Nate Soares at the Harvard Science Center

Harvard Book Store, the Harvard University Division of Science, and the Harvard Library welcome Nate Soares—President of MIRI and author of a large body of technical and semi-technical writing on AI alignment—for a discussion of his new book, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would K*ll Us All, co-written by Eliezer Yudkowsky. Soares will be joined in conversation by Greg Kestin—Lecturer on Physics and Associate Director of Science Education at Harvard University. This event will take place at the Harvard Science Center, Hall D, located at 1 Oxford St, Cambridge. Following the presentation will be a book signing.

There are two ticket options available for this event.

Free General Admission Ticket: Includes admission for one.
Book-Included Ticket: Includes admission for one and one hardcover copy of If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies.

Note: Books bundled with tickets may only be picked up at the venue the night of the event, and cannot be picked up in-store beforehand. Ticket holders who purchased a book-included ticket and are unable to attend the event will be able to pick up their book at Harvard Book Store up to 30 days following the event. This offer expires after 30 days. Please note we cannot guarantee signed copies will be available to ticket holders who do not attend the event.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER, The New Yorker's Best Books of 2025, The Guardian's Best Books of 2025, A 2025 Booklist Editors' Choice Pick
The scramble to create superhuman AI has put us on the path to extinction—but it’s not too late to change course, as two of the field’s earliest researchers explain in this clarion call for humanity.
In 2023, hundreds of AI luminaries signed an open letter warning that artificial intelligence poses a serious risk of human extinction. Since then, the AI race has only intensified. Companies and countries are rushing to build machines that will be smarter than any person. And the world is devastatingly unprepared for what would come next.
For decades, two signatories of that letter—Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares—have studied how smarter-than-human intelligences will think, behave, and pursue their objectives. Their research says that sufficiently smart AIs will develop goals of their own that put them in conflict with us—and that if it comes to conflict, an artificial superintelligence would crush us. The contest wouldn’t even be close.
How could a machine superintelligence wipe out our entire species? Why would it want to? Would it want anything at all? In this urgent book, Yudkowsky and Soares walk through 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 under the sun. And if anyone builds it, everyone dies.

Nate Soares is the President of MIRI. He has been working in the field for over a decade, after previous experience at Microsoft and Google. Soares is the author of a large body of technical and semi-technical writing on AI alignment, has been interviewed in Vanity Fair and the Financial Times, and has spoken on conference panels alongside many of the AI field’s leaders.

Greg Kestin earned his physics Ph.D. from Harvard, as a member of The Center for the Fundamental Laws of Nature, focusing on theoretical particle physics and quantum field theory. He then joined the faculty of Harvard’s Physics Department as a College Fellow and Preceptor and is currently the Associate Director of Science Education and a Lecturer on Physics. Over his career, he has conducted research in nuclear physics, particle physics, fusion energy, gravitational wave physics, and science education. As a Digital Producer at NOVA | PBS he created award-winning media, from documentaries to educational interactives to an original video series, “What the Physics?!” In his time at NOVA |PBS, nearly a decade, he served as a director, producer, screenwriter, scientific consultant, on-screen talent, author, grant writer, animator, public speaker, and more.

Masks are encouraged but not required for this event.

The Harvard Science Book Talks series is a collaboration between the Harvard University Division of Science, the Harvard Library, and Harvard Book Store. The series features talks by the authors of recently published books on a variety of science-related topics and is open to both the Harvard community and to the general public. Typically, lectures are followed by a book signing with the author.

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