MIT professor Max Tegmark, chair of the Future of Life Institute, invoked a warning about AI-driven human extinction that top AI CEOs signed roughly three years ago, arguing they still lack concrete plans to keep humans in control.
Future of Life Institute · Max Tegmark
They warned AI could end humanity — then offered no plan to stay in control
Three years ago, the CEOs of OpenAI, Google DeepMind and others signed statements comparing AI's extinction risk to pandemics and nuclear war. Tegmark argues we are now closer to building superintelligence than to controlling it.
350+
Researchers & executives who signed the 2023 extinction-risk statement
95%
of Americans oppose an unregulated superintelligence race
0
Concrete plans offered to keep humanity in control
A sequence of high-profile alarms
Timeline of the major warnings and calls for action
MAR 22, 2023 · FLI
Open letter urging a six-month pause on training beyond GPT-4. Signed by Musk and others.
MAY 30, 2023 · CAIS
Single-sentence statement making extinction-risk mitigation a global priority . Signed by Altman, Hassabis, Amodei & 350+.
2025 · FLI-LINKED
New statement calling for a ban on superintelligence development .
The core warning
"Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war."
Tegmark's concern: the very structure in which each lab's CEO distrusts rivals and believes it should lead is itself the danger — a race without safeguards.
THE SKEPTICS' WORRY
Non-extinction outcomes may be more realistic and troubling — humanity losing freedom or control, "zooified" or ruled by a "benevolent dictator." Development is outpacing any means to control it.
THE OPTIMISTS' VIEW
Meta's Yann LeCun — who did not sign the statement — continues to argue that such existential risks are overstated, leaving assessments of AI's danger deeply divided.
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