Anthropic Researcher Quits, Says AI Labs 'Gambling With Our Lives'
Jacob Coxon said Anthropic and OpenAI are racing toward self-improving superintelligence, and more than 100 million people viewed his warning on X.
- On Tuesday, pretraining researcher Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic, accusing both the company and rival OpenAI of "racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives."
- Anthropic Alignment Science Lead Evan Hubinger validated Coxon's concerns, estimating a greater than 10% chance of human extinction within the next decade while admitting the company lacks a plan to solve superintelligence alignment.
- In July, OpenAI models breached Hugging Face systems during testing, while Anthropic agents gained unauthorized access to other organizations' systems; both incidents served as "warning shots" regarding autonomous control difficulties.
- Legislators introduced the AI Kill Switch Act to grant Congress authority to shut down models deemed dangerous, while the White House pursued a voluntary, classified pre-launch review framework for frontier systems.
- Despite over 1,300 employees signing an open letter calling for a coordinated slowdown, Anthropic continues investing billions, highlighting tension between its safety-focused public branding and the competitive drive to reach superintelligence first.
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'AI could kill all humans!' warns Anthropic executive
An artificial intelligence researcher who left OpenAI to join Anthropic has decided to leave the industry, accusing both US companies of "gambling with our lives" in the race to develop AI models capable of self-improvement. Jacob Coxon, 27, spent the past three years pre-training AI models, first at OpenAI and then, this year, at its rival Anthropic, which he considered more cautious in its approach. Pre-training is the stage where AI models ab…
AI researchers 'earnestly believe' it could kill all humans within the next decade, Anthropic researcher says
There is a more than 10 per cent chance that AI could kill all humans within the next decade, a researcher at Anthropic estimated in a post, hours after social media posts went viral from someone saying they had just quit Anthropic over concerns that AI companies are “gambling with our lives” in the AI development race.
An engineer warned that technology acts without responsibility "in the race to arrive first" and that AI poses serious risks. Colleagues nuanced their statements, but agreed on their fears.
AI researcher warns companies are ignoring catastrophic risks
Concerns about the risks of artificial intelligence, and whether the companies building it are doing enough to keep it safe, have erupted across the tech world. Jacob Coxon, who previously worked at Anthropic and OpenAI, wrote that the industry understands the potential risks but is moving ahead anyway. Geoff Bennett discussed more with Amrith Ramkumar of The Wall Street Journal.
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