A recent study from MIT FutureTech and the University of Queensland surveyed 272 researchers across 24 categories of AI risk. Participants estimated a 12% probability that dangerous AI capabilities could contribute to a catastrophic outcome by 2030 and a separate 12% probability that AI-enabled weapons or mass-harm capabilities could emerge during the same period. Researchers said those figures exceeded 20% in scenarios without mitigation efforts. The study defined a catastrophic event as one involving more than one million deaths or at least $100 billion in damages. Risks involving chemical and biological weapons were among the highest-ranked categories identified by respondents. Many of the people building today's leading AI systems privately identify engineered pathogens as their greatest concern, Axios reported Thursday. The concerns are shared across competing companies. Last month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman and Meta Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang signed an open letter calling for stronger protections against AI-assisted biological threats, according to The Verge. The letter urged lawmakers to require screening of synthetic DNA and RNA orders and improve safeguards around biological research.