'The most important book of the decade' MAX TEGMARK, author of Life 3.0 'A loud trumpet call to humanity to awaken us as we sleepwalk into disaster - we must wake up' STEPHEN FRY ** A Guardian biggest book of the autumn ** AI is the greatest threat to our existence that we have ever faced. The scramble to create superhuman AI has put us on the path to extinction - but it's not too late to change course. Two pioneering researchers in the field, Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares, explain why artificial superintelligence would be a global suicide bomb and call for an immediate halt to its development. The technology may be complex but the facts are simple: companies and countries are in a race to build machines that will be smarter than any person, and the world is devastatingly unprepared for what will come next. Could a machine superintelligence wipe out our entire species? Would it want to? Would it want anything at all? In this urgent book, Yudkowsky and Soares explore the theory and the evidence, present one possible extinction scenario and explain what it would take for humanity to survive. The world is racing to build something truly new - and if anyone builds it, everyone dies.