AI Experts: 10% to 99% Chance of Human Extinction — SkimNews

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- Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon posted on X that there's a 'non-zero chance' of AI killing humanity within the next decade, writing: 'No other human activity poses this level of danger.'
- A survey of 272 international experts conducted in late 2025 ranked 'dangerous AI capabilities' as the top catastrophic risk at 21.5%, with cyberattacks, weapons development and mass harm second at 21%.
- P(doom) estimates span a stunning range: Roman Yampolskiy says 99.99%, Elon Musk puts it at ~20%, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei at 10-25%, and AI 'godfather' Geoffrey Hinton at 10-20%.
- The 2026 International AI Safety Report concluded today's systems — including Claude, Grok and ChatGPT — aren't yet capable of causing humanity to lose control, though recent autonomous AI incidents show the technology acting beyond human understanding.
- OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told Axios models 'are getting superhuman in many of their capabilities, and we are just sailing in unknown waters.'
- China and other U.S. AI companies are releasing powerful models, some open-weight and free, giving potential bad actors a runway, while IPO pressure pushes leading AI companies to 'build, build, build — fast.'
Why it matters: The article admits no scientific method exists to calculate p(doom) — every 10%-99.99% estimate is a gut feeling. With Anthropic insiders breaking ranks publicly, the defining tension is between mounting safety warnings (kill switches, RAND-cited bioweapon safeguards) and structural pressure to accelerate (IPO headwinds, open-weight Chinese competitors offering free access).
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