Anthropic researcher quits, warns AI race is “gambling with our lives”
What's the deal? AnthropicDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → researcher Jacob CoxonDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →resigned this morning, citing fears that AI labs are racing to build systems that could threaten human life within years. He announced the move in an X post, saying he had also previously quit OpenAI.
Why now? Coxon, 27, spent three years doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic. "Neither company is acting responsibly," he wrote. "They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives."
The warning: Coxon said advanced AI systems could soon "hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources." He went further, claiming they could end humanity within a few years.
"The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade," he wrote. "No other human activity poses this level of danger."
Not a stunt: Coxon said he had first-hand knowledge of senior researchers who share those fears privately. "This is not a marketing stunt," he wrote, adding that many executives "couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible — but I hear the same people express fear privately."
What separates the two labs? Coxon drew a distinction between his former employers. "At OpenAI, many have not deeply internalized the civilizational stakes. At Anthropic, the stakes are well-understood," he claimed.
Yet understanding the risk has not slowed the pace, he said. Anthropic is "locked in a race to get there first — they believe no one else will act responsibly, so they must do it themselves, despite the risk."
The signal: Public departures from frontier labs over safety concerns are becoming a recurring feature of the AI race, with insiders questioning whether commercial competition can coexist with caution. Coxon's exit puts a name and a timeline to fears that companies often keep behind closed doors.
Read more: The Wall Street Journal
Image credit: brewbooks
