New Delhi, Oct. 30 -- An AI safety expert has stopped contributing to his retirement savings, not because he believes artificial intelligence will make people wealthy, but because he fears it could bring human civilisation to an end within the next decade. Nate Soares, president of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), believes there is a greater-than-50% chance that advanced AI could cause human extinction in less than 10 years.

Soares, a former Google and Microsoft engineer who has spent more than 12 years working on AI alignment, said he has not contributed to his retirement account for a decade because he is uncertain whether humanity has a long-term future.

"I do not save for retirement right now. I have a 401(k) from...