Race for AI is making Hindenburg-style disaster ‘a real risk’, says leading expert

The problem, Wooldridge said, was that AI chatbots failed in unpredictable ways and had no idea when they were wrong, but were designed to provide confident answers regardless. When delivered in human-like and sycophantic responses, the answers could easily mislead people, he added. The risk is that people start treating AIs as if they were human. In a 2025 survey by the Center for Democracy and Technology, nearly a third of students reported that they or a friend had had a romantic relationship with an AI.