Hundreds of artificial intelligence experts, as well as tech executives, scholars and others, are warning that AI poses an existential threat. The ominous one-line statement reads, “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.” Among the signatories is Geoffrey Hinton, who has been dubbed “the godfather” of AI. He recently quit Google so he could warn of the dangers of the technology he helped build.

Experts say the greatest dangers may come with the development of “artificial general intelligence,” or AGI, in which machines would have cognitive abilities akin or superior to human beings, and that it could happen sooner than previously thought. Many have called for a pause on introducing new AI technology until strong government regulations are put into place.