A Stanford University researcher who runs crisis simulations told a Seaside audience Thursday, Sept. 10, that artificial intelligence now poses risks she considers potentially existential.

Jacquelyn Schneider, director of the Hoover Wargaming and Crisis Simulation Initiative, made the statement at a daylong forum organized by the Monterey Bay Economic Partnership (MBEP) at CSU Monterey Bay's University Center. The forum, titled "AI & the Future of Our Region," drew speakers from OpenAI, Loti AI, the Hoover Institution and Stanford Law, Monterey County NOW reported.

Schneider described findings from 2024 wargame experiments in which AI agents played the same crisis scenarios as human participants. The AI agents tended toward more violence and were more likely to hallucinate, she said. She then reviewed more recent studies to see whether newer models behaved differently.

They did not.

Schneider said research shows that models with stronger strategic reasoning are more likely to break their guardrails and make more catastrophic choices. She told the audience she had moved away from her earlier stance that technology itself does not harm people. She now believes the danger warrants immediate public discussion.

The forum came two days after former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned from the AI company on Tuesday, Sept. 8, and posted on X that neither Anthropic nor OpenAI is acting responsibly. Coxon's post drew more than 90 million views in less than 24 hours, TIME reported. Monterey County NOW reporter Aric Sleeper cited Coxon's warning as backdrop for the Seaside forum.

Not every panelist shared Schneider's alarm. Erika McEntarfer, a labor economist and distinguished fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, took a different view on the job market.

"My personal forecast is that we're looking at normal economic disruption," McEntarfer said.

She called AI technology "jagged," meaning it excels at some tasks and fails at others. It can solve complex math problems but cannot read an analog clock, she said, making it hard for organizations to figure out where AI actually helps. McEntarfer, who described herself as a former CEO, added that restructuring an organization around a radical new technology is difficult in practice.

Former Santa Cruz County Supervisor Zach Friend moderated the panels. MBEP, which works to improve economic health across Monterey, San Benito and Santa Cruz counties, has not announced a follow-up event.