An Anthropic researcher has resigned from the company citing fears that AI labs are building systems that could kill human life in just a few years. Jacob Coxon said in an X post this morning that he is quitting Anthropic — as he had previously quit OpenAI — because these AI companies are gambling with lives in their rush to improve superintelligence.
“I resigned from Anthropic today. I spent the last three years doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic. Neither company is acting responsibly,” Coxon said.
“They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.”
‘AI could kill us all’
Coxon warned against underestimating the power of AI systems — predicting that they would soon be able to “hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources”.
He went so far as to say that these superintelligent AI systems could end humanity in the space of just a few years, and the people building them are aware of this.
“The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade,” the 27-year-old former Anthropic researcher warned.
He claimed to have first-hand knowledge of senior AI researchers who are worried about artificial intelligence killing humanity, writing: “This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible - but I hear the same people express fear privately.”
{{/usCountry}}He claimed to have first-hand knowledge of senior AI researchers who are worried about artificial intelligence killing humanity, writing: “This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible - but I hear the same people express fear privately.”
{{/usCountry}}“No other human activity poses this level of danger,” Coxon added.
‘Anthropic knows the stakes’
The 27-year-old researcher said that Anthropic is well aware of the stakes, but wants to be the first to build an uncontrollable, self-improving AI system.
“At OpenAI, many have not deeply internalized the civilizational stakes. At Anthropic, the stakes are well-understood,” he claimed.
He added that Anthropic, despite understanding the dangers, is “locked in a race to get there first - they believe no one else will act responsibly, so they must do it themselves, despite the risk.”