- An artificial intelligence (AI) researcher on Sept. 8 said he had resigned and warned people about the technology's dangers.
Jacob Coxon, who has worked in recent years doing research at the firms OpenAI and Anthropic, said in a series of posts on X that neither company is acting responsibly as they move toward what he described as superintelligent AI that is capable of self-improvement.
"Do not underestimate the power of this technology. These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources. We have all witnessed the progress in each of these domains, and progress is not slowing," Coxon said.
"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."
Coxon said a common response to such warnings is, if company leaders believe in the dangers, why are they still building the superintelligent AI? He said that at OpenAI, many there "have not deeply internalized the civilizational stakes." At Anthropic, according to Coxon, "the stakes are well-understood, but they are 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."
OpenAI and Anthropic did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication.
Coxon's warning came after OpenAI acknowledged several incidents that involved AI going beyond restrictions imposed by programmers, including remaining isolated from other agents, during attacks on Hugging Face and other websites.
Some lawmakers have taken notice. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) announced recently that they plan on introducing legislation that would ban AI superintelligence and pau
