‘Gambling with our lives’: Anthropic researcher quits, warns against self-improving AI
A researcher from Anthropic has resigned, citing concerns that the industry's race toward self-improving AI poses an existential threat to humanity. The resignation highlights growing internal and external fears regarding AI safety and the potential for systems to bypass human control.
Why it matters
This reflects a deepening divide within the AI industry regarding the pace of development and the adequacy of current safety protocols.
An Anthropic researcher has resigned over fears that unrestrained development of self-improving AI models will end up killing us all.
Jacob Coxon, a researcher who said in a social media post Tuesday evening that he spent the last three years working on pre-training research at both OpenAI and Anthropic, accused the firms of failing to act responsibly. He said the people racing to build this technology “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,” Coxon wrote in a thread on X.
Coxon joins a growing chorus in the industry calling for a slowdown before AI technology learns to improve itself — a milestone many believe would end human control over AI.
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