Ian Hogarth warns of a deeper-than-2008 AI crash risk and describes building the UK's AI Security Institute
What happened? On 5 November 2026, Ian Hogarth appeared on episode 4 of The Amol Rajan Connection, a roughly 69-minute conversation titled "How Powerful Could Artificial Intelligence Become?" Hogarth is a co-founder and partner at Plural and chair of the UK AI Security InstituteDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →. In the interview he also described himself as a co-founder of the institute.
The fork in the road: Asked whether the race for better AI should slow down, Hogarth said it depends which path the technology takes. If systems become able to recursively self-improve, he thinks more careful development would be "incredibly warranted," because capabilities would then hyper-accelerate. Another path, he said, looks more like a "souped-up version of electricity": very important, but more manageable in pace. Some people building the systems think recursive self-improvement is almost certain; others think it is not possible.
Bubble risk: Asked whether there is an AI bubble, Hogarth said there is a real chance of a very extreme market crash, "like deeper than 2008." That is his view in the interview, not a forecast.
Building AISI: Hogarth said he helped set the institute up, recruiting about 100 AI researchers into government and pairing them with national-security experts (including cyber and chemical and biological weapons) so the state can evaluate frontier systems itself rather than relying on companies. He said AISI has run something like a thousand evaluations across 50 of the most cutting-edge models, was built in less than three years from a standing start, and briefs senior UK decision-makers while working with other governments and with the companies themselves.
Anthropic shares: Rajan noted that Hogarth gave up shares in Anthropic to take the public role. Hogarth called it "a very expensive decision" and said someone with potential influence over regulation should not also hold a stake in one of the biggest companies that could be regulated. He added that he did not think the British public would be okay with that, and he would not be either.
Sources: The Amol Rajan Connection, Episode 4 (5 Nov 2026); @amolrajan on X.