Chughtai, who worked on AGI safety and alignment research at Google DeepMind, wrote on X: “I recently resigned from Google DeepMind, where I worked on AGI safety and alignment research.”
“I earnestly believe that AI has the potential to kill us all, and that we might be running out of time to avoid this outcome,” he added.
Chughtai, who co-authored research papers while at Google DeepMind, worked at the company as a research engineer and left in July 2026, according to his LinkedIn profile.
The warning came after growing public concern over the potential dangers of artificial intelligence, following comments by Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, who said last week that he had resigned partly because the “people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”
Anthropic scientist Evan Hubinger subsequently responded to Coxon’s comments, saying he was correct and that he believed there was a greater than 10% chance that AI could kill all humans within the next decade.
Meanwhile, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called over the weekend for a slowdown in the pace of advanced AI development, receiving rare backing from SpaceXAI's Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and prompting a debate over AI “doomerism.”
Chughtai said AI could be navigated safely but would require coordination “to avoid this manic race between AI companies.”
“We need to pace AI development to a speed that society can handle, where emerging risks can be addressed before extreme harm is realised,” he added.