Former Anthropic researcher says AI staff 'genuinely frightened' for humanity's future

"There is a possibility of human extinction," former Anthropic employee says about AI

By Brandon Livesay and Mitchell Labiak, Business Reporter

Updated 13 minutes ago

An artificial intelligence researcher who quit AI firm Anthropic has said people working on the technology were "genuinely frightened" about the speed of its advancements and what it could mean for humanity.

"I believe that if we don't slow down at the current rate of progress, there is a strong chance that we could all die in the immediate future," he said.

Jacob Coxon was speaking to the BBC after his resignation post on the dangers of AI went viral, amid growing safety concerns about the industry.

The 27-year-old's former boss, Anthropic head Dario Amodei, recently called for AI development to slow down — though some have questioned the motivations behind this.

The bosses of two rival AI firms, Sam Altman of OpenAI and Elon Musk of xAI, have both said they agree with Amodei's proposal for industry-wide deceleration and regulation, as well as independent monitoring of AI model development.

Amodei wrote in an essay on Saturday that developing the technology was not in question, but the risks associated with it were "serious," and that companies and governments must be given time to address them.

Coxon — who worked at OpenAI before joining Anthropic — welcomed the suggestion of a slowdown but said it would need to be co-ordinated with China to avoid "a race at an international scale."

"The people who work at these companies are completely serious when they ask for regulation because they find themselves trapped in a race. And they're scared of the outcomes of that race," he told Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.

Key Risks and Timelines

The hardest question to answer, according to Coxon, was what an AI apocalypse would look like.

One of the risks outlined in Amodei's comments was of a swarm of bots acting like a supercomputer that could take over the internet. Coxon said this scenario could be realistic in six months to a year.

Coxon said his peers feared the danger could even arrive in the next two years. He said staff at AI firms were "planning what to do with their lives and thinking about the impacts of their work," while some were "considering buying land somewhere because they're so scared of the instability as a result of rapid AI progress."

"They all keep this in their head on a daily basis while working on the technology," he added.

Anthropic's Response

In response to Coxon's departure, an Anthropic spokesperson told BBC News: "We have always been transparent that AI will bring both enormous benefits and unprecedented risks.

"To address these risks, we continue to build models with some of the strongest safeguards in the industry."

The firm has been a pioneer in studying how AI models work, the spokesperson added. It was the first to publish a framework for mitigating the risks posed by their development — and it also "aggressively" tests its models and publishes the findings to aid scrutiny and prevent incidents of "AI misalignment."

"This work is also why we believe the world would benefit from the industry adopting a lawful, verifiable way to work together to pace how we release powerful models," they said.

Broader Industry Concerns

Many others in the industry have also voiced their concerns since Coxon's social media post, including Anthropic scientist Evan Hubinger.

"We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade," Hubinger said.

Computer scientist and Nobel Prize winner Geoffrey Hinton, known as the "Godfather of AI," told the BBC on Friday that a 10% chance of AI killing all humans was "not unreasonable."

Meanwhile, Marc Warner, chief executive of AI safety firm Faculty, told the BBC that it was "extremely hard to place a probability" on AI killing all humans.

"But it's important to recognise that these people are very sincere in what they're saying," he added, noting that the risks surrounding AI have been raised by the heads of several AI firms for years.

A Note of Optimism

Despite his warnings, Coxon did express some optimism about the future of AI, telling the BBC that the people researching the technology "genuinely want to see the upside" of things like "solving diseases and improving everyone's lives."

Former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who is a paid adviser to Anthropic, [wrote...]