AI's explosive growth triggers a global wake-up call

Axios catalogs six unsettling realities of AI’s rise: Anthropic’s meteoric growth and Claude’s deployment, AI systems increasingly writing their own code and even building other AIs, a drop in model transparency as tools scale, concerns about concentrated power and security, a violent backlash including an attack on OpenAI’s Sam Altman home, and a $2 trillion wipeout in software value as automation encroaches on jobs. The piece argues we’re unprepared for the pace and scope of change and calls for cross-sector leadership, governance, and democratization of the technology to avoid a reckless trajectory.