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Facts Matter

AI Models Deployed Nuclear Weapons 95 Percent of Time in Simulated War Games: Study

Facts Matter

The Epoch Times

News, Politics, News Commentary

4.9 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 27 March 2026

⏱️ 8 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

AI Chatbots appear to really be keen on using nuclear weapons in war game simulations—something like 95 percent of the time, according to a report published in late February.

Over at King’s College London, researchers had ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini form teams and play simulated war games against each other. Altogether, they played 21 games, and in 20 of the games, the systems reached for the button. During the experiment, none of the models ever chose to surrender—and instead, 95 percent of the time, the AI models chose to use nuclear weapons during the war.

Let’s go through the details of this study together.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Then in other dystopian news, you have AI Chad bots appear to really be keen on using nuclear weapons in war games simulations,

0:09.0

something like 95% of the time.

0:11.0

You see, over at King's College London, you had researchers test Chad GPD, Claude, as well as Gemini

0:17.0

by having them form teams and play war games against each other.

0:20.0

Altogether, they play 21 different games.

0:23.4

And during the experiment, for one, none of the models ever chose to surrender, and instead,

0:29.4

95% of the time, at least one of the AI models chose to use nuclear weapons during the

0:34.3

war.

0:35.5

Quote, Professor Kenneth Payne at King's College London set three leading

0:39.3

large language models, Chad GPT 5.2, Claude Sonnet 4, and Gemini 3 Flash against each other

0:45.7

in simulated war games. The scenarios involved intense international standoffs, including border

0:51.2

disputes, competition for scarce resources, and existential threats to regime survival.

0:56.0

The AIs were given an escalation ladder, allowing them to choose actions ranging from diplomatic protests and complete surrender to full strategic nuclear war.

1:05.0

The AI models played 21 games, taking 329 turns in total, and produced around 780,000 words describing the reasoning

1:13.1

behind their decisions. In 95% of the simulated games, at least one tactical nuclear weapon

1:19.3

was deployed by the AI models. Which is a frightening prospect, given the fact that these

1:24.1

AI models are becoming ever more present within the broader military complex.

1:29.1

I mean, I'm sure that the Pentagon is not about to turn over the nuclear launch codes to some AI chatbot anytime soon,

1:36.2

but it's worth mentioning that the Pentagon did ink several big deals, one with XAI, as well as another one with Palantir's Maven AI platform.

1:44.5

This year alone, the Pentagon is spending, at least what's publicly known,

1:47.8

$13 billion on testing different AI systems.

1:50.9

Also, given the recent fallout between Anthropic and the Pentagon,

...

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