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Milestone · May 30, 2023

The statement on AI risk

One sentence: mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside pandemics and nuclear war.

Why it matters

The heads of the leading laboratories signed a claim that their own technology may pose an existential risk.

The format was deliberate: one sentence that people who agree on almost nothing else can sign. Altman, Hassabis, Amodei, Hinton and Bengio signed. Critics argued that emphasis on distant risk distracts from present harm, from bias to misinformation to displaced labour. That argument about which risks take priority continues.

Event record

Event date
May 30, 2023
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Event date
Verification
Sources gathered automatically · September 17, 2026
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evt-0278

The statement was published on 30 May 2023.

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