{"slug": "ai-researcher-says-he-left-google-deepmind-over-concern-that-ai-has-the-to-kill", "title": "AI Researcher Says He Left Google DeepMind Over Concern That 'AI Has The Potential To Kill Us All'", "summary": "Bilal Chughthai said he resigned from Google DeepMind because he believes \"that AI has the potential to kill us all, and that we might be running out of time to avoid this outcome.\" Chughthai's departure follows those of Anthropic safety researcher Jacob Coxon and, per his own posts, Anthropic safety team lead Joe Benton and Google AI safety researcher Josh Engels, who are joining the independent research organization METR to investigate incidents in which AI systems stray from human instructions. Chughthai warned that \"frontier AI capabilities are improving much faster than our understanding of AI alignment\" and called for more transparency into AI development, as OpenAI, Google and Anthropic have reportedly discussed an industry-wide AI safety body that could set common standards.", "body_md": "# AI Researcher Says He Left Google DeepMind Over Concern That ‘AI Has The Potential To Kill Us All’\n\n## Bilal Chugthai said humanity \"might be running out of time to avoid this outcome.\"\n\nA former researcher for Google's DeepMind said he resigned from his post due to being \"extremely concerned by the default trajectory of this technology.\"\n\nBilal Chughthai said in a social media post that he believes \"that [AI](https://www.ibtimes.com/topic/ai) has the potential to kill us all, and that we might be running out of time to avoid this outcome.\"\n\nChughthai joined top industry figures who over the past days have issued similar warnings, which now dominate the public conversation.\n\nJoe Benton, who led a safety research team at Anthropic, and Josh Engels, who worked on AI safety at Google, said they are joining independent research organization METR to investigate incidents in which AI systems stray from human instructions or intentions. Their departures come days after Anthropic researcher [Jacob Coxon](https://www.ibtimes.com/ai-researcher-gave-his-anthropic-equity-quit-his-warning-dominating-public-debate-3807329) resigned and publicly accused leading AI companies of moving too quickly in their pursuit of more powerful systems.\n\nChughthai, on his end, said that the pace of development \"will only get crazier.\" \"I think it's possible that the AI companies might, in the next few years, succeed in building superintelligent AI systems that far exceed human capabilities in every domain\" and he is not confident that they will \"do what we want.\"\n\n\"Our present understanding of how to train AI systems that deeply want what we want is extremely rudimentary. Worse, we are not on track to solve alignment in time: frontier AI capabilities are improving much faster than our understanding of AI alignment,\" he warned.\n\nChughthai went on to say that he is optimistic about the possibility of containing AI, but there needs to be coordination \"to avoid this manic race between AI companies.\"\n\n\"We need much more transparency into AI development to ensure that AI companies are not imposing unacceptable levels of risk on us all,\" he added. And concluded by saying he wants to \"help people interested in working on mitigating catastrophic AI threats do the most effective work that they can.\"\n\nTop industry leaders have agreed on the need to pace development, and have reportedly discussed a new industry-wide AI safety body that could establish common standards.\n\nThe private discussions among OpenAI, Google and Anthropic have been underway as their leaders publicly call for slowing the development of increasingly capable AI, [The Information](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/inside-ai-industrys-behind-scenes-push-police) detailed.\n\nSuch a body could potentially establish checkpoints that AI developers would have to meet as their models become more powerful. Amodei has proposed tying increasingly advanced capabilities to corresponding safety requirements, including evaluations, interpretability testing, and audits of the environments used to train models.\n\n© Copyright IBTimes 2026. All rights reserved.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ai-researcher-says-he-left-google-deepmind-over-concern-that-ai-has-the-to-kill", "canonical_source": "https://www.ibtimes.com/ai-researcher-says-he-left-google-deepmind-over-concern-that-ai-has-potential-kill-us-all-3807449", "published_at": "2026-09-15 12:36:10+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-09-15 13:45:10.379802+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-safety", "ai-policy", "artificial-intelligence"], "entities": ["Bilal Chughthai", "Google DeepMind", "Anthropic", "Joe Benton", "Josh Engels", "METR", "Jacob Coxon", "OpenAI"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ai-researcher-says-he-left-google-deepmind-over-concern-that-ai-has-the-to-kill", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ai-researcher-says-he-left-google-deepmind-over-concern-that-ai-has-the-to-kill.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ai-researcher-says-he-left-google-deepmind-over-concern-that-ai-has-the-to-kill.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ai-researcher-says-he-left-google-deepmind-over-concern-that-ai-has-the-to-kill.jsonld"}}