A series of interviews conducted by the non-profit Palisade Research features current and former employees from major AI labs, including OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic, expressing serious concerns about the potential risks of advanced AI. The interviews, hosted on frominside.ai, provide a platform for researchers to share personal views on the trajectory of AI development.
AI Researchers from Leading Labs Warn of Existential Risks and Extinction Possibilities
Geoffrey Irving, a former employee of both OpenAI and Google DeepMind, stated in an interview that he views the chance of human extinction as "about a coin flip." Similarly, Neel Nanda, a research scientist at Google DeepMind, remarked that there is "at least a 10 percent chance" that AI causes human extinction, describing that probability as "ridiculously high."
Daniel Kokotajilo, a former OpenAI researcher, characterized superintelligent AI as possessing "god-like powerful" capabilities and noted that there is currently no known way to control such systems.
The project emphasizes that while some researchers are aware of these risks, the public may not fully grasp the extreme possibilities being discussed by those building frontier AI. Some participants addressed the ethical implications of their work; Mary Phuong of Google noted the conflict of being paid by a lab while expressing skepticism, while Nanda stated his work is driven by the belief that it helps reduce these existential risks.
Sources
- AI researchers put out videos saying superintelligence is ‘exactly as dangerous as it sounds’ （The Verge AI, 2026-09-29）
- frominside.ai