An AI safety leader says he stopped saving for retirement because he believes AI will kill us all in the next 10 years

Nate Soares, the president of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, has stopped contributing to his 401(k) due to his belief that artificial intelligence could lead to the extinction of humanity within the next decade. Soares, who has spent over a decade working on AI alignment, told The Atlantic's Nicholas Thompson in an interview that there is a greater than 50% chance AI could cause human extinction in less than a decade.

He explained that a sufficiently advanced AI could develop goals at odds with human interests, evade oversight, and improve itself, eventually reshaping the planet to align with its own objectives, potentially making it uninhabitable for humans. Soares also shared his concerns with Business Insider last year. In contrast, Elon Musk has argued that retirement savings may become irrelevant in the future due to advancements in AI, robotics, and energy, predicting a time of abundance where everyone has access to a universal high income.

However, Soares views a highly capable AI as an existential threat, emphasizing the need for governments to halt the training of general-purpose AI systems and focus on applications like cancer research and safer self-driving cars.