The Bodley Head signs 'urgent AI call to action' If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies
The Bodley Head has acquired an "urgent call to action" by two researchers in the field of AI, entitled If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: The Case Against Superintelligent AI.
Will Hammond, deputy publishing director, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Max Brockman at Brockman, Inc. The book will be published simultaneously in the US by Hachette Book Group on 18th September 2025.
In the book, researchers Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares "break down the extreme dangers associated with artificial superintelligence and why its creation would result in the destruction of humankind".
The description continues: "Superintelligent AI is the greatest threat to our existence that we have ever faced. The scramble to create superhuman AI has put us on the path to extinction, but it’s not too late to change course. Yudkowsky and Soares call for an immediate halt to its development.
"The technology may be complex, but the facts are simple: companies and countries are in a race to build machines that will be smarter than any person, and the world is devastatingly unprepared for what will come next.
"In this urgent book, Yudkowsky and Soares explore the theory and the evidence, present one possible extinction scenario and explain what it would take for humanity to survive."
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Yudkowsky is one of the founding researchers of the field of AI alignment, which is concerned with understanding how smarter-than-human intelligences think, behave and pursue their goals. He is co-founder of the non-profit Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) and appeared on Time magazine’s 2023 list of the 100 Most Influential People in AI.
Soares is the president of MIRI. He has been working in the field for over a decade, after previous experience at Microsoft and Google. He is also the author of a large body of technical and semi-technical writing on AI alignment, including foundational work on value learning, decision theory and power-seeking incentives in smarter-than-human AIs.
Yudkowsky said: "If further escalation of AI capabilities is shut down worldwide by an international treaty, the book is a success. If we’re all dead, it failed regardless of sales numbers. But sales probably help."
Soares said: "We spent many years trying to ensure that artificial superintelligence will go well. It’s not looking good, and the world is running out of time. We wrote this book out of desperation, in hopes of sparking a global conversation about this looming danger, and in the hope that humanity can change course and avert extinction."
Juliet Brooke, acting deputy publishing director of The Bodley Head, added: "If Anyone Builds it, Everyone Dies is a vitally important book about one of the key existential issues of our age. The eloquence, clarity and wit with which Eliezer and Nate detail the risks make for compelling and essential reading."
