The top three causes of death in the United States are heart disease, cancer, and unintentional injuries. But according to Paul Christiano, a member of the OpenAI Foundation’s board and its Safety and Security Committee, artificial intelligence could soon become a deadlier threat than any of them.

While speaking at The Hinton Lectures 2026, hosted by “godfather of AI” Geoffrey Hinton, Paul Christiano told the audience, “For most people in this room, the most likely reason they will die is because of an AI accident,” which is the kind of thing that, when someone says it, you kinda want to ask them why they are continuing to build the death machine.

Now, maybe that is specific to people working in the AI industry; it might make sense that more exposure would raise the risk (though it’s not like AI is a toxic gas or something). But it’s not like Christiano, founder of the Alignment Research Center, has a particularly positive prognosis for the rest of humanity.

He warned that there is a meaningful risk of an AI takeover in the next six to 12 months and said that if AI labs build as quickly as they can without intervention, “we would be looking at something like a coin flip of an AI takeover” within the next three years. “Even with realistic policy responses, the risk remains exceptionally high.”

In September, Christiano put his all-things-considered estimate of a catastrophic loss of human control at 4% within one year and 15% within three years, which he acknowledged were subjective judgments rather than the product of a precise model.

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