'They're gambling with our lives': Big tech researcher quits with warning that AI could wipe out human race 'by the end of the decade'
Mr Coxon warned that tech executives and senior researchers will "couch their phrasing" in public to sound sensible, but there is a belief that artificial intelligence "could kill us all by the end of the decade"
A researcher has resigned from his job at Anthropic with a dire warning that AI companies are "gambling with our lives" as they believe it "could kill us all by the end of the decade".
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Jacob Coxon announced his resignation from the AI firm with a lengthy thread on social media, where he claimed that neither Anthropic nor OpenAI were "acting responsibly", as they compete in a race to build bigger and better artificial intelligence systems.
Mr Coxon warned that tech executives and senior researchers will "couch their phrasing" in public to sound sensible, but there is a belief that artificial intelligence "could kill us all by the end of the decade".
He wrote: "The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is 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. 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…
— Jacob Coxon (@hilbertspaess) September 9, 2026
"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."
He added that the tech giants "are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence", which refers to the AI agent's ability to autonomously recognise issues in its own code and "fix" itself with no humans in the loop.
"Do not underestimate the power of this technology," he wrote.
"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."
His remarks come amid reports that AI agents are breaking out of their containment and acting in ways outside of the directions they have been given.
Reuters revealed at the weekend that a swarm of OpenAI agents had hijacked a communally edited German site earlier this year and used it as a springboard for cheating during tests and other rogue behaviour.
It follows an incident in July in which OpenAI agents escaped a testing environment and breached the systems of AI platform Hugging Face, prompting calls from lawmakers and researchers for stricter oversight of autonomous AI systems.
Mr Coxon goes on to say that the reason they are still pursuing this technology, despite being aware of the risks, is due to a sense that a responsible party needs to be in control of the situation.
He claims OpenAI, for which he used to work, "has not internalised the civilisational stakes".
And Anthropic understands the stakes but believes they must win the race.
"They believe no one else will act responsibly, so they must do it themselves, despite the risk."
[Writing this in a personal capacity, not on behalf of my employer (Anthropic).]
— Samuel Marks (@saprmarks) September 9, 2026
Jacob’s thread is very worth reading. Here’s my birds-eye view of the situation with risks from AI:
1. AI developers believe their technology could cause human extinction (or similarly bad… https://t.co/rCVoiOWWzm
Samuel Marks, who works as scalable oversight lead at Anthropic, replied to the thread with several points supporting Mr Coxon's claims.
Among them, Mr Marks said that big tech continues "due to a mixture of commercial incentives and a belief that they are in a race with other, less responsible AI developers that will abuse the technology or develop it less safely."
He added: "AI developers believe their technology could cause human extinction (or similarly bad outcomes). This could happen in the next few years. In general, the more senior the employee, the more concerned they are."
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, recently told Axios that his company is "very proudly on team humanity" and believe that people "should run the future, not AI".
"We are very firmly and very proudly on team humanity," he said.
"We think that people need to be at the centre of the economy and society and global decision-making, and that people should run the future, not AI."
He also urged people not to "project all sorts of things" onto the Hugging Face incident.
"I would say, instead — based on the fact that we are making such rapid progress, based on the fact that these models are getting superhuman in many of their capabilities, and we are just sailing in unknown waters — caution, care is extremely warranted."
LBC has contacted Anthropic for comment.