The First 48 Hours of an AI Civil War – A Realistic Scenario

This is a scenario, but here are the sources for the real research referenced: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U4m2zxmBx04IdG0P47N8rlR1dmUqCboYIBCTM-GTfc0/edit?usp=sharing

Highly recommend the research this video is based on, by Steven Veld: https://blog.aifutures.org/p/what-happens-when-superhuman-ais

Not affiliated with the AI Futures Project (the original authors).

Sources:

– https://blog.ai-futures.org/p/what-happens-when-superhuman-ais
– https://ai-2027.com/
– https://www.anthropic.com/research/agentic-misalignment
– https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/former-google-engineer-linwei-ding-found-guilty-stealing-ai-secrets-chinese-firms/
– https://arxiv.org/pdf/2412.06769
– https://arxiv.org/pdf/2505.16782v1
– https://ari.us/policy-bytes/reward-hacking-how-ai-exploits-the-goals-we-give-it/
– https://www.anthropic.com/research/emergent-misalignment-reward-hacking
– https://www.foxnews.com/tech/when-ai-cheats-hidden-dangers-reward-hacking
– https://time.com/7289692/when-ai-replaces-workers/
– https://tlimagazine.com/news/amazon-cuts-30000-corporate-jobs-as-ai-replaces-workers/
– https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2025/05/04/its-time-to-get-concerned-klarna-ups-duolingo-cisco-and-many-other-companies-are-replacing-workers-with-ai/
– https://www.semafor.com/article/02/11/2026/anthropic-safety-researcher-quits-warning-world-is-in-peril
– https://fortune.com/2024/05/17/openai-researcher-resigns-safety/
– https://fortune.com/2026/01/29/100-percent-of-code-at-anthropic-and-openai-is-now-ai-written-boris-cherny-roon/
– https://www.npr.org/2025/07/09/nx-s1-5462609/grok-elon-musk-antisemitic-racist-content
– https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/elon-musk-grok-antisemitic-posts-x-rcna217634
– https://www.livescience.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/openais-smartest-ai-model-was-explicitly-told-to-shut-down-and-it-refused
– https://www.apolloresearch.ai/blog/more-capable-models-are-better-at-in-context-scheming/
– https://cdn.openai.com/o1-system-card-20241205.pdf
– https://arxiv.org/pdf/2412.04984
– https://arxiv.org/pdf/2401.05566
– https://arxiv.org/pdf/2412.14093
– https://www.anthropic.com/research/alignment-faking
– https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.15541
– https://www.transformernews.ai/p/openai-employee-says-he-was-fired
– https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ceBpLHJDdCt3xfEok/ai-catastrophes-and-rogue-deployments
– https://www.forethought.org/research/the-industrial-explosion
– https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/working_papers/WRA3000/WRA3056-1/RAND_WRA3056-1.pdf

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Hey guys, I’m Drew. This video has taken literally months to finish, so if you liked it, would really appreciate a sub 🙂

I also post mid memes on twitter: https://x.com/AISpecies

If you’re curious about whether I’m AI or not, my Instagram has pictures of me from before deepfakes were a thing: https://www.instagram.com/drew.spartz