Elite students are dropping out of Harvard, MIT to prevent AI extinction of both humans and jobs

College students at elite universities like Harvard and MIT are dropping out to work on preventing artificial general intelligence (AGI) from potentially causing human extinction, driven by fears that superintelligent AI could arrive within the next decade. This exodus reflects growing anxiety among young people about both existential AI risks and the possibility that their future careers will be automated away before they even begin.

What you should know: Students are abandoning prestigious academic programs to join AI safety organizations and startups, believing the threat is too urgent to wait.

• Alice Blair took permanent leave from MIT to work as a technical writer at the Center for AI Safety, a nonprofit focused on AI safety research, saying “I was concerned I might not be alive to graduate because of AGI.”
• Harvard physics and computer science major Adam Kaufman left to work full-time at Redwood Research, a nonprofit examining deceptive AI systems.
• Kaufman’s brother, roommate, and girlfriend have also taken leave from Harvard for similar reasons, with three of them now working for OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.

The timeline driving urgency: AI leaders and students predict AGI could arrive much sooner than many expect, creating a perceived race against time.

• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman thinks AGI will be developed before 2029, while Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis predicts it within five to 10 years.
• Harvard graduate Nikola Jurković believes “AGI is maybe four years away and full automation of the economy is maybe five or six years away.”
• Jurković co-authored a forecast predicting the ability to automate most white-collar jobs by 2027.

Career fears accelerating decisions: Half of 326 Harvard students surveyed expressed worry about AI’s impact on their job prospects, with some viewing college as wasted time.

• “If your career is about to be automated by the end of the decade, then every year spent in college is one year subtracted from your short career,” Jurković explained.
• Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has warned that AI could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs and cause unemployment to rise to 20%.
• Some companies are already hiring fewer interns and recent graduates as AI becomes capable of handling their tasks.

The entrepreneurial gold rush: Many students are dropping out to start AI companies, inspired by success stories and the perceived limited window of opportunity.

• Anysphere CEO Michael Truell, 24, dropped out of MIT, and his company was last valued at $9.9 billion.
• Mercor CEO Brendan Foody, 22, left Georgetown University and has raised over $100 million for his startup.
• Jared Mantell dropped out of Washington University to focus on dashCrystal, which has raised over $800,000 at a $20 million valuation.

What the skeptics say: Not all experts believe the timeline predictions or recommend dropping out.

• “Human extinction seems to be very very unlikely,” said NYU professor emeritus Gary Marcus, though he called AI safety work “noble.”
• “It is extremely unlikely that AGI will come in the next five years,” Marcus added, calling timeline predictions “marketing hype” given unsolved problems like hallucinations.
• Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham, whose startup accelerator is known for funding young dropouts, advised against leaving school: “Don’t drop out of college to start or work for a startup. There will be other (and probably better) startup opportunities, but you can’t get your college years back.”

The financial trade-off: Students risk significant economic disadvantages by abandoning their degrees.

• According to Pew Research Center, younger adults with bachelor’s degrees generally make at least $20,000 more than peers without one.
• Blair acknowledged the difficulty: “It’s very difficult and taxing to drop out of college early and get a job. This is something that I would only recommend to extremely resilient individuals.”