Ex-DeepMind Safety Researcher Warns AI Could 'Kill Us All'

A Google DeepMind safety researcher who left the company in July has told the public he believes the technology he worked on could kill everyone.

Bilal Chughtai, who worked on AGI safety and alignment research at DeepMind, published the warning Monday on X and LinkedIn, Bloomberg reports. "At Google, I witnessed AI development first hand. I too am extremely concerned by the default trajectory of this technology," he wrote, adding that he "earnestly believe[s] that AI has the potential to kill us all, and that we might be running out of time to avoid this outcome." He described the industry as a "manic race between AI companies" and called for pacing development "to a speed that society can handle, where emerging risks can be addressed before extreme harm is realised."

Chughtai's LinkedIn now lists him at BlueDot Impact, a nonprofit that runs AI-safety training for professionals across fields. He said he remains optimistic it is still possible to navigate the technology safely, and framed his new role around that goal.

The post arrives during a short run of similar departures. Bloomberg notes Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned September 9 after three years at the company and prior time at OpenAI, saying labs were "racing toward super-intelligent AI" and "gambling with our lives." Chughtai's post is the latest we've logged inside a busy stretch of safety coverage on our tracker.

Neither Bloomberg's report nor the outlets carrying it name a DeepMind response, or the specific projects Chughtai points to as having shaped his view. The public artifact is the post itself: an alignment researcher employed by a frontier lab until two months ago, telling readers on his personal accounts that the technology may kill everyone.