# "If Anyone Builds it, Everyone Dies" : three AI futurists with disparate views respond - socializing, talks, and panel discussion at Microsoft NERD

[**PLEASE MAKE SURE TO RSVP ON AICAMP -- FOR SECURITY REASONS AN RSVP VIA AICAMP IS REQUIRED.**](https://www.aicamp.ai/event/eventdetails/W2025111014)

**Agenda for the evening:**

5:30-6:15 pm Socializing with food and refreshments  
6:15-6:20 pm Intro by Dan Elton, Ph.D.  
6:20-6:30 pm talk by Preston Estep, Ph.D.  
6:30-6:40 pm talk by Brian M Delaney  
6:40-6:50 pm talk by Kris Carlson  
7:00-8:00 pm Open panel discussion with the audience  
8:00-8:30 pm Socializing and wind-down

Speakers and panelists:

**\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\- Preston Estep, Ph.D. --------**

**Talk title: "Why we might need advanced AI to save us from doomers, rather than the other way around."**  
Preston Estep III is the Founder and Chief Scientist of the [Mind First Foundation](https://mindfirst.foundation/) and Rapid Deployment Vaccine Collaborative (RaDVaC), and co-founder and Chief Safety Officer of Ruya AI. Since the beginning of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in 2020 he has focused exclusively on AI and AI safety, and decentralized pathogen countermeasures. He began writing and speaking about AI safety in the early 2000s, and gave his first public talk on AI safety at the 2008 Singularity Summit in San Jose, CA (an annual event organized by the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence). Dr. Estep graduated from Cornell University and received his Ph.D. in Genetics at Harvard University in the laboratory of pioneering scientist George Church. [Read his review of the book here](https://s-rsa.com/index.php/agi/article/view/16251). 

**\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\- Brian M. Delaney -------------**  
**Talk title: “If Nobody Builds It, Everyone Dies”**  
Brian M. Delaney is Chief Philosophy Officer at the Mind First Foundation and Clinical Trials Liaison at RaDVaC. He has founded and run several nonprofit and not-for-profit research organizations focused on health and longevity, with a particular emphasis on mental and neurological health. He did AI research long ago with Eugene Charniak at Brown University and recently has been thinking and writing extensively about the co-evolution of AI and humanity.

**\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\- Kris Carlson ---------------**  
**Talk title: "AGI Timelines and Implications for Existential Risk"**  
Kris Carlson is Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the journal [*SuperIntelligence - Robotics - Safety & Alignment*](https://s-rsa.com). He edits the journal alongside Roman Yampolskiy, Steve Omohundro, and Allison Duettmann. He has been working full-time on AI existential safety since 2023. Previously he did research on neurostimulation at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School.

Your host and panel discussion moderator for the evening is **Dan Elton**. He writes about AI, scitech progress, metascience, and other topics on his Substack, [*More is Different*](https://moreisdifferent.blog/)*.* He is founder of the [Metascience Observatory](https://metascienceobservatory.org/) and a Senior Scientist at Mind First Foundation.

This event is sponsored by [The Mind First Foundation](https://mindfirst.foundation/) and run in conjunction with AICamp, The Boston Astral Codex Ten Meetup, and The Boston Futurology & Transhumanism Meetup.