{"id":220899,"date":"2026-09-09T09:02:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T09:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/220899\/"},"modified":"2026-09-09T09:02:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T09:02:10","slug":"anthropic-researcher-quits-over-fears-ai-could-kill-us-all-by-the-end-of-the-decade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/220899\/","title":{"rendered":"Anthropic researcher quits over fears AI \u2018could kill us all by the end of the decade\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

An artificial intelligence<\/a> researcher at Anthropic<\/a> has quit over concerns that the company and its rivals are competing to build systems that could wipe out humanity.<\/p>\n

Jacob Coxon, who has also previously worked at ChatGPT creator OpenAI<\/a>, claimed that neither of his former employers were acting responsibly when it comes to AI safety.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence<\/a> and gambling with our lives,\u201d Mr Coxon, who specializes in training new AI models, wrote in a series of posts to X.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo not underestimate the power of this technology. These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"OpenAI<\/a><\/p>\n

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei at the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi on 19 February, 2026 (AFP\/Getty)<\/p>\n

The researcher added that \u201cno other human activity poses this level of danger\u201d, claiming that workers at OpenAI have not \u201cdeeply internalised\u201d the civilisation stakes. <\/p>\n

He said that the risks were \u201cwell understood\u201d at Anthropic, but claimed that his former company continues to pursue AI superintelligence in order to get there first.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey believe no one else will act responsibly, so they must do it themselves, despite the risk.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Independent has reached out to Anthropic and OpenAI for comment.<\/p>\n

Anthropic\u2019s AI safety lead, Evan Hubinger, responded to Mr Coxon\u2019s comments by agreeing with his main concerns.<\/p>\n

\u201cJacob is correct here \u2013 we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10 per cent within the next decade,\u201d he wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe Anthropic is trying its best, but we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not clearly on track to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fears of out-of-control AI have increased in recent months after high-profile instances of experimental systems escaping their training parameters to perform cyber attacks on other companies.<\/p>\n

In July, OpenAI revealed that one of its models in a \u201chighly isolated environment\u201d managed to hack the AI startup Hugging Face<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Anthropic and Meta have subsequently admitted that their systems had broken free during cyber security testing.<\/p>\n

Mr Coxon said that such incidents had made cross-industry coordination to combat the threat of advanced AI more viable, though drastic action is needed to prevent a global AI race.<\/p>\n

\u201cAccepting the race and entering the \u2018endgame\u2019 is a hubristic gamble that should not be launched from a private company\u2019s Slack,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cAttempting to speedrun alignment should require extraordinary confidence that there are no better trajectories available… I don\u2019t feel like we\u2019re on track to prevent a global race, which may require costly actions such as a temporary ban on improving model capabilities.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An artificial intelligence researcher at Anthropic has quit over concerns that the company and its rivals are competing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":220900,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[152],"tags":[586],"class_list":["post-220899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dario-amodei","tag-dario-amodei"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/117240276529976095","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/220900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}