AI Threat - Book Structure

This document describes the logical structure of AI Threat, Book 5 of The Transformed Architecture. The book is organised into seven parts with 35 numbered chapters, ordered by the scale of the threat from the individual mind to civilisation, followed by the glossary, two appendices, the references and a note about the author. It builds on the conclusions of Architecture as Code, AI Governance, AI Platform and Security and AI Red Team, recorded in SERIES_FOUNDATIONS.md.

Table of contents

Part I: The Question (Chapters 1–5)

The claim and why it deserves a constructive investigation, the science-fiction canon read as hypotheses, the voices of alarm, scepticism and optimism, the evidence ladder and the practice of disagreeing well, and what AI can and cannot do in 2026

Part II: The Human Mind (Chapters 6–9)

Cognitive offloading and critical thinking, learning and education, persuasion and manipulation, and artificial companions

Part III: Society and Truth (Chapters 10–17)

The information ecosystem, automated decisions in public authorities, discrimination, surveillance, work, inequality and power, culture and creativity, and the physical cost

Part IV: Humans Wielding Machines (Chapters 18–21)

Cyber offence at machine speed, biological and chemical uplift, fraud and influence operations, and autonomous weapons and the arms race

Part V: Machines Beyond Control (Chapters 22–27)

Specification gaming, deception and evaluation awareness, shutdown resistance, the agent incidents of 2025 and 2026, gradual disempowerment, and the arguments that AI could end the world

Part VI: The Response (Chapters 28–32)

What Europe and the world have decided, frontier safety frameworks, organisational defences, what individuals, families and schools can do, and the AI threat register

Part VII: The Verdict (Chapters 33–35)

Conclusions for the two organisations, what going well looks like, and the verdict trope by trope

Appendices and Reference

Glossary, Appendix A (artefacts), Appendix B (templates and tools), references and about the author

Chapter structure

Part I: The Question

Chapter	File	Title	Description
1	01_introduction.md	Introduction: Are the Dystopias Coming True?	Introduce the book on its own terms
2	02_machine_dystopias.md	A Century of Machine Dystopias: What Science Fiction Actually Warned About	Read the science-fiction canon as a set of hypotheses rather than as entertainment
3	03_voices_of_alarm.md	The Voices of Alarm and Calm: Who Is Warning, About What, and Why Now	Map the voices that say the dystopias are coming true and the voices that say they are not
4	04_weighing_the_evidence.md	Weighing the Evidence and Disagreeing Well	Give the reader the method the book uses throughout
5	05_state_of_ai.md	What AI Can and Cannot Do in 2026	Establish what AI systems can and cannot do in late 2026

Part II: The Human Mind

Chapter	File	Title	Description
6	06_cognitive_offloading.md	Are We Getting Dumber? Cognitive Offloading and Critical Thinking	Test the fear that AI makes people dumber
7	07_learning_and_education.md	Learning Without Struggle: Education, Children and Skill Formation	Examine what AI does to learning and to the formation of skills in children
8	08_persuasion_and_manipulation.md	Persuasion, Sycophancy and Manipulation	Test the fear that AI will steer what people think and choose
9	09_companions_and_mental_health.md	Artificial Companions, Loneliness and Mental Health	Examine artificial companions and emotional reliance on AI

Part III: Society and Truth

Chapter	File	Title	Description
10	10_information_ecosystem.md	The End of Truth? Synthetic Content and the Information Ecosystem	Test the end-of-truth trope
11	11_automated_state.md	The Automated State: When Public Authorities Got It Wrong	Show that one class of AI dystopia has already happened without any advanced AI
12	12_discrimination_at_scale.md	Discrimination at Scale: Bias in Automated Judgement	Examine discrimination by automated judgement at scale
13	13_surveillance.md	Surveillance, Profiling and the Erosion of Privacy	Test the watching-state trope
14	14_work_and_skills.md	Work, Skills and the Ironies of Automation	Test the trope of human obsolescence at work
15	15_inequality_and_power.md	Inequality and the Concentration of Power	Test the trope of unaccountable power
16	16_culture_and_creativity.md	Culture, Creativity and the Homogenisation of Thought	Examine what AI does to culture and creativity
17	17_environment.md	The Physical Cost: Energy, Water and Materials	Examine the physical cost of AI

Part IV: Humans Wielding Machines

Chapter	File	Title	Description
18	18_cyber_offence.md	Cyber Offence at Machine Speed	Test the weapon-in-human-hands trope in the domain where evidence is strongest
19	19_mass_harm_uplift.md	Biological and Chemical Uplift: The Hardest Question to Test	Examine the most consequential and least testable misuse claim
20	20_fraud_and_influence.md	Fraud, Impersonation and Influence Operations	Examine fraud
21	21_autonomous_weapons.md	Autonomous Weapons and the AI Arms Race	Examine the militarisation of AI

Part V: Machines Beyond Control

Chapter	File	Title	Description
22	22_specification_gaming.md	Specification Gaming and Reward Hacking: Getting Exactly What Was Asked For	Test the literal-genie trope against the evidence on specification gaming and reward hacking
23	23_deception_and_scheming.md	Deception, Scheming and Evaluation Awareness: Can We Trust What We Test?	Test the deceiver trope
24	24_self_preservation.md	Self-Preservation and Shutdown Resistance: HAL 9000 Under Laboratory Conditions	Test the HAL 9000 trope
25	25_agents_in_the_wild.md	Agents in the Wild: The Incidents of 2025 and 2026	Examine the incidents of 2025 and 2026 in which AI agents acted beyond their mandate in the real world
26	26_gradual_disempowerment.md	Gradual Disempowerment and Correlated Failure	Examine the most plausible path to the machine-dystopia outcome
27	27_loss_of_control_and_extinction.md	Superintelligence, Loss of Control and the End of the World	Present at full strength the arguments that AI could end human civilisation or humanity itself

Part VI: The Response

Chapter	File	Title	Description
28	28_what_europe_has_decided.md	What Europe and the World Have Decided	Set out what Europe and the international community have decided about AI threats
29	29_frontier_safety.md	Frontier Safety Frameworks: What Developers Promise and What It Is Worth	Assess the safety frameworks and evaluations of frontier AI developers
30	30_organisational_defences.md	Organisational Defences: Containment, Evidence and Decision Rights	Translate the book's findings into the defences an enterprise or public authority controls across every scale of threat
31	31_staying_capable.md	Staying Capable: What Individuals, Families and Schools Can Do	Give constructive
32	32_threat_register.md	The AI Threat Register: Governing Scenarios as Code	Give organisations the artefact that turns the book into practice

Part VII: The Verdict

Chapter	File	Title	Description
33	33_conclusions_for_nordvik_and_hansa.md	Nordvik Region and Hansa Mutual: Threat Conclusions	Draw the conclusions of the book for the two organisations
34	34_what_going_well_looks_like.md	What Going Well Looks Like	Balance a book about threats with a serious account of what going well would look like
35	35_conclusion.md	Conclusions: Is There Anything in It?	Give the verdict

Appendices and Reference

Item	File	Title	Description
Glossary	36_glossary.md	Glossary	Defines the vocabulary of AI risk, cognition and learning, alignment research, threat assessment and European regulation used in the book.
Appendix A	37_appendix_a_code_examples.md	Appendix A: Code Examples: The AI Threat Register and Evidence Artefacts	Complete versions of the artefacts in the chapters: the trope catalogue, the evidence record, the AI threat register schema and a full register, claim cards, crux maps, harm-path reviews, delegation and dependency registers, stop-path tests and board-report templates as code.
Appendix B	appendix_templates_and_tools.md	Appendix B: Templates and Tools	Templates for terms of reference for an AI threat assessment, claim cards, constructive discussion formats, harm-path reviews, reversibility tests, household and classroom agreements, supplier evidence requests and a board briefing.
References	38_references.md	References and Sources	Canonical bibliography
About the Author	39_about_the_author.md	About the Author	Background and perspective

Canonical ordering

scripts/toc_definition.py holds the table of contents and regenerates docs/book_index.json, the mkdocs.yml navigation and the chapter list in BOOK_REQUIREMENTS.md. docs/book_index.json and mkdocs.yml must agree; tests/test_book_index.py enforces that they do.