The AI Researcher Who Just Quit Anthropic Says It’s ‘Crunch Time for Humanity’
A former Anthropic researcher has publicly warned that the industry is reaching a critical 'crunch time' regarding AI safety. The report highlights growing internal concerns among AI developers about the potential for catastrophic outcomes from advanced models.
Why it matters
It underscores the intensifying debate within top AI labs regarding the existential risks posed by rapid development and the pressure to balance safety with commercial growth.
“The consensus is that the next year or two is crunch time for humanity,” Coxon, who worked on the pretraining stage of AI development, said in an interview with WIRED. “These are actually just literal quotes from my colleagues at Anthropic. They'll say things like ‘endgame’ or ‘crunch time,’” he says. “From their perspective, this is when Anthropic and its competitors decide the fate of humanity.”
It’s far from the first time someone has sounded the alarm about AI, but it comes at a delicate moment. Silicon Valley is scrambling to reckon with the safety and security concerns of advanced AI models. OpenAI has rushed to respond to a security incident in which its agents hacked the platform Hugging Face. Meanwhile, Anthropic is trying to assure investors it has these concerns under control as it reportedly prepares to file for what could be the largest IPO ever.
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