Dustin Moskovitz: The Billionaire and the Apocalypse

Almost a year and a half ago, the first five million dollars landed in his account. Dan Hendrycks was able to get to work: against the end of the world. He hired researchers, created consulting services for politicians and entrepreneurs and has since been thinking full-time about averting his personal horror: that one day an artificial superintelligence could get out of control and destroy humanity.

Hendrycks is a computer scientist and only 28 years old. Thanks to a generous windfall, he is now the head of his own research institute, called the Center for AI Safety, which employs around a dozen people in San Francisco. Hendrycks had previously studied and researched at the University of Berkeley as an expert on the question of how to teach machines morals. Even at university, Hendrycks told everyone that AI systems could develop bioweapons against humans. That robots that have gone wild turn against their creators, that war machines could attack their creators. “They thought I was crazy,” says the head of the institute.

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