Ex-Google Engineer Warns AI Could Kill Humanity In 10 Years: 'I Don't Save For Retirement'

A former Google engineer has claimed that he has stopped saving for his retirement as he believes artificial intelligence (AI) will probably kill everyone in the next 10 years, well before anyone reaches the retirement age. In a recent interview, Nate Soares, the president of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), a Berkeley nonprofit, took a grim view of the ongoing AI race, which has seen global corporations burning billions to gain a competitive advantage.

Soares left Google in 2014 to join MIRI, where he has spent years studying how to make advanced AI behave as intended for safe human use.

"I do not save for retirement right now. I have a 401(k) from when I worked at Google, but I haven't contributed for a decade," Soares was quoted as saying by The Atlantic.

Quizzed whether he believed there was more than a 50 per cent chance humans won't be around in 10 years, Soares replied: "More than 50% that we don't have a decade at this point is how it looks to me."

In his 2025 book "If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies," which he co-wrote with MIRI cofounder Eliezer Yudkowsky, Soares argued that superintelligent AI would develop goals its creators never intended that would most certainly end human life.

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Godfather Of AI Issues Warning  

Soares is not the only leading voice in the industry to raise concerns about AI being a threat to humanity. Geoffrey Hinton, widely regarded as the 'godfather of AI', has predicted that there's a 10 to 20 per cent chance that AI takes over humanity.

Hinton, who was awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in physics alongside John Hopfield, said AI systems were quickly evolving and that the majority were unaware of what is about to come.

"I'm in the unfortunate position of happening to agree with Elon Musk on this, which is that there's a 10 to 20 per cent chance that these things will take over, but that's just a wild guess," said Hinton.

Hinton laid the foundation for machine learning that is powering today's AI-based products and applications. However, the Nobel laureate grew wary of AI's future development and cut ties with his employer, Google, in order to speak more freely on the issue.