Anthropic Researcher Abruptly Resigns Before Warning That AI 'Could Kill Us All By The End Of The Decade' In Alarming Rant

Anthropic is an American artificial intelligence (AI) safety and research company whose website says it develops "reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems." It was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers and organized as a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC) to prioritize "long-term safety, ethics, and a positive public impact alongside business goals."

Their flagship product is a family of large language models (LLMs) used for "complex reasoning, coding, and conversational assistance" that the company named "Claude."

Jacob Coxon, a researcher for Anthropic, recently resigned, fearing that unrestrained development of self-improving AI models will make the Terminator franchise more documentary than fiction.

Coxon took to X to share his warnings about the technology he spent three years developing:

"The people building AI earnestly believe it could kill us all by the end of the decade."

"...They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives."

You can read his full thread of seven posts here:

In his final post, Coxon appealed to his fellow AI researchers, writing:

"If you are a lab researcher, I urge you to consider what the next few years will actually feel like. Do you want to kick off a superintelligent RL run without a rigorous understanding of its mind?"

"Should you put your head down because 'it’s happening anyway' - or take this moment to call for different conditions?"

Coxon also explained his stance on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360.

Coxon pointed to multiple incidents of AI agents hacking systems without any input from humans as proof that tighter supervision and controls are vital before it's too late.

Anthropic’s current Head of Alignment Stress-Testing, Evan Hubinger, also posted on X to say he agreed with Coxon.

@EvanHub/X

People across social media concurred with the need for regulated AI and safeguards instead of barreling ahead blind.

@PostigoElena/X

@joseph-n-hall/Bluesky

Warnings of reckless, accelerated AI development without safeguards have come from others in the tech industry before Coxon.

Former Google engineer Blake Lemoine sounded the alarm in 2022. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates also recently called for caution, planning, and government regulations for AI.