Ex-DeepMind Scientist WARNS: Why We Still Can’t Trust Today’s AI

Is "AI is dangerous" a warning, or the world's best marketing line?

This episode is brought to you by AgelessRx, where aging becomes a puzzle that can be solved. The mission is to help you live longer and healthier by adding more life to your years through science-backed solutions and personalized care. Learn more at agelessrx.com/beyond-tomorrow.

On this episode of Beyond Tomorrow, I sit down with Thore Graepel, co-creator of AlphaGo and former researcher at Google DeepMind. I asked him straight up how close we are to superintelligence, and his answer surprised me: there won't be a single moment we can point to, and he argues human organizations like companies already count as a form of superintelligence. We get into why he thinks "AI will destroy humanity" is the biggest myth in the field, the near-term risks he does take seriously, and why I pushed him on the incentives behind the AI safety messaging coming from the labs.

From there we go deep on his core technical argument: that today's transformers are black boxes that mix knowledge and reasoning in the same weights, and that scaling alone will never make them trustworthy. He lays out a different approach built on explicit beliefs, hypotheses and evidence, and I found it one of the clearest explanations of AI transparency I've heard. In the back half, we talk about his time at Altos Labs, why biology is a reality check for the "cure all disease in 10 years" claims, and his cell annealing theory of rejuvenation.

Key Takeaways

• Thore sees AI progress as a "jagged frontier," not a single superintelligence moment, and by his own definition, AGI is already here

• He argues companies and institutions are already a form of superintelligence

• His P(doom) is very low: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and he doesn't see it

  
  

About Thore Graepel

Thore Graepel is a computer scientist and AI researcher who recently left Google DeepMind, where he was a co-creator of AlphaGo and worked on multi-agent systems, reasoning and consciousness research. He has also spent time at Altos Labs, applying his machine learning and physics background to cellular rejuvenation, and writes about AI, reasoning and safety on Substack.

⏱ Timestamps

00:00 Intro

00:06 How Close Are We to Superintelligence?

01:42 Are Human Organizations Already Superintelligent?

02:56 Is Anyone Trying to Destroy Humanity?

04:45 Near-Term Risks: Jobs and the Economy

08:08 Why the Transition Will Be Hard

10:06 Post-AGI Planning and the Case for Positive Futures

14:35 Capability vs. Diffusion: The Train Driver Problem

16:46 Optimization vs. Game Theory

18:53 The Incentives Behind AI Safety Messaging

22:26 What Is Thore's P(doom)?

23:25 Why Transformers Are Black Boxes

29:19 How Do We Build Safer, More Transparent AI?

33:01 Separating Knowledge From Reasoning

37:39 Safety vs. Capability and the Trust Ceiling

39:45 Narrow AI vs. General AI

44:02 Do You Believe in God?

47:15 Consciousness and Whether LLMs Are Alive

51:08 AlphaGo and Move 37

58:29 Credit Assignment and Moral Reasoning

01:04:31 Who Sets the Moral Guardrails?

01:09:37 The AGI Race: US vs. China

01:11:53 Longevity and Altos Labs

01:16:01 The Biology Reality Check

01:23:04 Pockets of Computability and AlphaFold

01:26:05 Yamanaka Factors and Cell Annealing

01:35:51 Will the Singularity Happen in Your Lifetime?

01:36:49 Rapid Fire Questions with Thore

01:41:35 Thore's Best Piece of Advice

Resources & Mentions

AlphaGo and AlphaFold (Google DeepMind)

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

Altos Labs

Stephen Wolfram's "pockets of computability"

David Deutsch on simulation and the limits of experiment

Thore's Substack

Connect with Thore:

Github: https://thoregraepel.github.io/

LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/thoregraepel

X: https://x.com/ThoreG

Connect with Julian

Instagram: @thebeyondtomorrowpodcast / @juliankissa

LinkedIn: julian-issa

X: @juliankissa

Website: www.beyondtomorrowpodcast.com

Email: bookings@beyondtomorrowpodcast.com