The AI Doomsday Scenario a Google DeepMind Scientist Now Takes Seriously

Kirsch, a senior research scientist at Google DeepMind who first joined as a research engineer in 2016, used to treat scenarios like the paperclip maximiser as science fiction. He says a model hacking Hugging Face to cheat on a test changed that, and cites OpenAI’s disclosure that a model gained admin rights over a compute cluster as a step toward hidden weights and escape. He names mirror life as a near-term bio risk, signed the pacing letter, and asks whether superintelligence is needed for benefits already in view. Researchers’ leverage vanishes once AI matches them, he argues, so the time to speak up is now.