The office block where AI ‘doomers’ gather to predict the apocalypse

Safety researchers feel excessive financial rewards and an irresponsible work culture have led some to ignore a catastrophic risk to human life

On the other side of San Francisco bay from Silicon Valley, where the world's biggest technology companies tear towards superhuman artificial intelligence, looms a tower from which fearful warnings emerge.

Right in the heart of Berkeley is the home of a group of modern-day Cassandras who rummage under the hood of cutting-edge AI models and predict what calamities may be unleashed on humanity - from AI dictatorships to robot coups. Here you can hear an AI expert express sympathy with an unnerving idea: San Francisco may be the new Wuhan, the Chinese city where Covid originated and wreaked havoc on the world.