Original subtitles

Hello and welcome to Global Eye,

a programme that brings you hard-hitting investigations

and tales of hope and resilience

from teams across the BBC World Service.

I'm Sandra Maksimovic, and this week we are in Serbia.

The country is split down the middle as student protesters

demand change from a government they view

as corrupt and authoritarian.

Which side will win out in the upcoming elections?

Also coming up...

The kind of dizzying rate of progress means that things that were

previously in the realms of science fiction are now becoming reality.

Are the AI doomers right about the risks of digital Armageddon?

We'll ask if there is still a path to a safer AI future.

And tracing Putin's rise -

from the streets of Leningrad to the corridors of the Kremlin.

How did a little-known KGB officer become

one of the world's most powerful leaders?

These two messages are posted almost everywhere across Serbia -

"students are winning", "and Serbia is winning".

Just one word is different, but it tells you a great deal

about this landlocked Balkan country.

This is a country used to divisions -

over wars, nationalism, Russia, the West.

But nowadays it's not only politics rousing heated debates

between Serbians - it's the reality they live in.

The latest rupture began here.

At 11.52 on November 1st, 2024,

a concrete canopy collapsed at Novi Sad railway station.

16 people died.

Shortly before, the station was renovated

as part of a Chinese-led railway project

repeatedly celebrated by President Aleksandar Vucic.

Every day, people still block streets at 11.52.

16 minutes - one for every person who died.

What began with demands for accountability

for the canopy collapse grew into a nationwide student-led movement.

For the protesters,

the collapse has become a symbol of what they say

is a much bigger problem - corruption, secrecy

and institutions that fail to hold those in power to account.

The institutions cannot perform their duties

and what is requested of them,

what is their duty,

because they're simply shackled by the regime.

They can't make a single decision unless the regime

or the government actually approves it,

and therefore, it is simply impossible

for them to actually follow the law.

The government denies allegations of corruption.

For months, crowds filled streets and squares across Serbia.

But this is just one reality of Serbia.

Here is another.

The Serbian government points to economic growth,

investment and building boom.

Belgrade will host the first specialised expo

ever held in the Western Balkans,

and this massive construction site is where the event will take place.

It is the image Serbia's government

wants to project to the world - ambitious, modern and open.

The expo is meant to symbolise Vucic's vision of Serbia

as a nation with ties to all countries.

But there is a stark contrast.

Next year, Serbia wants the world to take part in its expo,

celebrating culture and music.

But this year, one of its best-known cultural exports

was missing from its traditional home.

Exit Festival was born here, out of a student movement

opposed to the regime of late strongman Slobodan Milosevic.

So it was no surprise that a quarter of a century later,

the festival gave its support to the new student protest movement.

Serbia! The whole world is watching.

Make some noise for the students of Serbia!

Bring them together! Let's go!

But the silent punishment soon came.

Despite Exit brought Serbia three titles

for the best major European festival and over 300 million of euros

in tourism economy, after we supported the student protest,

we were practically forced to leave Serbia,

and we received various threats.

I even personally received a threat

from one of the local heads of the special police forces

that if we continue to support students,

that they will turn the whole agency against me personally.

So our suppliers were being threatened,

our sponsors were being threatened, so there was no option then to,

for the time being, go leave Serbia.

International watchdogs have accused Vucic's government

of putting undue pressure on independent media organisations

and harassing opposition groups.

But he rejects the claims.

This is peace, stability and...

...the best living standards so far that we delivered to Serbian people.

And these are the facts.

Serbia's divide will soon face its biggest test.

Vucic stepped down as president

at the end of September to seek the post of prime minister,

following the snap parliamentary elections

scheduled for October 25th,

which brings us back to these rival graffiti artists.

Who is winning - the students, or Serbia?

For the people who painted these messages,

it looks like that cannot be the same thing.

Disinformation and foreign influence

are familiar worries here in Serbia,

but artificial intelligence is changing the rules of the game.

AI can create increasingly realistic content at a scale

that was unimaginable just a few years ago.

The immediate concern is what that means

for elections and public trust here and around the world.

But some researchers are looking much further ahead

and asking exactly where this technology could lead.

Recent AI safety concerns have been driven

by stark warnings about the growing risks of the technology going rogue.

Could AI really wipe out humans? And how might it do it?

Cyber correspondent Joe Tidy

has been looking at some of the scenarios.

We've never created beings that may soon be smarter than us.

We don't know what's going to happen.

It's a warning sign that we need to slow down.

Like, that's what we're trying to do here,

is we're trying to get ahead

of things that otherwise might happen.

I can't see any way to really stop

this incredible momentum of AI and robots.

It's not at all an exaggeration

to say that the people who are involved believe

there is a possibility of human extinction.

The warnings have ramped up, but how could a superintelligent AI

that wanted to take control of our world

actually kill us all?

Let's take a look at some of the worst-case scenarios

that so-called AI doomers are talking about,

and assess how likely they are.

One thing that the recent AI outbreaks

has shown us is that these AIs are now very good at hacking.

The kind of dizzying rate of progress means

that things that were previously in the realms

of science fiction are now becoming reality.

To give a concrete example - AIs can hack.

They can hack into the sort of critical infrastructure

that the world runs on.

The scary scenario here is that a rogue AI might infiltrate

the computer networks of internet providers,

energy grids, and even nuclear power stations.

The AIs could shut it all down,

so there's no electricity for humans,

no heating or cooling, no internet connectivity.

It could cause untold chaos.

In some imagined scenarios, nuclear catastrophes are possible.

Another doomsday scenario is explored in great detail

by AI researchers in a paper called AI 2027.

What we sort of said happened in that scenario

was in 2027, so next year, AIs recursively self-improve,

and that snowballs to an AI that has access

to a large number of robots,

which are doing most of the physical tasks throughout the economy.

Well, I'll be!

You found that report faster than my whole staff combined.

Happy to help, sir.

And the US, as well as other governments worldwide,

are constantly asking this AI for advice.

However, unfortunately, it's also not friendly

and is out for its own ends.

And then eventually what happens is it releases a bioweapon,

killing most humans, and continues to run the robot economy itself.

And so that resulted in human extinction.

In another scary scenario, the end of humanity is a mistake.

The so-called paperclip maximiser hypothesis

was first imagined more than 20 years ago.

So, in this thought experiment,

it's a hypothetical AI that cares about making

as many paperclips as possible.

It doesn't hate us or resent us humans,

but that's its sole goal.

And then, from the pursuit of that goal,

it would have instrumental subgoals.

That might include gaining more power,

gaining more intelligence.

And then the thought is that a sufficiently powerful entity

would have instrumental subgoals that might entail

the destruction of humanity,

cos it could be making more paperclips

if there were no humans around to stop it.

And if nothing else, our bodies are made of...

...contain iron atoms that could be transformed

into really nice paperclips.

It's meant to illustrate this idea that you don't need some very

specific hostile goal in a sufficiently powerful

superintelligence for it to pose a danger to humanity.

Almost any goal, unless it really embeds in that goal

a care for humans.

There is another school of thought about AI safety, though -

guessing how and why a superintelligent AI might try

and kill humans is futile.

If you imagine asking chimpanzees,

"How exactly are these humans going to make you extinct?"

they would have a very difficult time answering because what we do,

they don't understand.

The discussion here has to rest on the assumption

that once you create something that's much more intelligent

than humans, we simply no longer have a say in what happens.

It all sounds very sci-fi,

but there is an increasingly significant and loud group

of AI scientists that think something like this might happen.

It's so common that in the AI world, people talk about their P.

A common percentage seems to be anywhere between 10 and 25%.

Many people's probability of doom for humans seems to have risen

after a recent spate of uncontrolled outbreaks and hacks

of AI agents from OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta.

But some in the cyber world are less worried

and think the companies are also to blame.

And anything these machines, these tireless, relentless,

goal-seeking, very capable machines,

anything these machines do is as a result of how they've been built.

And the bottom line is that if you are a manufacturer of technology,

you should be designing and developing and testing

and delivering your capability

with security as the number-one priority.

Other people think that an out-of-control AI poses

a significant risk to humans, but not extinction level.

If AI actually did, you know,

inflict heavy losses on humanity -

if it even wanted to, which is a big question -

but if it did, humans would fight back.

We would take out all the data centres.

We'd be blowing up power stations.

So, like, extinction, so there's no humans left,

no way for us to rebuild, like, I just don't see it.

We in the US are spending too much time focusing on

the extinction scenarios,

which make for great narrative, but aren't the likely ones.

The likely ones are things like power grids get hit

in the next several months, you know, because these tools can be

used for cyber-hacking, and will be.

So what's being done now to reduce the risk of these bad AI outcomes?

The researchers behind AI 2027 published a more optimistic view

of what they think could happen if things change.

The plan calls for a slow-down in development

until safety measures and monitoring can improve.

It also calls for international cooperation

between countries and companies to build things like kill switches

in data centres.

Some of these things are now being openly talked about

alongside other ideas.

I'm very happy that AI safety is sort of getting the attention

that I think it really needs.

I'm hopeful that this sort of large societal outcry will result

in a useful policy response that will actually reduce the risk.

In some ways, you could say that these incidents

that have happened over the past couple of months are actually

a blessing in disguise, as it's raised the consciousness

around how we need to ensure that these capabilities can't be used

to perpetrate massive cyberattacks against our critical infrastructure,

can't be used to effectively create bioweapons or chemical weapons

or radiological weapons.

Now, we should all feel like we have the responsibility

to do something about it.

But getting an international agreement in place

seems like a tall order right now,

with so much money and geopolitical tension tied up in AI.

We don't want to restrict them,

where, all of a sudden, we come in second to China.

For now, the so-called AI doomers are hoping that the recent

upswell of concern will be enough to bring about change

inside the industry.

Historically, Serbia has been one of Russia's closest allies in Europe.

With their shared Slavic and Orthodox Christian heritage,

the two countries have maintained a strong relationship for centuries,

and as we have seen, before stepping down,

President Vucic had been keen to foster a warm, personal friendship

with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.

According to one recent poll, Serbia was the only country in Europe

where Putin had a net-positive favourability rating.

Putin's image has been tarnished by Russia's slide into authoritarianism

and invasion of Ukraine.

He is now one of the most recognised people in the world,

but before he took charge of Russia, over 25 years ago,

he was a virtual unknown.

Much of what we know about his life before the Kremlin

comes from stories he repeatedly tells about himself.

From a childhood spent chasing rats

to the twist of fate that drew him into politics,

the World Service's global journalism team

have explored his early years

and what they can teach us about the man behind the leader.

This is Russian President Vladimir Putin,

long before the world knew his name.

An unknown, mid-ranking KGB officer, who went on to become

one of the most recognisable leaders on the planet.

Since he was first elected,

Putin has carefully crafted the image of a macho,

hypermasculine strongman.

But beyond the photo ops lies another curated self-portrait,

one made of anecdotes he often repeats in interviews.

Those messages are extremely important,

not necessarily at face value, but at symbolic value.

What is it that he is trying to say?

Here are three stories Putin returns to again and again

from his life before the Kremlin.

Vladimir Putin was born in 1952 in Leningrad, now St Petersburg,

a city traumatised by the 872-day Nazi siege of World War II.

This is where he grew up - a cramped, communal apartment

with no hot water and a shared toilet.

Most of his childhood played out in the dvor,

the shared courtyard between apartment blocks.

But there's a particular anecdote he likes to recount about his childhood

and how he liked to chase rats.

That was all fun and games until, at one point,

he chased a particularly big rat

into a room from which there was no exit,

and, realising that, the rat turned and was ready to spring,

and, actually, Putin himself ran.

In First Person, a book of interviews published the year

he became president, he says he got "a quick and lasting lesson"

from this experience.

If you corner a rat and you leave it no way out,

they will fight with unexpected ferocity.

He says he drew a conclusion from this -

never be cornered and never corner anyone.

Putin says he dreamt of joining the KGB,

the Soviet intelligence service.

As a teenager, he says he even turned up

at their Leningrad headquarters asking for a job,

but they told him to go to university and study law,

and that's where they later recruited him.

He joins the KGB, not really because of the ideological dimension,

but because it seems to be the biggest gang in town.

Because he spoke German fluently,

he was posted to Dresden, East Germany, in 1985.

Putin was still in Dresden as mass protests swept across East Germany

in late 1989, leading to the fall of the Berlin Wall in November.

The following month, a crowd stormed the Dresden headquarters

of the Stasi - the feared East German secret police -

racing to stop the destruction of files and evidence

as the regime was falling.

In the book First Person,

he recalls how the crowd then turned against the KGB compound

across the road, where Putin was watching.

So there he is in the KGB's compound,

when there's a crowd of East Germans,

who clearly identify the Soviets - the KGB in particular -

as their oppressors.

Putin himself goes out and confronts the crowd and says,

"Look, there's a whole collection of soldiers inside with weapons.

"If you come in, they will have to fire."

And he talks them down.

That persuaded the group to withdraw,

but fearing further unrest, Putin asked Moscow for backup.

The KGB put in a panicked call to the nearest Soviet garrison,

saying, "We have a crowd here.

"You're going to have to send some troops."

And they say, "Look, we can't do anything unless we have orders.

"We need to have orders from Moscow."

And Moscow is silent.

Though the Soviet Union didn't collapse until 1991,

Putin says he felt it ended that day,

and it made a lasting impression.

I think that experience in Dresden shaped his obsession

with state strength, civil control,

and preventing disorder.

After Dresden, Putin stayed on the KGB's books,

but he didn't have an official posting.

But his former law professor,

Anatoly Sobchak, who would soon become

the mayor of Leningrad,

offered him a job that would change his life.

That's how he quietly entered the world of politics.

Often unnoticed, he sat right by Sobchak for years.

You can see him here.

Or even here.

At the time, no-one was paying much attention

to the man in the brown coat.

He says his time there were some of the most formative years

of his career.

It's a small anecdote that Putin tells -

and he repeatedly highlights above all others -

and that is that Sobchak had such personal trust in him

that he gave him a stack of blank signed papers,

as he calls them, blank signed letters.

So, he was authorised to act in the mayor's name.

That experience shaped Putin's view of power as something personal,

loyal, and indivisible.

And that lesson stayed with him long after the Sobchak years.

To this day, he is still surrounded by many of the people he met

during his time in the mayor's office.

After Sobchak lost an election, Putin moved to Moscow

to join the Kremlin in the dying years

of President Boris Yeltsin's administration.

The so-called family, the people around Yeltsin,

were beginning to look for a successor,

someone who they thought could be controllable

and could be efficient.

Yeltsin's inner circle ensured Putin took charge

when Yeltsin stepped down.

But to most Russians, he was still a mystery man.

Putin really hadn't struck the public imagination that much.

And therefore, when he became, well, first prime minister,

but then, certainly president, there was a sense of,

"Well, who is this man"?

Which, of course, was very useful for Putin,

because it more or less meant that he had a blank slate.

It's on that blank slate that Putin built the image

of the leader we know today -

a man who went from the streets of Leningrad to Russia's top job.

In control of the country for more than 25 years,

he has become increasingly authoritarian.

I think the pre-Kremlin years tell us a great deal

about Putin's operating instincts,

but those years are not deterministic.

Biography alone I don't think explains Putin's choices

across his career.

His time in power has also been shaped by wars, economic crises,

and repeated clashes with the West.

But from the stories he tells,

we can get a glimpse into his mindset.

Putin's childhood in post-war Leningrad,

his KGB training, the events in Dresden,

the chaos of the 1990s clearly, I think, instilled deep instincts

in Putin about vulnerability,

loyalty, and the dangers of state collapse.

In 2001, Serbia was emerging from a change of regime

with a sense of optimism about democracy, openness,

and a different future.

Against that backdrop, LGBT activists attempted to organise

the country's first Pride march.

It was over before it had even begun,

ending in violence in the centre of Belgrade.

Iva Gajic has been speaking to people who were there

about what happened that day,

and how much has really changed since.

It was 2001.

Serbia had just gone through a change of regime.

Driven by optimism and promises of democratic changes,

LGBT activists decided to organise the country's first Pride.

It was due to take place on 30th of June,

in the centre of Belgrade.

The slogan was simple - "There is room for all of us".

But the march never even began.

It ended in violence before participants

had the chance to gather.

One of the people caught up in it was Igor Dobricic.

What Igor didn't know was that, in the days before Pride,

far-right groups had been threatening violence.

Anti-Pride stickers had appeared around the city.

By the time participants began arriving at Republic Square,

hundreds of opponents were already there.

Organisers quickly realised how badly outnumbered they were,

and there were almost no police.

Igor was already approaching the square.

At first, he thought the crowd ahead of him was there for Pride.

A group of men surrounded Igor.

He was knocked to the ground and beaten.

As violence spread through the centre of Belgrade,

more police units began arriving.

But Agata says getting officers to intervene was another struggle.

CROWD JEERS

Organisers estimated that around 40 people were injured that day.

No-one was held responsible.

The violence effectively halted Pride in Serbia for years.

Since 2014, the march has been held every year.

But a quarter of a century after the first attempt,

the picture is complicated.

According to LGBT rights organisation Da se zna!,

110 incidents motivated by homophobia and transphobia

were recorded in Serbia in 2025.

42 were motivated by gender identity.

At the same time, LGBT people are far more visible

in Serbian public life than they were in 2001.

Serbia has had an openly gay prime minister, Ana Brnabic,

who is now speaker of the parliament.

Yet same-sex couples still cannot marry,

and laws recognising same-sex partnerships

and regulating gender identity have not been adopted.

While he was in office, President Aleksandar Vucic

has repeatedly said he would not sign such laws,

and senior Serbian officials have described the LGBT agenda

as being against Serbian values.

For Igor, that gap between visibility and equality

goes to the heart of what Pride is about.

25 years after he walked towards Republic Square,

the question is no longer simply

whether a Pride march can take place.

It is whether LGBT people can feel the same freedom beyond a few hours

when the streets are protected for them.

Thank you for joining me in Serbia.

We'll be back next week. Goodbye.