"AI will destroy us all": leading Google researcher makes grim prediction and resigns

Leading AI safety researcher at Google DeepMind, Bilal Chughtai, announced his resignation, warning that humanity is on the brink of disaster due to the race for the most powerful AI. He is moving to the organization BlueDot Impact. His departure follows the resignation of Jacob Coxson, who accused labs of reckless disregard for lives. The head of Anthropic called for slowing development, supported by Altman and Musk. Cybersecurity experts view these scare stories with irony, pointing to existing protective measures.

Leading AI safety researcher at Google DeepMind, Bilal Chughtai, announced his resignation on Wednesday, September 16. He warned that humanity is on the brink of disaster due to the race for the most powerful AI. According to the specialist, people are losing the little time remaining to prevent apocalyptic consequences. Chughtai stated that he sincerely believes this technology has the potential to destroy the entire human race. He is moving to the organization BlueDot Impact to train specialists in technological safety. His departure follows the resignation of Jacob Coxson, a former researcher at Anthropic and OpenAI, who accused the labs of "reckless disregard for human lives." Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an appeal calling for slowing AI development, supported by Sam Altman of OpenAI and Elon Musk. Amodei warned that many autonomous AI-based programs could spiral out of control and take over the entire internet. However, cybersecurity experts in Israel, the US, and Europe view these scare stories with irony, pointing to the existence of long-known protective measures—isolated test environments, firewalls, and incident response systems. In the US, Senator Bernie Sanders and conservative Steve Bannon jointly called for reining in the AI industry, though they propose different approaches.