AI researcher quits Anthropic, says frontier AI labs “gambling with our lives”
A former AI researcher at Anthropic has resigned, publicly criticizing the company and OpenAI for prioritizing rapid development over safety. The researcher and other internal experts expressed concerns that current trajectories in superintelligence development pose existential risks to humanity.
Why it matters
This highlights the growing internal dissent within top-tier AI labs regarding the ethical and safety implications of the current 'arms race' toward AGI.
An AI researcher at Anthropic quit the AI lab, criticising the approach of both Anthropic and OpenAI towards safety. He outlined the potential risks of AI systems that are progressing so quickly that they could pose dangers to humans worldwide.
Jacob Coxon posted that he carried out pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic, and that neither company was acting “responsibly” while “gambling with our lives” in an effort to reach self-improving superintelligence.
Mr. Coxon’s resignation was also confirmed by The Wall Street Journal.
“The 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 - but I hear the same people express fear privately. No other human activity poses this level of danger,” posted Mr. Coxon on September 9.
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