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Is "AI is dangerous" a warning, or the world's best marketing line?
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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
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
Connect with Julian
Instagram: @thebeyondtomorrowpodcast / @juliankissa
LinkedIn: julian-issa
X: @juliankissa
Website: www.beyondtomorrowpodcast.com
