Technology leaders have warned that the threat posed by artificial intelligence-enabled cyber attacks is intensifying, as organisations attempt to adopt the technology while managing new security and regulatory risks.
The warning emerged during the 2026 CNBC Technology Executive Council Summit in New York, where executives and industry specialists discussed how companies are incorporating AI into their operations. The event focused on the growing responsibilities of technology leaders, including the return on investment from computing infrastructure, cybersecurity, regulation and quantum computing.
Growing concern over the next phase of attacks
OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman said during an appearance at Stanford Graduate School of Business that the cybersecurity danger associated with AI remained far from resolved. He argued that the scale of the challenge had not yet been taken seriously enough by organisational leaders, governments or individuals.
“The problem coming towards us, I think, is still something that we have not, as organizational leaders or countries or individuals, taken seriously.”
Campbell Brown, founder and chief executive of Forum AI, told the summit that the next six months could be particularly unsettled as the public becomes more aware of hacks and leaks. Her comments point to a changing security environment in which incidents involving AI may become more visible to consumers, businesses and public institutions.
Lower barriers could widen access to sophisticated attacks
Michael Weening, chief executive of Calix, and Shane Eleniak, the company’s chief product officer, said the potential danger could be greater than current forecasts suggest. Weening said society was moving through a period of change at a pace that people were not prepared for.
The concern is not limited to the capabilities of AI systems themselves. The cost and availability of the computing resources needed to develop advanced attacks may also determine who can use them. Eleniak said large-scale AI-driven attacks had so far largely been associated with nation states because creating them required substantial resources. However, he also highlighted the significance of open-weight models and more affordable graphics processing units.
- AI is expanding the range of tasks that organisations must secure as they deploy the technology.
- Open-weight models and lower-cost GPUs could reduce the barriers to developing sophisticated attacks.
- Executives are facing simultaneous pressure over security, spending, regulation and the wider direction of technology.
Security becomes a central test for adoption
The discussion illustrates the tension at the centre of the current AI rollout. Companies are being encouraged to find practical uses for the technology and assess whether investment in computing capacity delivers value. At the same time, the systems they introduce may create additional points of vulnerability and make existing risks harder to assess.
That challenge places technology executives in a role that extends beyond selecting software or managing infrastructure. They must also judge how quickly threats are evolving, how much protection is required and whether their organisations are equipped to respond when attacks or data leaks occur. The summit’s agenda reflects that broader remit, bringing cybersecurity into the same conversation as AI adoption, regulation and future computing technologies.
A warning as companies move from experiments to deployment
The comments from Altman, Brown, Weening and Eleniak do not identify a single attack or provide a forecast for the number of incidents that may occur. Instead, they offer a shared warning that the security consequences of AI adoption may develop faster than organisations expect.
For businesses and public authorities, the immediate issue is therefore not simply whether AI can improve operations. It is whether safeguards, leadership and public understanding are advancing at the same speed. As more organisations shape their technology strategies around AI, the ability to anticipate and contain AI-enabled threats is becoming a fundamental part of deciding how that technology can be used safely.
