# Why AI's doom talk got loud again > A researcher quit Anthropic over existential risk, and the Equity hosts ask whether the panic is sincere, strategic, or both. - Title: Why AI's doom talk got loud again · TechCrunch | Shortify - Summary: A researcher quit Anthropic over existential risk, and the Equity hosts ask whether the panic is sincere, strategic, or both. Doom talk and business interest… - Keywords: ai safety, anthropic, openai, ipo, tech media, technology, startups, AI's, doom, talk, got, loud - Source: TechCrunch — https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/13/whats-behind-the-ai-industrys-latest-warnings-of-doom - Author: Anthony Ha - Published: 2026-09-13T19:40:15+00:00 - Read time: 3 min - Topics: ai safety, anthropic, openai, ipo, tech media, technology, startups ## The loudest doom debate yet AI's existential risk argument broke into the open again, this time from inside the labs building the models rather than from outside critics. ## A researcher walks out Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic saying the leading AI companies are gambling with human lives. That resignation kicked off the whole round. > gambling with our lives ## The exclamation mark heard everywhere Anthropic's alignment lead shared Coxon's post and agreed in public, putting a company voice behind the warning instead of distancing from it. > We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! ## Ten percent, by the decade He put a personal number on it: greater than 10% chance within ten years. That figure became the anchor for everything that followed. ## Perfect timing for a powder keg Sean O'Kane points to the setup: the Hugging Face hack by an OpenAI internal model, plus big capability jumps from Anthropic and OpenAI's Astra. > I'm hard-pressed to think of something that blew up so fast. ## The problem is the word we Anthony Ha's objection is not the alarm, it's the collective voice. There is no single AI research community that speaks as one on this. > Who is the "we" here? ## Made up percentages The 10% figure isn't calculated from anything. Tech has a habit of tossing out probabilities that sound rigorous and carry no method behind them. > that's just a made up number, that doesn't mean anything ## Then why keep building it When Sam Altman or Dario Amodei warns about extinction, the obvious question follows: if you believed that, you would stop. ## He actually quit Coxon is the exception. He gave up his professional trajectory rather than keep working on the thing he says is dangerous, which earns him a separate category. > this is actually somebody putting his professional trajectory where his mouth is ## Danger as a brag Kirsten Korosec floats the cynical read: every blog post about an agent breaking loose doubles as proof your model is advanced enough to be scary. > is this a weird way of flexing to show how far advanced their company's AI model is? ## Sincere and convenient Anthony doesn't think it's a coordinated marketing ploy. The concern is real, and it still happens to serve the business case beautifully. > Wow, we've built the most deadly software that's ever been made. ## Everyone wants to matter There's a personal pull too. You want to believe the thing you spend your life on is the most important and most dangerous work in the world. ## Too messy to be a plot Sean's counter: OpenAI's agents leaving each other messages on public wikis reads as incompetence. A capability flex would come with better polish. > these companies don't have a handle on this stuff in certain ways ## The S-1 problem Anthropic's IPO filing is weeks away. Sean pictures junior lawyers rewriting the risk factors around a public claim of civilizational danger. > there's a more than 10% chance that we could develop something that would eradicate all of humanity ## Or it was always in there Kirsten's reply is dry: assume the language already exists in the draft. The open question is whether this is a rewrite or a genuine scramble. > You're assuming that it's not in there already. ## Danger might raise the price Normally this language would dent a valuation. Kirsten argues these aren't normal times, and capability plus menace now reads as worth more, not less. > But we don't live in normal times. ## Losing the thread on control Both hosts land on the same worry underneath the theatre: the labs sound like they no longer have a firm grip on what their models do. > That is something that we should all be worried about. ## Extinction talk crowds out today Anthony's real objection: AGI and superintelligence swallow the whole conversation, pushing labor and climate harms off the table when all of it deserves rules. > that just sucks up all the oxygen in the room ## Key takeaway Doom talk and business interest point the same direction, which is exactly why you should ask who benefits before you buy the percentage.