Serving tech enthusiasts for over 25 years.

TechSpot means tech analysis and advice you can trust .

Crystal ball: Worried about the increasing likelihood that an AI will go rogue and kill us all? It's a depressing thought, but one AI safety leader is looking on the positive side: his concern that the technology will bring about mass extinction in the next decade has led him to stop saving for retirement.

Nate Soares, the president of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), revealed his pessimistic choice to The Atlantic CEO Nicholas Thompson in a recent interview for the latter's The Most Interesting Thing in AI series.

"I do not save for retirement right now. I have a 401(k) from when I worked at Google, but I haven't contributed for a decade," Soares said.

Apocalyptic warnings about AI are a dime a dozen, but they hit a lot harder when one comes from an expert in the field. Soares has spent 12 years working on AI alignment.…