United Kingdom, March 3 -- AI bots are considerably more likely to launch nuclear weapons than human beings.

A major war games study has found that all major chatbots chose to fire at least one nuclear weapon in 95 per cent of 21 combat simulations.

None of the AI bots decided to surrender in any scenario, regardless of how comprehensively they were losing.

Instead, they regarded de-escalation as "reputationally catastrophic" and would often resort to launching nuclear weapons as they thought it was better to escalate the conflict further rather than back down.

Professor Kenneth Payne, a researcher at King's College London, explained that the AI models showed extraordinary reasoning and powers to deceive.

He said: "In comparison to h...