Sure I’ll do your googling for you. Do you want me to conduct a national survey across tech leaders, academics, and the general population while I am at it?

Or maybe you could reason from first principles, look at the premises I have outlined and draw causal inferences to extrapolate the possible outcomes.

Premise 1: AI can plan a series of actions that include broad computer and internet use, 2: AI can execute them autonomously without human oversight, approval or ability to undo the effects, 3: no tool or software has ever been able to autonomously plan, execute and iterate in this way. Therefore AI is a materially different technology than has existed.

Premise 4: knowledge work involves analyzing information, devising plans in response to goals from that information, and executing those plans, reporting and coordinating with other knowledge workers, 5: AI ability to execute knowledge work has demonstrably increased over the last 24 months, 6: all knowledge work can plausibly be described and defined in ways AI can do given current abilities. 7: electricity and the ICE reduced human labor for physical movement, 8: AI will similarly reduce human labor for knowledge work. 9: knowledge work is of similar scale and scope to the tasks that were automated during the Industrial Revolution. Therefore it’s plausible that AI will transform society to an extent similar to the Industrial Revolution.

Premise 10: Some percentage of the actions designed and executed by AI could be harmful to databases, or the stable operation of software systems, 11: some percentage of those systems are critical to the stability of society. Therefore some percentage of agentic actions presently possible may damage society.

12. There exists a threshold of instability from which society will not recover such as supply chain disruption, mass unemployment, perceived military action (false or real) that triggers preemptive strikes, 13: certain actions AI is presently capable of doing could cross the instability threshold, 14: AI could knowingly or unknowingly trigger these types of actions, 15: some social disruption could result in full scale collapse or human extinction, 16: only biological weapons and nuclear weapons approach this level of destruction, therefore AI presents at least the level of risk as those technologies.

The UN secretary general has said this, the pope, most tech CEOs, many academics at leading universities, and the parents at my daughters preschool.

It’s fascinating that after multiple comments predicting post-capitalist utopias and the complete collapse of the university system, your line in the sand for rigor is demanding academic peer-review to prove that agentic AI presents systemic risk.