3 charged in deadly Manassas shooting; Anthropic researcher quits over AI fears

And welcome in at three o'clock. I'm Marina Morocco. Let's get you started here on the DMV Zone as we get you behind the scenes of everything we're working on in real time. And let's jump right in to a Fox 5 News alert as we continue to follow that deadly shooting in Manassas that killed a 16-year-old girl who police say was an innocent bystander. Well, today three men are now facing charges in connection with that deadly shooting. Police say the gunfire started during a confrontation between two men who had pre-existing hostile relationship and the teenager was caught in the crossfire. The three suspects are now being held without bond as the investigation continues. The police chief Doug Keane said during a news conference today that investigators initially believed there were only two shooters involved in the gunfire at the first Friday event in Old Town Manassas. But on Sunday they discovered there were three. The three suspects are now being held without bond as it all continues. So, of course, we'll get much more of everything that's happening in Manassas throughout the hours here on Fox 5. In the meantime, a warning today from inside one of the world's leading AI companies that artificial intelligence could pose an existential threat to humanity. Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon has quit his job accusing the company and OpenAI of racing towards self-improving superintelligence without enough safety measures. Anthropic's own alignment lead says that he believes there's more than a 10% chance AI could kill all humans within the next decade. At the same time, Senator for Vermont Bernie Sanders and Representative Greg Caesar are calling for a global ban on AI superintelligence and want development paused until new safety rules are in place. The lawmakers are pointing to recent AI related security concerns and saying the technology may already be moving faster than the safeguards designed to control it. We've got tech expert William Antonelli joining us now. This conversation has really blown up over the last couple of hours. What's your first take and what are people saying at large right now? Do they agree with the sense that things are out of hand and something needs to be done to at least pause the immediate research and development? I would say that most people I speak to both within the tech industry and just as outsiders would definitely agree that something needs to be done. What that something is though is hard to define and part of the reason why that's hard to define is because companies like Anthropic and OpenAI, even as they're saying oh you know AI is posing an existential threat, part of their let's say allure, their model, their trade secrets is that they don't like to explain exactly how it will pose an existential threat or how it will get there and part of the reason why that is is because these AI companies have really tried to pose themselves as the arbiters of what the AI industry and what the technology will be. Sort of the selling point is well AI is dangerous so you have to trust us the experts to know everything and take care of everything and that also makes it so when regulation is talked about it's you know it's hard to regulate something if you don't know exactly what is the thing that needs to be regulated. So something like you know Bernie Sanders bill is really trying to take a wide scope with that saying you know anything that goes towards making a super intelligence no matter what that is is something that needs to be regulated but again with something so vague it's hard to get that down into concrete language the sort of concrete language you would need to have in an actual bill. Well yeah I mean 30 years ago right 25 years ago people didn't know what the worldwide web was and much less our congress people who till this day probably don't really entirely understand the scope of it and we have these conversations with social media all the time they're called to the hill to testify and and you could argue that a lot of these senators have probably are not even on Instagram it's their staffer so if you're not dealing in this and you don't know what you're talking about how could you regulate so I hear what you're saying on that point but is there a potential for example for an injunction something that would positive allow someone who understands to take a wider look at how the development is going because when you have so many people screaming we need help here or else we're going to be at the on the other side of this demise there needs to be some sort of immediate remediation in this political landscape that we have right now in the United States unfortunately it's doubtful one thing that a number of different outlets noted is that Sanders and Cesar are two of the only leading politicians that are calling for a slowdown on AI development even among the Democrats there's still very much a view that you know oh we need to be safe about AI but we don't want to slow it down too much or else we're going to fall behind to China or Russia so there is not unfortunately a big appetite among the higher end political class for a slowdown or for really hard safety guardrails within the Trump administration Trump himself has gone back and forth originally saying oh no we want to go full speed ahead and then eventually saying well no we want to take a slight step back so but unfortunately that's how it is with a lot of you know Trump's thoughts it sort of you know depends on the day so right now in the United States it's not looking very hopeful for regulation and to that point if you were to regulate it right you can only regulate within the confines of the United States I mean there's still is an AI race that's across the the world including China right where that potentially is the main competitor so really the demise could come from somewhere else and yet we wouldn't really be able to do much or could we have a hand in that we definitely could have a hand I mean although a lot of this development is happening in China the fact is that open AI and entropic are both U.S. based so you know in theory if there were to be really hard regulations and when I say a really hard regulations I don't just mean a voluntary hey you should probably do this or we'll fine you I'm talking about things like you know maybe even arrests it comes to that point but you know we're talking about possibly you know according to anthropic again I want to stress just according to anthropic you know possibly a 10 chance of you know the life being extinguished by AI you know if the chances really are that high if that really is something that they believe then I think that it only makes sense that they should be willing to submit to really really harsh guidelines you know if the threat is so high then I think the protection should be high as well but to just one last thing to the point you're making is that not only do we have to worry about different countries funding AI through these various firms whether it's open AI whether it's Tencent but you also have to remember that so much of AI development is also open source it's the sort of thing that anyone can do as long as they have the hardware so when people say AI is never going to go away that doesn't necessarily mean that say open AI is going to stay around forever but AI as a technology is definitely going to be running in some way. Wow I mean certainly food for thought and hopefully faster rather than a delayed thought because at this point like you said this thing is moving at space time and a rate that we can't even control it's so quickly evolving. Absolutely AI is getting better every day and I know that there are a lot of people on you know both sides of the aisle that like to say well you know and they've been saying it's going to get better for years and it still looks you know pretty crappy but the fact is is that it is getting better and the only thing that we can really hope for in terms of stopping quote-unquote AI is to try and slow it down whether via regulation and or by stopping these giant firms because they're the ones that are really leading the research. If they go away then a lot of that research slows down. Yeah definitely well hopefully we'll see what comes of this as it seems as though the conversation is ripe for the moment. William good to talk to you thank you. Let's move on now because there's a huge debate that's happening in the DMV. Are Maryland drivers really the worst on DC roads? A new analysis of nearly a decade of crash data challenging that longtime stereotype while Maryland drivers were involved in more at-fault crashes than any other group from 2019 to 2021. The numbers look different when you account for how many mailers actually drive into the district. We've got Washington Sun's data reporter Andrew Van Dam who's joining us here. So Andrew the analysis found that Virginia drivers may deserve a little bit more of the blame but even that has a caveat here. Definitely because the problem with Virginia drivers is that we're measuring drivers with Virginia plates and as my fantastic local reporting colleagues remind me it has long been a habit of the more lawless drivers of the area to cross the river and get Virginia plates because they're a little cheaper it's easier to register and insure at least it was and so we had this sort of skewed population of people with Virginia plates who weren't necessarily Virginia residents and tended to drive a little sketchier. Okay so Andrew are we still placing blame on Marylanders or could those who are potentially finding the loophole in Virginia be DC drivers? Oh man they could easily be and often are district drivers based on some separate data from Maryland when we uh from Montgomery and Prince George's County when we only look at Virginia drivers who have Virginia plates they are not a problem at all they are roughly average it's really just that crossover population of the scofflaw trans state platers. Okay and that's been something that Virginia has really tried to clamp down on to try and avoid because like you said it can be at times more affordable to do this and DC taxes we know are extremely high but you know I mean you could argue this data for everyone including the Maryland drivers and say well these at fault crashes how can you prove they're from Maryland even though they have Maryland registrations? Definitely though Maryland too is trying to crack down and got a new law going into effect in October but when we just look at Maryland data at least that is on their home roads so they are a lot safer there they look pretty darn good. So are we okay to say that this stereotype is no longer true at least the data does not support it? In general it looks like pretty much everybody drives about as dangerously as everybody else you're a little bit safer on your home roads a little rougher outside but really if we're worried about any population there is one group that does stand out in the data as routinely being at fault and that is of course the younger drivers. So we can blame it on Gen Z who most of whom don't even want to drive to begin with so there's that. Andrew thank you so much for breaking down the data I think some relief for Marylanders who long feel like when they cross the river and they've got that Maryland tag that they're being looked at and judged. We appreciate it of course you can catch all that reporting and the new data coming out with the Washington Sun. Thank you so much Andrew take care stay with us here on the DMV zone quick break and we'll be right back.