Hard Fork · Friday, September 18, 2026
A post by Evan Hubinger, a co-worker of Jacob at Anthropic, stating a belief that AI could kill all humans with a greater than 10% probability, has brought the AI existential risk conversation to a broader audience. While such probabilities are considered optimistic by some within AI research circles, the number has resonated with the public and politicians, prompting questions about why development continues at such a pace.
“And I had the same realization about the bubble that we live in here in the Bay Area when I saw a follow-up post from one of Jacob's co-workers at Anthropic, Evan Hubinger, who sort of, you know, quote tweeted his post and said, I, uh, I believe that AI could kill all humans and he attached a specific probability to it. He said I think there's a greater than 10% chance that this could happen.”
“Like, for me, in the world that we travel in, people who have a P-doom of 10% are considered somewhat optimistic. Like, among the AI researchers at the labs that I've been talking to and interviewing, people have much higher probabilities that all of this could go badly.”
“People were saying, wait a minute, these people are racing to build something that they think could have a 10% or more chance of killing us all. Why are they doing that? They should stop doing that.”