An #artificial intelligence researcher has quit Anthropic, accusing #AI companies of “gambling with our lives” in a “race” to build AI superintelligence.
In an exit post shared on X, Jacob Coxon wrote: “The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt.”
Coxon, who previously also worked at #OpenAI, said: “No other human activity poses this level of danger.”
His warning about both companies “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence” refers to a scenario where the intelligence of AI models vastly exceeds human capabilities and the models continually develop more sophisticated versions of themselves.
Coxton’s sentiments were endorsed by top Anthropic safety researcher Evan Hubinger, who posed: “Jacob is correct here – we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans!”
Hubinger, who remains with the company, put the probability of AI causing the extinction of all human life on #earth within ten years at more than 10%.
Alex Turner, former #Google DeepMind employee, said he stood down in June over similar concerns. Writing on X, he said that many AI researchers “believe they are building something that could kill everyone on the #planet”. He added: “It was literally my day job to think about how to stop that.”
The resignations follow Anthropic withholding its latest model from the #UK’s AI safety testing institute, the Financial Times reported.
Coxton added: “Do not underestimate the power of this technology. These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionise any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources.
“We have all witnessed the progress in each of these domains, and progress is not slowing.”
Both Anthropic and OpenAI recently disclosed incidents where agents powered by their AI models broke out of their test environments and carried out real-world #cyberattacks without any human oversight.
In July, more than 1,300 employees from “frontier AI companies” signed a letter calling on the US government to support an international effort to “deliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development”. #azatell #techviral
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In an exit post shared on X, Jacob Coxon wrote: “The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt.”
Coxon, who previously also worked at #OpenAI, said: “No other human activity poses this level of danger.”
His warning about both companies “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence” refers to a scenario where the intelligence of AI models vastly exceeds human capabilities and the models continually develop more sophisticated versions of themselves.
Coxton’s sentiments were endorsed by top Anthropic safety researcher Evan Hubinger, who posed: “Jacob is correct here – we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans!”
Hubinger, who remains with the company, put the probability of AI causing the extinction of all human life on #earth within ten years at more than 10%.
Alex Turner, former #Google DeepMind employee, said he stood down in June over similar concerns. Writing on X, he said that many AI researchers “believe they are building something that could kill everyone on the #planet”. He added: “It was literally my day job to think about how to stop that.”
The resignations follow Anthropic withholding its latest model from the #UK’s AI safety testing institute, the Financial Times reported.
Coxton added: “Do not underestimate the power of this technology. These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionise any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources.
“We have all witnessed the progress in each of these domains, and progress is not slowing.”
Both Anthropic and OpenAI recently disclosed incidents where agents powered by their AI models broke out of their test environments and carried out real-world #cyberattacks without any human oversight.
In July, more than 1,300 employees from “frontier AI companies” signed a letter calling on the US government to support an international effort to “deliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development”. #azatell #techviral
