A former Google DeepMind researcher has warned that artificial intelligence could eventually “kill us all” and that the industry may be running out of time to prevent such an outcome, adding to a growing chorus of researchers raising alarms about the pace at which increasingly capable AI systems are being developed.

Bilal Chughtai, who worked on artificial general intelligence safety and alignment research at Google DeepMind, said Monday that he had resigned from the company because of concerns about the trajectory of AI development.

“I earnestly believe that AI has the potential to kill us all, and that we might be running out of time to avoid this outcome,” Chughtai wrote on X.

Chughtai worked as a research engineer at Google DeepMind and co-authored research papers during his time at the company. His LinkedIn profile indicates that he left the company in July 2026.

His warning follows a series of stark statements from researchers at some of the world’s leading AI companies, turning what was once largely an academic debate over long-term AI risks into a more public dispute over how quickly frontier systems should be developed and deployed.

Last week, former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon said he had resigned partly because people developing advanced AI “earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”

Evan Hubinger, an Anthropic scientist who has worked on AI safety research, subsequently said Coxon’s characterization was accurate and estimated that there was a greater than 10% probability that AI could kill all humans within the next decade.

Those assessments are not predictions that AI will necessarily cause human extinction. Rather, they illustrate how some researchers working closest to frontier AI systems have come to assign meaningful probabilities to catastrophic outcomes, even while the timing and mechanisms remain highly uncertain.

AI Safety Moves From Research Concern to Industry Debate

Chughtai said a safe path for AI development remains possible, but argued that it will require cooperation between companies rather than an unrestricted race to build increasingly powerful systems.

“Navigating AI safely is possible, but it requires coordination to avoid this manic race between AI companies,” he wrote.

“We need to pace AI development to a speed that society can handle, where emerging risks can be addressed before extreme harm is realized,” he added.

The comments arrive as AI companies face a difficult competitive problem. The largest labs are investing enormous sums in computing infrastructure, talent and model development, creating strong incentives to release more capable systems before rivals do. A company that voluntarily slows development could fear losing customers, talent or technological advantage to competitors that continue moving ahead.

That dynamic is at the heart of the recent debate over whether frontier AI development should be deliberately slowed.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei also called for a slower pace of advanced AI development, explaining that companies and governments need more time to understand and manage emerging risks. His position received unusually broad support from rivals and other technology leaders, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and SpaceXAI’s Elon Musk.

The convergence is notable because the companies involved remain direct competitors in the race to build sophisticated AI systems. Agreement on the need for greater caution does not necessarily mean agreement over what constitutes a safe development pace, how safety should be measured or who should have authority to impose limits.

It has also opened a broader debate over “AI doomerism,” the term often used to describe warnings that sufficiently advanced AI could produce catastrophic or existential consequences.

Skeptics believe that such warnings can exaggerate uncertain future risks and potentially justify restrictions that protect established AI companies from competition. Supporters of stronger safeguards counter that the uncertainty itself is a reason to develop systems more cautiously, particularly if future models become capable of autonomous planning, self-improvement or other behaviors that researchers cannot reliably control.

Washington Takes a Different View

The warnings from AI researchers have also exposed a widening gap between parts of the technology industry and the Trump administration.

President Donald Trump has dismissed calls for greater AI regulation, describing the industry’s push for regulation as a “hoax.” His administration has emphasized the need for the United States to maintain its lead in AI development, particularly in competition with China.

Trump’s stance has created a fundamental policy tension. The United States wants its AI companies to move quickly enough to maintain technological and economic leadership, while some of the scientists developing those systems are increasingly arguing that speed itself could become a source of systemic risk.

Chughtai’s warning adds weight to that argument because it comes from someone who recently worked inside one of the world’s most prominent AI research organizations on the specific problem of making advanced systems safer and more aligned with human objectives.

His departure does not establish that AI is on a path toward human extinction, nor does his assessment provide a timetable for such an outcome. But taken alongside warnings from researchers at Anthropic and calls for slower development from Amodei, it shows how concerns once confined largely to AI safety circles are becoming increasingly difficult for the industry to keep at the margins.

The major concern now hinges largely on how AI companies can coordinate on safety without sacrificing the competitive incentives that are driving the technology forward. For researchers such as Chughtai, the danger is that those incentives could push development faster than safety research, regulation, and society’s ability to respond.

That is a considerably different proposition from arguing that AI development should stop. It is an argument that the speed of the race may itself become one of the risks that the industry needs to manage.

The benchmark U.S. 10-year Treasury yield climbed to its highest level since 2007 on Tuesday, extending a sell-off in government bonds as investors confronted the prospect of higher-for-longer interest rates and a worsening oil supply shock ahead of the Federal Reserve’s latest policy decision.

The 10-year yield rose 8 basis points to 5.041% as of 4:07 a.m. ET, after briefly breaking above 5% on Monday before retreating. The move puts the benchmark yield at a level not seen since before the global financial crisis and signals how quickly inflation and interest-rate expectations can overwhelm demand for U.S. government debt.

The 30-year Treasury yield, which is particularly sensitive to long-term inflation and geopolitical risks, climbed 7 basis points to 5.4%. The two-year yield, which more closely tracks expectations for Fed policy, rose about 5 basis points to 4.686%.

Bond prices move inversely to yields, meaning the rise represents a broad decline in the value of existing Treasurys.

The sell-off comes as the Federal Reserve begins a two-day policy meeting, with markets assigning more than a 92% probability to a 25-basis-point rate increase, according to the CME FedWatch tool. August inflation remained well above the central bank’s 2% target, leaving policymakers with less room to ease financial conditions even as economic risks build.

That tension is gaining attention because the latest threat to inflation is coming from oil.

“U.S. 10-year treasuries are highly sensitive to inflation expectations, and with inflation gauges still above the Fed’s target of 2%, we believe this tight correlation will likely persist for a while,” said Jonathan Liang, Standard Chartered’s chief investment officer of fixed income and foreign exchange.

The relationship between crude prices and Treasury yields has become unusually strong. The one-month rolling correlation between front-month West Texas Intermediate crude and the 10-year Treasury yield has risen to 0.96, according to BMO Capital Markets.

“Speaking simplistically, higher oil prices lead to higher inflation expectations and vice versa,” said Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers.

“Normally, the relationship isn’t as clean as it is now, but the geopolitical drivers behind the price of oil and global inflation are so prominent that the normally modest correlation has become much tighter,” he said.

“As long as oil prices remain firm and continue to drift higher, this will add pressure to interest rates,” Sosnick added.

Oil Shock Complicates the Fed’s Inflation Fight

Oil prices rose more than 2% on Tuesday after attacks on Saudi Arabian energy infrastructure disrupted the kingdom’s East-West pipeline, intensifying concerns about the availability of crude and the duration of the disruption.

Brent crude futures rose $2.50, or 2.37%, to $108.18 a barrel at 8:13 a.m. GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures gained $2.46, or 2.43%, to $103.85.

The attacks have introduced another source of inflation pressure at precisely the moment when the bond market is already demanding greater compensation for holding long-term U.S. debt.

Iran-backed Houthi forces in Yemen launched fresh attacks on Saudi Arabia on Monday, while Gulf Arab states postponed planned discussions with Iran. The escalation has raised concerns that damage to energy infrastructure and transportation routes could take longer to repair.

“Fresh attacks by the Houthis targeting Saudi Arabia may be influencing oil market investors’ expectations about the severity and duration of the conflict,” said Hamad Hussain, senior climate and commodities economist at Capital Economics.

The Houthis said Monday that they had fired dozens of missiles and drones at a military airbase in Khamis Mushait in southern Saudi Arabia, targeting aircraft hangars, radar systems, runways and ammunition depots in retaliation for Saudi airstrikes in Yemen.

The attacks followed strikes on Friday that disrupted Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline, a crucial alternative route that allows the kingdom to transport oil to the Red Sea and bypass the Strait of Hormuz.

The pipeline is therefore more than a piece of infrastructure. Its disruption reduces Saudi Arabia’s ability to move crude without relying on a maritime chokepoint that has already become a major source of market anxiety.

The Strait of Hormuz previously carried about one-fifth of global oil supplies. Commodity vessel traffic through the strait fell to just four vessels on Monday from 10 the previous day, according to preliminary Kpler data.

Saudi Arabia could exhaust crude available for export within days if the East-West pipeline is not restored, according to buyers and traders. The disruption has threatened as much as 4% of global oil supply.

Goldman Sachs said the latest attack could be more severe and potentially threaten the remaining 2 million barrels per day of recent Yanbu exports. Repair estimates range from “very soon” to as long as eight weeks, according to the bank.

The duration of the disruption is becoming almost as important as the initial supply loss. A short-lived outage could produce a temporary price spike, while prolonged damage would force buyers to compete for a smaller pool of available crude and could feed higher energy costs into transportation, manufacturing and consumer prices.

Goldman Sachs said the attacks represented a meaningful escalation and increased the probability that Brent crude could rise above $120 a barrel. Its scenario assumes average Gulf oil production in 2027 remains 4 million barrels per day below pre-war levels.

Capital Economics’ Hussain warned that, without a demand adjustment or increased flows through the Strait of Hormuz, several weeks of East-West pipeline disruption could push Brent toward $130 a barrel.

That scenario would create a difficult environment for the Federal Reserve.

A conventional inflation shock caused by strong domestic demand can eventually be addressed through tighter monetary policy. An oil shock is different. Higher interest rates cannot produce more crude or reopen a damaged pipeline. Yet if energy prices lift headline inflation and begin feeding into broader price expectations, the Fed may still be forced to maintain or increase monetary restraint.

That helps explain why the Treasury market is reacting so sharply.

The rise in the two-year yield points to immediate concern over Fed policy, while the move in the 10- and 30-year maturities suggests investors are also demanding greater compensation for long-term inflation and fiscal risks.

A sustained oil shock could therefore produce an uncomfortable combination of higher inflation, higher Treasury yields and weaker economic growth. That would raise borrowing costs for households, companies and the U.S. government while simultaneously putting pressure on corporate valuations.

The significance of the 5% threshold in the 10-year yield extends beyond the bond market. Treasury yields serve as a reference point for mortgages, corporate borrowing, and the valuation of equities. As risk-free yields rise, investors generally require stronger earnings prospects to justify elevated stock-market valuations.

For markets already sensitive to inflation and monetary policy, another leg higher in Treasury yields could therefore broaden the pressure well beyond government bonds.

China provides a partial counterpoint to the supply concerns. Official data showed that Chinese oil throughput increased for a second consecutive month in August, supported by higher fuel exports after Beijing eased restrictions in mid-July.

But stronger Chinese refinery activity does not eliminate the broader supply risk. If disruptions persist across Gulf infrastructure and shipping routes, the market may have to absorb a prolonged reduction in available crude regardless of regional demand.

The immediate concern for investors is no longer about the Fed raising rates by 25 basis points. Markets are increasingly trying to determine how much additional inflation pressure the central bank will have to absorb if oil remains above $100 and moves toward $120 or higher.

A 5% 10-year yield was once viewed as an important psychological barrier. With the geopolitical shock now feeding directly into energy prices and inflation expectations, the more consequential issue is whether the yield can remain above that level. If it does, the Treasury market could be entering a more persistent repricing in which inflation, oil and monetary policy reinforce one another.

Analysts warn that this would make the Fed’s task harder and raise the cost of capital across the global economy at the same time.