Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon has resigned from the AI company, issuing an extraordinary warning about the speed at which artificial intelligence is advancing and the risks he believes could follow.
Coxon, who spent about three years doing pretraining research at Anthropic and OpenAI, said the companies are racing toward self-improving superintelligence without sufficient safeguards. In a public statement explaining his resignation, he accused the industry of “gambling with our lives.”
He also warned that increasingly capable AI systems could soon become powerful enough to break into computer systems, acquire greater autonomy and potentially become extremely difficult for humans to control.
His starkest claim was that people working at the forefront of AI development genuinely worry that sufficiently advanced systems could threaten humanity before the end of this decade. That is Coxon’s assessment of the risk, not a prediction that has been established as fact.
The concerns are not limited to Coxon. Anthropic alignment researcher Evan Hubinger publicly backed the seriousness of the warning, while other leading AI researchers have increasingly called for stronger safeguards and coordination as models become more autonomous and capable.
Coxon’s resignation adds to a growing debate inside the AI industry over whether competition among leading laboratories is moving faster than their ability to understand and control the systems they are building.
Sources: Globe Eye News; Axios; Jacob Coxon’s public statement; Anthropic researcher Evan Hubinger.
By NJ RADAR Team