mainstream groups, who had more to lose, initially qualified and diluted the message, taking positions like, “It would make sense in the long term to delegate control over local matters.” (There were always exceptions: Some public intellectuals proclaimed the original dissident message verbatim.) Finally, the original message—being, simply, true—won out over its diluted versions. Estonia regained its independence in 1991, and the last Soviet troops left three years later. The people who took the risk and spoke the truth in Estonia and elsewhere in the Eastern Bloc played a monumental role in the eventual outcome—an outcome that changed the lives of hundreds of millions of people, myself included. They spoke the truth, even as their voices trembled. The Second Message: AI Risk My exposure to the second revolutionary message was via Yudkowsky’s blog—the blog that compelled me to reach out and arrange that meeting in California. The message was: Continued progress in AI can precipitate a change of cosmic proportions—a runaway process that will likely kill everyone. We need to put in a lot of extra effort to avoid that outcome. After my meeting with Yudkowsky, the first thing I did was try to interest my Skype colleagues and close collaborators in his warning. I failed. The message was too crazy, too dissident. Its time had not yet come. Only later did I learn that Yudkowsky wasn’t the original dissident speaking this particular truth. In April 2000, there was a lengthy opinion piece in Wired titled, “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us,” by Bill Joy, co-founder and chief scientist of Sun Microsystems. He warned: Accustomed to living with almost routine scientific breakthroughs, we have yet to come to terms with the fact that the most compelling 21st-century technologies—robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology—pose a different threat than the technologies that have come before. Specifically, robots, engineered organisms, and nanobots share a dangerous amplifying fa