AI-pocalypse Now Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, has signed onto a one-sentence open letter warning about the “extinction” dangers posed by artificial intelligence. Yes, we’re LOLing — after all, he’s probably doing more than anyone else alive to bring advanced AI into existence. “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,” the letter released by the Center for AI Safety reads. Altman is joined by Harvard legal scholar Laurence Tribe, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, and Ilya Sutskever, his fellow OpenAI cofounder currently acting as the firm’s chief scientist. As of now, though, Altman is probably the biggest-deal signatory on the list, which is kind of ironic considering that his company has done more to push AI into the real world than pretty much anyone else ever. To be fair, while it’s definitely a good thing that the CEO of the most recognizable AI firm in the world is concerned about its risk, there’s more than a hint of irony in someone like Altman — who, lest we fail to mention, is a doomsday prepper — talking out of one side of his mouth about the potential for AI apocalypse when he, like many of the other signatories, are actively working to build human-level or even superhuman AIs. Precedented The history of Altman’s complicated stance on AI risk goes deeper than this letter, too. OpenAI was, as Futurism and many other outlets will regularly remind you,…OpenAI CEO Signs Letter Warning AI Could Cause Human "Extinction"