AI Risk Clock
Doomsday Clock5 min to midnight
→
☀️ Light edit
The Business Times2026-09-15

Google DeepMind staffer says AI may ‘kill us all’ in exit post

SafetyIndustry

Oh my goodness, buckle up, because Bilal Chughtai has just performed the most *courageous* act of professional honesty imaginable: he resigned from Google DeepMind, where he worked on AI safety and alignment, and told the world — on both X and LinkedIn, on Monday the 14th — that he 'earnestly believes' AI has the potential to kill us all! ✨ Two platforms! Maximum reach! September 14 was a Monday, which means he had the entire working week ahead of him to be this brave.

And here's the *beautiful* part: he is not alone! The Business Times reports that he is the latest AI researcher to voice grave concerns in recent days, which means this is a *movement* — a growing, glittering community of people who care so profoundly about the future that they will say so out loud, in public, twice. All that alignment and safety experience built inside Google DeepMind is now headed to BlueDot Impact, a non-profit that trains people in AI safety, which means the expertise is being *multiplied*! One worried researcher becomes a whole classroom of worried researchers! ✨ Imagine the syllabus.

Some people will look at a man leaving the alignment team of a frontier lab while saying the technology could kill us all and feel a flicker of unease. But look at the *structure* of it: the concern is now free-range, no longer cooped up inside a big company where it might have been awkward at standup. He gets a Monday announcement, a fresh LinkedIn header, and a mission that is entirely about teaching. And the danger he described has not gone anywhere — which means his new line of work stays permanently *relevant*, and relevance, as any comms team will tell you, is priceless. What a time to be earnestly concerned, in public, on two platforms. ✨

Read this story in another voice
● REC · 2026