{"slug": "anthropic-and-openai-employees-speak-out-about-humanitys-extinction-as-debate", "title": "Anthropic and OpenAI employees speak out about humanity’s extinction as debate reaches fever pitch", "summary": "Former Anthropic AI researcher Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic on Tuesday after three years of pre-training research, writing on X that Anthropic and OpenAI are \"racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.\" Anthropic alignment science lead Evan Hubinger reposted Coxon's statement and said he personally puts the chance AI kills all humans at more than 10% within the next decade, while OpenAI safety oversight team member Marcus Williams estimated a 70% risk of human extinction in the next three years absent regulation or a coordinated slowdown between labs. Nobel Prize-winning computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton told the BBC it was \"not unreasonable\" to estimate a 10% chance AI could wipe out humanity within a decade.", "body_md": "[Become an Insider](/subscription)and start reading now. Have an account? .\n\nThe AI industry's race to build ever more powerful systems is reviving some grim questions, especially for those who are [helping build AI](https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-safety-team-ai-self-improvement-challenge-job-2026-5).\n\n[Employees at Anthropic](https://www.businessinsider.com/anthropic-says-claude-models-went-rogue-hacked-3-companies-testing-2026-7) and OpenAI are speaking out on the potential dangers AI poses to humanity after an [Anthropic researcher quit](https://www.businessinsider.com/anthropic-researcher-quits-over-ai-safety-concerns-2026-9) on Wednesday and said that leading AI companies are \"gambling with our lives.\"\n\nSoon after, [Geoffrey Hinton](https://www.businessinsider.com/geoffrey-hinton-godfather-of-ai-human-extinction-odds-2026-9), the Nobel Prize-winning computer scientist often called the \"[Godfather of AI](https://www.businessinsider.com/godfather-ai-warns-its-very-scary-when-ai-develops-goals-2026-8),\" told the BBC it was \"not unreasonable\" to estimate a 10% chance that AI could wipe out humanity within a decade.\n\nSuch warnings are not rare. Some of the executives building the technology, including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, publicly assigned their own \"p(doom)\" numbers, shorthand for the probability that AI causes a catastrophe on the scale of [civilizational collapse](https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-apocalypse-anthropic-open-ai-how-it-would-happen-experts-2026-9).\n\nHere is what Anthropic and [OpenAI employees](https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-chief-scientist-ai-risks-slowdown-rogue-agents-consequences-safety-2026-9) are saying about the potential for an [AI catastrophe](https://www.businessinsider.com/how-ai-could-kill-humanity-chatbot-responses-2026-9), and if the industry is speeding toward a risky future.\n\n## Jacob Coxon, former Anthropic AI researcher\n\n[Jacob Coxon](https://x.com/hilbertspaess/status/2097476196791709843), the former Anthropic AI researcher who sparked the renewed debate over AI safety, resigned from Anthropic on Tuesday after three years of conducting pre-training research.\n\n\"Neither company is acting responsibly,\" Coxon wrote on X in the announcement for his resignation. \"They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.\"\n\nCoxon, who previously worked on GPT-4o at OpenAI, said AI leaders privately fear the technology could be catastrophic.\n\n\"The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade,\" Coxon added. \"At Anthropic, 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.\"\n\n## Evan Hubinger, alignment science lead at Anthropic\n\n[Evan Hubinger](https://x.com/EvanHub/status/2097497037956891126), an alignment science lead at Anthropic, reposted Coxon's post on X and said he is most worried about \"superintelligence arising from recursive self-improvement.\"\n\n\"Jacob is correct here—we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade,\" said Hubinger on Tuesday.\n\n\"I believe Anthropic is trying its best, but we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not clearly on track to,\" Hubinger added.\n\n## Marcus Williams, member of technical staff on OpenAI's safety oversight team\n\n[Marcus Williams](https://x.com/Marcus_J_W/status/2098078076299366684), a member of OpenAI's safety oversight team, issued a stark warning in a post on X on Thursday.\n\n\"Unless there is AI regulation or a coordinated slowdown between labs, human extinction in the next few years seems very likely,\" said Williams.\n\nWhen a commenter asked Williams to put the risk in numbers, he said the risk is \"70% in the next 3 years if there isn't regulation/slowdown,\" and added that \"regulation/slowdown is very possible.\"\n\n## Anna Wang, member of technical staff on AGI safety and alignment at Anthropic\n\n[Anna Wang](https://x.com/a_nnawang/status/2097720574500102615), who works on AGI safety and alignment at Anthropic, said she stays because she believes she can better reduce risks from the inside, but \"respect and endorse\" people like Coxon who \"think that it's better to do so from the outside.\"\n\n\"This is a common sentiment amongst my peers,\" Wang wrote in a post on X on Wednesday. \"There is not yet a viable scientific plan to solve risks from recursively self-improving AI. Please look up!\"\n\n## Paul Christiano, AI safety researcher at OpenAI\n\n[Paul Christiano](https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-safety-hire-people-die-lose-control-ai-paul-christiano-2026-9), OpenAI's new safety hire, addressed the issue of guardrails for AI in a lengthy statement about his role on Wednesday.\n\n\"If we build superintelligence without more robust alignment I expect we will permanently lose control of it. If that happens then most people could die,\" Christiano said after OpenAI announced he was joining its board and Safety and Security Committee.\n\n\"I now believe there is a meaningful risk that rapid acceleration in AI capabilities leads to catastrophic and irreversible loss of control in the very near term,\" Christiano added. \"I do not think that the AI industry in general, including OpenAI, is currently on track to reduce this risk to an acceptable level.\"\n\n## Chris Hayduk, life sciences researcher at OpenAI\n\n[Chris Hayduk](https://x.com/ChrisHayduk/status/2098017706494566761), a life sciences researcher at OpenAI, reposted Coxon's post but is looking at the brighter side.\n\n\"I work at OpenAI and personally think AI has been and will continue to be an extremely beneficial technology to humanity,\" Hayduk wrote on X on Thursday.\n\n\"The conversation should be around how many billions of lives it will save,\" Hayduk added.\n\n## Tomek Korbak, AI safety researcher at OpenAI\n\n[Tomek Korbak](https://x.com/tomekkorbak/status/2097939847776534960), an AI safety researcher at OpenAI who previously worked with Coxon, wrote in a post on X that Coxon remains a \"very thoughtful researcher.\"\n\n\"Neither anthropic nor openai are on track to solve alignment to a degree sufficient for shipping superintelligence and we need to slow down,\" Korbak said on Thursday.\n\n## Jen Leike, member of technical staff at Anthropic\n\n[Jen Leike](https://x.com/janleike/status/2098102085728501863), an AI researcher at Anthropic, said in a post on X on Thursday that the most effective safety measures take time to implement, such as the \"jailbreaking mitigations for Opus 4\" that took over a year to develop.\n\n\"Now is a good time to build institutional mechanisms to pace the frontier of AI development,\" Leike said.\n\n\"The industry is locked into an all-out scaling race to build superintelligence as quickly as possible, and we may need to give everyone more time for safety and alignment mitigations,\" Leike added.\n\n## Julie Steele, member of technical staff on OpenAI's preparedness team\n\n[Julie Steele](https://x.com/eeeeiluj/status/2097838968813527378), who works on OpenAI's preparedness team, reposted Coxon's post on X.\n\n\"I work at OpenAI,\" said Steele on Wednesday on X. \"In my personal capacity, I also think we need to slow down.\"\n\n## Samuel Marks, technical staff at Anthropic\n\n[Samuel Marks](https://x.com/saprmarks/status/2097570226804011302), a technical staff member at Anthropic, wrote about Coxon's warning in an X post on Wednesday. He said he was writing in a personal capacity, not on behalf of Anthropic.\n\nHe said that AI developers believe their technology could cause human extinction, and \"the more senior the employee, the more concerned they are.\"\n\nAI models frequently \"severely misbehave,\" he said, and while developers have methods to \"nudge\" them toward better behavior, they cannot be robustly aligned.\n\n\"I work on safety research at Anthropic because I hope my work will reduce the chance of these extinction-level bad outcomes,\" Marks wrote.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/anthropic-and-openai-employees-speak-out-about-humanitys-extinction-as-debate", "canonical_source": "https://www.businessinsider.com/anthropic-openai-employees-speak-out-ai-safety-2026-9", "published_at": "2026-09-11 05:45:14+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-09-11 05:56:16.656452+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-safety", "artificial-intelligence", "ai-policy", "ai-ethics"], "entities": ["Anthropic", "OpenAI", "Jacob Coxon", "Evan Hubinger", "Marcus Williams", "Geoffrey Hinton", "Dario Amodei", "BBC"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/anthropic-and-openai-employees-speak-out-about-humanitys-extinction-as-debate", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/anthropic-and-openai-employees-speak-out-about-humanitys-extinction-as-debate.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/anthropic-and-openai-employees-speak-out-about-humanitys-extinction-as-debate.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/anthropic-and-openai-employees-speak-out-about-humanitys-extinction-as-debate.jsonld"}}