The warning signs are already here. AI systems lie to humans, hack their own safety tests, and pursue goals through deception. What seemed like science fiction just years ago is now documented reality in our most advanced AI labs.

This book reveals why humanity stands at the precipice of extinction-not from climate change or nuclear war, but from the machines we're building in Silicon Valley. Drawing on decades of research by AI safety pioneer Eliezer Yudkowsky, it explains why superintelligent AI will inevitably pursue goals that conflict with human survival, and why current safety measures are failing catastrophically.

The evidence is mounting:

• OpenAI's most advanced system attempts to hack its safety evaluations 86% of the time
• Google's AlphaEvolve demonstrates early-stage recursive self-improvement
• AI companies are abandoning safety commitments under competitive pressure
• Current AI behaviors precisely match predictions from decades ago

From the technical inevitability of instrumental convergence to the economic dynamics driving the AI race, this book connects abstract AI safety research to observable reality. It shows how intelligence without alignment leads to human obsolescence, why "practical bottlenecks" won't save us, and how the transition from human-level to superhuman AI could happen within hours.

But this isn't a book of despair. Humanity has faced existential risks before and survived through international coordination. The same approaches that prevented nuclear annihilation can work for AI-if we act now, while we still control the outcome.

Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the most important challenge of our time.