Dozens of senior officials in the artificial intelligence industry, academics and even some celebrities signed a statement warning against "global annihilation due to artificial intelligence" and called for reducing the risk of such an extinction event. According to them, the threat of an AI extinction event should be a global priority.

British scientist warns: "Artificial intelligence will wreak havoc on humanity"

"Reducing the risk of extinction from artificial intelligence should be a global priority alongside other risks on a societal scale such as epidemics and nuclear war," reads the announcement published by the Center for Artificial Intelligence Safety, which emphasizes "wide-ranging concerns about the ultimate danger of uncontrolled artificial intelligence."

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The statement was signed by industry leaders including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman; the "godfather" of artificial intelligence Jeffrey Hinton; executives and senior researchers from Google DeepMind and Anthropic; Kevin Scott, Microsoft's chief technology officer; Bruce Schneier , internet security and cryptography pioneer; climate advocate Bill McKibben; and the musician Grimes, among others.

The statement follows the viral success of OpenAI's ChatGPT, which has helped fuel the tech industry's arms race over artificial intelligence. In response, a growing number of lawmakers, advocacy groups and tech insiders have warned about the ability of AI-powered chatbots to spread misinformation and displace jobs .

Hinton, whose pioneering work helped shape today's artificial intelligence systems, previously told CNN that he decided to leave his job at Google and "expose the truth" about the technology after he "suddenly" realized "these things are getting smarter than us."

Dan Hendricks, director of the Center for Artificial Intelligence Safety, said in a tweet that the statement, first proposed by David Kruger, a professor of artificial intelligence at the University of Cambridge, does not prevent the company from addressing other types of AI risk, such as algorithmic bias or misinformation.

Hendricks compared Tuesday's statement to warnings from atomic scientists "issuing warnings about the very technologies they've created." "Companies can manage multiple risks at once; it's not 'either/or' but 'both/and,'" Hendricks tweeted. "From a risk management perspective, just as it would be reckless to exclusively prioritize the current damages, it would also be reckless to ignore them."