New Book, forthcoming from McGill-Queen’s University Press, Spring 2027:

Treacherous Tech: Taking the Risks of Artificial Intelligence Seriously

William Leiss william.leiss@gmail.com and Richard Smith smith@sfu.ca

https://treacheroustech.ca

“The risks associated with AI are unfortunately going to grow from here. A very capable agent explicitly trained and instructed to carry out nefarious acts presents a new kind of danger; it is likely to cross the scope of its operator’s intent, generalizing into potentially more extremely malicious behavior. The boundary between misuse and autonomous misaligned actions will blur as AI gains more agency. We may be used to thinking of AI as tools, but some agents will be pursuing their own objectives. They will find ways to collaborate with people, by bargaining with, tricking or blackmailing them.” Jakub Pachocki, Chief Scientist, OpenAI, September 6, 2026: https://openai.com/index/an-alien-mind/

“The world’s leading AI companies believe they could be close to automating AI research. It is hard to predict exactly how much this will accelerate AI progress, but there is a real risk that capability development rapidly accelerates beyond our ability to understand or control the resulting systems.” (Open Letter from 1400 AI Industry Employees (“Pacing the Frontier,” June 2026: https://www.pacingthefrontier.com/ )

Book Description

This book begins with the story of the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) for the general reader, detailing some of its benefits as well as its problematic side. It then brings the well-established risk management approach to bear on the catastrophic risks associated with Frontier AI, the newest AI models—risks which have been identified by many AI professionals as well as by leading AI firms. These risks include undermining cybersecurity, the creation of new biological and chemical weapons, and the real possibility that newer AI models may evolve beyond their human creators’ ability to understand or control the resulting systems. The Director of the CIA referred to the newest AI models as “digital nuclear weapons.” Canada and other countries use the risk management approach for managing catastrophic risks, for example, those which arise from using nuclear power. When confronted by new catastrophic risks, the risk management approach first asks: How likely are they to happen? And if they happen, how bad will the outcomes be? This approach tells us (a) how severe the levels of risks are and (b) whether those levels are acceptable in terms of public security. We conclude that the catastrophic risks associated with AI are clearly unacceptable. Stringent regulations by governments must be created urgently, requiring the AI industry to implement a global indefinite pause on Frontier AI and on the goal of creating a superintelligent machine: Stop AI! We call upon the Government of Canada to enact such regulations and join with other countries to create an international treaty on AI safety.

Key Selling Points

• This is the first book to explain why the level of serious risks posed by AI (Artificial Intelligence) are unacceptable in terms of public security.
• This is the first book to explain why governments should not allow the AI industry to proceed in developing Frontier AI, using the slogan: Stop AI!
• This is the first book to explain why governments should not allow the AI industry to proceed to develop a superintelligent machine.
• This is the first book to explain why no conceivable level of future hypothetical benefits derived from AI, no matter how great, can justify exposing the world’s population to even the remotest chance that AI will lead to the extinction of the human species.

Table of Contents

Preface

Part One: Artificial Intelligence

Introduction

Chapter 1: The Good

Chapter 2: The Bad

Chapter 3: The Ugly

Chapter 4: The Superhuman Machine

Part 2: Risk Policy and Analysis

Chapter 5: The Risk-Based Approach

Chapter 6: The Control Problem

Chapter 7: Catastrophic and Existential Risks

Chapter 8: Risk Estimation

Chapter 9: Quantitative Risk Assessment for Loss of Control (By Michael G. Tyshenko)

Part Three: Governance and Risk Management

Chapter 10: Regulation

Chapter 11: Risk Mitigation Options

Chapter 12: Heart of Darkness

Chapter 13: Blaming the Victims

Chapter 14: What Should the Public Do?

Chapter 15: What Should Governments Do?

Chapter 16: Risk Management Summary

References

Acknowledgements

How we used AI

Early in the process of writing this book we used a variety of commercial generative AI tools (NotebookLM and Gemini, ChatGPT, and Claude) along with a few open source/open weight models (Gemma, deepseek, kimi, qwen, and gpt-oss), mainly for experimenting with and learning how models work - nothing like running a model on your laptop to give you an appreciation for the energy they consume (and cooling they require)!

In a practical sense, generative AI was involved in our online research, especially as Gemini became more and more integrated into the Google search results. The configuration for this web site (built in Markdown for Hugo and deployed using Workers/Pages on Cloudflare) was also largely done by ChatGPT and Claude, with help from CloudFlare’s in-house AI tool and Docker’s AI tool.

Generative AI also provided essential help early in the project when a mistake resulted in the entire bibliography having to be redone in Chicago (as required by MQUP) and converted from APA (as formatted by one of the authors - whose initials are RKS). Ahem.

Back cover

William Leiss 10 September 2026

Over the past few years many leaders in the AI industry, including the “godfather of AI,” Nobel prizewinner Geoffrey Hinton, have warned about serious risks associated with this new technology—including, incredibly, human extinction. Then in the second half of 2026 these warnings reached a crescendo.

Fourteen hundred senior employees of AI firms signed an open letter, calling attention to a risk that capability development in AI models will rapidly accelerate “beyond our ability to understand or control the resulting systems.” And the Chief Scientist at OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, told us: “The risks associated with AI are unfortunately going to grow from here” and that AI agents “will find ways to collaborate with people, by bargaining with, tricking or blackmailing them.”

Industry leaders themselves have called upon governments to act in the face of these threats and to forge an international treaty to regulate AI. But so far nothing is happening: Governments appear to be paralyzed, in part because they do not even understand this new technology or how to regulate it and to reduce its risks.

Only a well-informed and mobilized citizenry can change this situation. They must demand that their governments stop the further development of AI systems until the industry knows how to make this technology safe to use.

William Leiss, O.C., Ph.D., FRSC

Professor Emeritus

School of Policy Studies

Queen’s University (Canada)

www.leiss.ca