Doom prepping: What some tech billionaires are worried about
But by that summer, Mr Sutskever was becoming increasingly convinced that computer scientists were on the brink of developing artificial general intelligence (AGI).
Tech leaders have claimed that AGI is imminent. OpenAI boss Sam Altman said in December 2024 that it will come "sooner than most people in the world think".
Sir Demis Hassabis, the co-founder of DeepMind, has predicted in the next five to ten years, while Anthropic founder Dario Amodei wrote last year that his preferred term - "powerful AI" - could be with us as early as 2026.
Others are dubious. "They move the goalposts all the time," says Dame Wendy Hall, professor of computer science at Southampton University. "It depends who you talk to." We are on the phone but I can almost hear the eye-roll.
"The scientific community says AI technology is amazing," she adds, "but it's nowhere near human intelligence."
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