So I think we need to go very slowly on AGI and ASI, and double down on slightly narrower scientific goals. With even that, we need to be very cautious. We need to have kind of an international consensus on what constitutes safe AI.
George Church
Harvard genetics professor who helped initiate the Human Genome Project
In a 2025 podcast interview, George Church called for moving very slowly on artificial general intelligence and superintelligence and for international agreement on safe AI.
Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical SchoolPublished June 26, 2025 · date of remarks not establishedDwarkesh Podcast
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Surrounding words
This is not like COVID-19, where millions of people were dying if we delayed the science. This is something where, if there ever is a crisis, it's because we created it, it's not because we're trying to solve it. So I think we need to go very slowly on AGI and ASI, and double down on slightly narrower scientific goals. With even that, we need to be very cautious. We need to have kind of an international consensus on what constitutes safe AI. Dwarkesh Patel 00:51:47 Suppose we did build safe superintelligence. How much would that speed up bio progress? There's a million George Churches in data centers just thinking all the time, is it a 10x speed-up?
What this quote does not say
- Later in the interview, Church said that if safety issues were handled as a top priority, AI and artificial general intelligence could accelerate health and biology; the benefit claim was explicitly conditional on safety.
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