Eliezer Yudkowsky

In 2000 he founded the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (SIAI), initially aiming to build an artificial superintelligence; he later turned to the risks of advanced AI.⁠[1]

He grew up in Chicago, left school after eighth grade and taught himself computer science; in 2005 he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to pursue “friendly AI” aligned with human values.⁠[2]

In 2010 he began serializing Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, a Harry Potter fan fiction meant to introduce the core concepts of Rationalism; that year he also introduced DeepMindGoogle DeepMindGoogle DeepMind is Google’s artificial intelligence research organization, formed in April 2023 by merging DeepMind, which Google acquired in 2014, with the Brain team from Google Research, and led by CEO Demis Hassabis. It developed AlphaGo, AlphaFold, and the Gemini family of models, and Hassabis and John Jumper received the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for AlphaFold’s protein structure prediction work.Open the full entry’s founders to the investor Peter ThielPeter ThielPeter Thiel is an American entrepreneur and investor, a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, and the first outside investor in Facebook. He is a partner at the venture capital firm Founders Fund and founded the Thiel Fellowship, which funds young people to leave college and build new things; his public skepticism of higher education, his support for Trump in 2016, and his funding of litigation against Gawker Media have drawn controversy.Open the full entry.⁠[2]

By March 2013 the Singularity Institute had been renamed the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI); he was one of four participants in its November 2012 research workshop.⁠[3]

On June 5, 2022, he published the long essay AGI Ruin: A List of Lethalities on LessWrong, listing the reasons he believes artificial general intelligence would kill humanity, and opened: “I have several times failed to write up a well-organized list of reasons why AGI will kill you.”⁠[4]

On March 29, 2023, he published the TIMETIMETIME is an American newsmagazine and media brand founded by Henry Luce and Briton Hadden, which published its first issue on March 3, 1923; it is headquartered in New York and known for its Person of the Year selection and the TIME100 list. Since 2018 it has been personally owned by Marc and Lynne Benioff; its current Chief Executive Officer is Jessica Sibley, and its Editor-in-Chief is Sam Jacobs.Open the full entry opinion piece The Open Letter on AI Doesn’t Go Far Enough. He is a decision theorist from the U.S. who leads research at MIRI and has worked on aligning artificial general intelligence since 2001.⁠[5]

In the piece he called for an “indefinite and worldwide” moratorium on new large AI training runs and the shutdown of all large GPU clusters, and wrote that the most likely result of building a superhumanly smart AI is that “literally everyone on Earth will die.”⁠[6]

On March 30, 2023, he appeared on episode 368 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, whose summary described him as a researcher, writer and philosopher on superintelligent AI; the timestamps covered GPT-4 and open-sourcing it, defining AGI and AGI alignment, how AGI may kill us, superintelligence, evolution, consciousness, AGI timelines and advice for young people.⁠[7]

On September 16, 2025, Little, BrownBrown UniversityBrown University is a private nonprofit research university in Providence, Rhode Island, and a member of the Ivy League. Chartered by Rhode Island's colonial legislature in 1764, it is known for its undergraduate Open Curriculum, which has no common required core. Christina H. Paxson, president since July 2012, announced on August 3, 2026, that the 2026–27 academic year would be her last in office. As of October 1, 2026, the search for Brown's 20th president remained underway.Open the full entry and Company published If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies (272 pages), written with MIRI president Nate Soares. It argues that sufficiently smart AIs will develop goals that conflict with ours and presents one possible extinction scenario.⁠[8]

In an endorsement, John (Jack) N.T. Shanahan, inaugural director of the Department of Defense Joint AI Center, said he was skeptical that the current trajectory would lead to human extinction but that the book’s proposals for global guardrails deserved serious consideration.⁠[8]

On September 18, 2025, the UK audiobook edition was released by Penguin’s Vintage imprint; the publisher’s description says the authors call for an immediate halt to the development of artificial superintelligence.⁠[9]

Clara Collier’s review in Asterisk found the book more accessible than the authors’ earlier writing but “significantly less coherent,” in particular for not justifying the fast-takeoff premise; she noted his reply that he does not believe his arguments depend on fast takeoff.⁠[1]

As of October 2026, MIRI’s website calls him a founding researcher of the field of AI alignment and co-founder of MIRI, notes his chapters in The Cambridge Handbook of Artificial Intelligence and Global Catastrophic Risks, and says he was named to TIME’s 2023 list of the 100 most influential people in AI.⁠[10]

X: Public account: https://x.com/ESYudkowsky (opens in a new window)⁠[7]

Machine Intelligence Research Institute: Official website: https://intelligence.org/ (opens in a new window)⁠[10]