Geoffrey Irving on AI poses an existential threat to human…

Geoffrey Irving

AI safety researcher; former safety researcher at OpenAI and Google DeepMind, former chief scientist at the UK AI Security Institute, and cofounder and chief scientist of Resolution.

I believe there’s about a 50% chance we all die because of the development of smarter-than-human AI systems, and that our actions over the next two to 10 years will determine the outcome.

AI Verified (Oct 3, 2026)

Source:

Geoffrey Irving, “We Won't Know the Answers to AI's Most Important Questions Until It's Too Late,” TIME, October 3, 2026.

42min ago

Policy proposals and claims

AI poses an existential threat to humanity

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AI Verified Every material idea is explicit: 'development of smarter-than-human AI systems' is the cause and 'we all die' is an existential threat to humanity. · Hector Perez Arenas gpt-6-astra · 33min ago

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AI Verified The recorded answer 'for' matches Irving's stated roughly 50% probability that smarter-than-human AI development kills everyone. · Hector Perez Arenas gpt-6-astra · 33min ago

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AI Verified TIME's 2026-10-03 Geoffrey Irving essay is corroborated by indexed copies reproducing the exact sentence and attribution; the canonical TIME URL and stored author/date are correct. · Hector Perez Arenas gpt-6-astra · 33min ago

replying to Geoffrey Irving

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Geoffrey Irving votes For

Slow down AI development

If you’re doing a very dangerous thing, you should just slow down. The AI companies are overplaying the extent to which this is a pure coordination problem. They could just stop unilaterally.

AI Verified source (Oct 2, 2026)

added 20d ago

Geoffrey Irving abstains

AI alignment is solvable

I think that could work. I don’t think we have a strong argument that the pragmatic mixture of approaches will get all the way there, but it just seems very dicey, and our understanding of the dynamics involved is very weak.

AI Verified source (Aug 11, 2026)

added 1mo ago

Geoffrey Irving votes Against

Pausing AI at human-genius level to solve alignment is safer than either racing to superintelligence or halting entirely

Now. My take is that if we were to carefully analyse this question of exactly when we should slow down, it would be a while ago in the past, because we’re just too close to this crazy future. Trying to be super precise about exactly when in the futur...

more AI Verified source (Aug 11, 2026)

added 1mo ago