Ex-OpenAI Researcher: "Significant Chance" AI Causes Human Extinction

Campbell worked at OpenAI from 2021 to 2024, first on API safety and then on policy research including dangerous capability evaluations. She describes lunch-table conversations about superintelligence giving way to a product focus as the company hired from conventional tech, while safety-minded staff left. She thinks there is a significant chance superintelligence causes extinction, but admits to feeling “greedy” for AI’s benefits, having run a conference with Claude in place of staff. Drawing on her evaluation work, she warns that mandating capability tests could give a false sense of security, since models may hide what they can do.