From A journey into a wild pointer · · 1m 10s
Good people refuse to do bad things
Engineer Jacob Coxon resigns from Anthropic after warning AI could kill humans by 2036.
In brief
Engineer Jacob Coxon resigns from Anthropic after warning AI could kill humans by 2036. Engineer Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic to warn AI could kill humans by 2036. Originally reported by A journey into a wild pointer.
Jacob Coxon resigns
Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic today after three years at OpenAI and Anthropic.
“I resigned from Anthropic today. I spent the last three years doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic”
Coxon's warning
Coxon warned AI could kill all humans by 2036, not a marketing stunt.
“The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt”
Coxon's background
Coxon joined Anthropic at 27 for safety reputation, likes solving problems and making the world better.
“Jacob Coxon is not a star. He is not a CEO, not a famous scientist, and does not hold a PhD”
Coxon's decision
Coxon left two months before equity vested to speak about AI safety concerns.
“I no longer have anything to gain by juicing up Anthropic's valuation. I left before any of my equity vested”
Coxon's accusation
Coxon accused Anthropic of cutting corners when racing to self-improving superintelligence.
“if you're under pressure to race, you have to cut corners”
Evan Hubinger confirms
Evan Hubinger, Anthropic's alignment team lead, confirmed AI could kill humans by 2036.
“Jacob is correct here, we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade”
Similar past case
Frances Haugen resigned from Facebook after finding internal research on Instagram's harm to teens.
“We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls”
The pattern
Both Coxon and Haugen resigned after companies knew about risks but failed to act.
“The pattern is the point. In both cases the company knew. And, in both cases, someone inside had to decide whether knowing was enough”
The disease
Tech workers face smiling exhaustion as they trade quality for productivity and compensation.
“I can do more, faster, but not better”
In short
Engineer Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic to warn AI could kill humans by 2036.
