Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) poses an extinction risk to all known biological life. Given the stakes involved -- the whole world -- we should be looking at 10% chance-of-AGI-by timelines as the deadline for catastrophe prevention (a global treaty banning superintelligent AI), rather than 50% (median) chance-of-AGI-by timelines, which seem to be the default[1].

It's way past crunch time already: 10% chance of AGI this year![2] Given alignment/control is not going to be solved in 2026, and if anyone builds it, everyone dies (or at the very least, the risk of doom is uncomfortably high by most estimates), a global Pause of AGI development is an urgent immediate priority. This is an emergency. Thinking that we have years to prevent catastrophe is gambling a huge amount of current human lives, let alone all future generations and animals.

To borrow from Stuart Russell's analogy: if there was a 10% chance of aliens landing this year[3], humanity would be doing a lot more than we are currently doing[4]. AGI is akin to an alien species more intelligent than us that is unlikely to share our values.

The original text contained 4 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
January 5th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xEjxQ4txmxTybQLmQ/ai-risk-timelines-10-chance-by-year-x-should-be-the-headline

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“AI Risk timelines: 10% chance (by year X) should be the headline (and deadline), not 50%. And 10% is _this year_!” by Greg C

LessWrong (30+ Karma)