra element of difficulty into the mix. “I didn’t really know what to expect,” Verstappen told indy100 after the challenge and joked that the cardboard Christians he knocked over had “recovered.” “I really enjoyed it, it was definitely better than I thought it would be just because I had no clue how much fun it was.” He even likened the experience to feeling “16 again and jumping into an F1 car for the first time.” While Whiddett also commented on the challenge: “We really pushed the limits with Max and I hope he’s learnt some awesome tricks he can take to the F1 track - drifting is as raw as it gets! “I’d love to try out these challenges in an F1 car and see what’s possible in Max’s seat next time.” Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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