AI Researcher: Superintelligence could cause human extinction

Added: 2026-04-30

[00:00:00]Give me a number. What are the odds that artificial super intelligence kills us all?

[00:00:06]>> Pretty high. So really depends on how soon you expect this to happen. So short term, we're unlikely to get that level of capability from AI. So we are probably okay. But once we create true super intelligence, a system more capable than any person in every domain, it's very unlikely we'll figure out how to indefinitely control it. And at that point, if we are still around, it's because it decided for whatever game theoretic reasons to keep us around.

[00:00:35]Maybe it's pretending to be nice to accumulate more resources before it strikes. Maybe it needs us for something. It's not obvious, but we're definitely not in control and at any point it decides to take us out, it would be able to do so.

[00:00:48]>> Okay. And if you were going to give us a rough timeline, are you in the two to five years or is this something way off in the future?

[00:00:56]>> Yeah. Yeah. So it's hard to predict. The best tool we got for predicting future of technology is prediction markets. And they saying maybe 2027 is when we get to AGI, artificial general intelligence. I think soon after super intelligence follows. The moment you automate science engineering, you get this self-improvement cycle in AI systems.

[00:01:17]The next generation of AI being created by current generation of AIS. And so they get more capable and they get more capable at making better AIs. So soon after I expect super intelligence.

[00:01:29]>> Okay. So we're talking if that happens roughly in two years with some margin of error. It's not long after that. Say a year two years after that that we hit ASI.

[00:01:40]>> That's my prediction. Of course if it's actually 5 to 10 years or anything slightly bigger it doesn't matter. The problems are still the same.