Elon Musk
CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and xAI; OpenAI co-founder (departed 2018)
xAI / Tesla / SpaceX
Lab leaders
Musk has warned for a decade that AI is an existential threat, signed the 2023 pause letter, and then launched his own frontier lab, xAI. He puts the odds of annihilation at around 10-20% and expects AI to be smarter than all humans combined by about 2030—while arguing the upside justifies pressing ahead.
Their number
10–20%
"The probability of a good outcome is like 80%" — i.e. roughly 20% chance of annihilation (Joe Rogan Experience, February 28, 2025); previously 'somewhere between 10% and 20%'. In a July 2026 Economist interview he said the probability of things going catastrophically wrong is "not zero" while putting good outcomes at 80-90%.Source
On timing
AI "smarter than all humans combined" by 2029 or 2030 (February 2025); in July 2026 said AI may exceed the sum of all human intelligence "in about five years" and that humans will "no longer be in charge of the world in 10 years."
SourceWhat they call for
- Signed 2023 call for 6 month pause on training beyond GPT 4
- Government regulatory oversight / 'referee' for AI
- 'maximally truth seeking' AI
- Continued acceleration of AI development (2025 26 position)
In their own words
"I always thought AI was going to be way smarter than humans and an existential risk. And that's turning out to be true."
28 February 2025
Signed the FLI open letter calling on "all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4" — then founded xAI four months later.
22 March 2023
Probability of catastrophe is "not zero"; AI may exceed all human intelligence "in about five years" leading to "an age of amazing abundance." (The Economist)
2026-07
Signed
- FLI pause letter 2023