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Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton, the ‘godfather of artificial intelligence’ believes there is a 10-20% chance that AI will cause human extinction within 30 years. Most of the CEOs of AI companies have given comparable figures. In a 2023 survey of 2778 AI researchers more than half thought the figure was greater than 5% - today the figure would be greater. Some whistle blowers and AI insiders believe that the risk is greater than 50% and that we are probably heading for the apocalypse. Others inside and outside the industry dismiss these claims as woefully and dangerously alarmist. Nobody though would dream of boarding a plane which had a 1% risk of crashing, or even a 0.1% risk that people would survive the journey. Yet the race to establish super-intelligent AI proceeds at breakneck speed with no effective control.

Disagreements are monumental, including amongst experts and AI insiders. They are not only about the seriousness of the risk and about what should be done about it, but about the nature of the problem. There is disagreement about even the nature of artificial intelligence . Is it truly intelligent, is it conscious, is it sentient, does it have agency, can it act independently, could it have feelings, might it have rights, can it be securely aligned with human values, could it be malevolent, should we be nice to it, can we ever hope to control it, how will we relate to something when it becomes a great deal more intelligent than we are?

Philosophical questions may never have been so relevant to a public debate, and may never have had such practical implications.
For example if AI developers believe that AI is conscious or could become conscious this will affect their belief in how AI is developed and controlled

This meeting was planned two months ago. A month later AI risk hit the headlines and has never left them. If you join us at the Britannia you may not find many answers but should have an interesting evening, and may even improve your understanding of what could well be the most serious issue ever to face humanity,

Resources
AI risk is best covered by podcasts, which are innumerable and updating rapidly. Here are four, a book, and two advocacy sites:

  • Big Technology Podcast, 16/9/26, 42 minutes: “A sober conversation about AI Existential Risk - with Nate Soares”
  • The Rest Is Politics podcast (with Rory Stewart), 28/9/26, 63 minutes. “Mustafa Suleyman (CEO of Microsoft AI): Is AI Actually Conscious?”
  • The Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett podcast, 17/9/26, 147 minutes: “The Great AI Debate: Is Artificial Intelligence an Extinction Threat? Debating the True Risks of Advanced AI.” This podcast aims to present both sides of the debate.
  • Modern Wisdom Podcast, 25/10/25, 97 minutes: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All - Eliezer Yudkowsky. Yudkowsky can be seen as the godfather of doom, but his analysis is coherent and predictions remarkably accurate - this podcast was made a year ago.
  • “Obsolete: The AI Industry’s Trillion Dollar Race to Replace Us - and How to Stop It” by Garrison Lovely. It has just been released in the US but is currently only available in the UK on Kindle or as an audio book. The paperback should be released here by the end of October. It provides an overview of recent AI developments. The last chapter (the last 70 minutes of the audio book) sets out a campaigning strategy for pausing AI developments. Reviews and interviews with the author can be found on many podcasts. He has set up a campaigning website "Organize Against the Machine".

By contrast, organizations campaigning for pausing or slowing down AI development are thin on the ground. They include:

Guidelines
Anyone can attend this session. No experience in philosophy or knowledge of the subject is required in advance. Just come along and enjoy. Our events use the the 4Cs of community philosophy:

  • Caring for others, making space for their contributions
  • Collaborating to get a better mutual understanding rather than scoring points
  • Critically assessing what we say, clarifying what is meant and asking what reasons support assertions
  • Creatively coming up with alternative perspectives, rather than dogmatically sticking to our initial positions

Related topics

Events in Oxford, GB

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