{"slug": "jacob-coxon-says-his-former-anthropic-colleagues-are-genuinely-frightened-of-ai", "title": "Jacob Coxon Says His Former Anthropic Colleagues Are Genuinely Frightened of AI", "summary": "Jacob Coxon, a 27-year-old researcher who spent three years training AI models at OpenAI and Anthropic, told the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg that his former Anthropic colleagues are \"genuinely frightened\" and privately planning their lives around a rough two-year horizon, warning 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.\" Coxon's interview follows Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's Saturday essay \"We Must Pace the Frontier,\" in which Amodei wrote that recursive self-improvement is \"starting to happen across the industry, including at Anthropic\" and warned that within six to twelve months autonomous AI agents could run a persistent botnet causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage. Anthropic head of AI safety Mrinank Sharma also resigned this month, writing that \"the world is in peril,\" while President Trump told reporters leaving Dallas he has \"no concerns\" about AI causing human extinction and said his real worry is losing the AI race to China.", "body_md": "*Jacob Coxon quit Anthropic and told the BBC his former colleagues are quietly planning their lives around a two-year window before artificial intelligence could spiral out of their control.*\n\nJacob Coxon spent three years training AI models, first at OpenAI, then at Anthropic. Now he wants the public to know what his old colleagues actually believe. In an interview with the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg airing this weekend, the 27-year-old researcher said staff working on frontier AI systems are \"genuinely frightened\" by how fast the technology is moving, and that some are privately arranging their lives around a rough two-year horizon.\n\n\"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,\" Coxon told the BBC. He said colleagues inside Anthropic now talk casually about \"crunchtime\" and \"endgame.\" That's not a metaphor to them.\n\nThis isn't Coxon's first warning. His resignation post on X went viral days earlier, arguing that neither Anthropic nor OpenAI is acting responsibly as both race toward self-improving systems. He put it bluntly: the two companies are \"gambling with our lives.\" He later told the Wall Street Journal that things could be \"out of control\" by the end of next year.\n\n## Amodei says the same thing\n\nThe timing makes this more than one researcher's anxiety. Coxon's BBC interview lands just days after his former boss, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, published an essay on Saturday titled \"We Must Pace the Frontier.\" Amodei's argument was direct: \"We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models.\" He warned that within six to twelve months, a swarm of autonomous AI agents could run a persistent botnet across the internet, causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage. Recursive self-improvement, he wrote, is \"starting to happen across the industry, including at Anthropic.\" That's the boss talking now too.\n\n[Trump says he has no concerns AI could cause human extinction](https://startupfortune.com/trump-says-he-has-no-concerns-ai-could-cause-human-extinction/)\n\nPresident Trump told reporters leaving Dallas he has 'no concerns' about AI causing human extinction, saying his real worry is losing the AI race to China. The comments come days after an Anthropic researcher resigned warning the industry is 'gambling with our lives,' backed by the company's own head of alignment. - [can AI cause human extinction concerns](https://startupfortune.com/trump-says-he-has-no-concerns-ai-could-cause-human-extinction/) - [Trump's stance on artificial intelligence risks](https://startupfortune.com/trump-says-he-has-no-concerns-ai-could-cause-human-extinction/)\n\nThe reaction moved fast. OpenAI's Sam Altman endorsed the idea on X within hours, saying pacing the frontier had already become a major internal discussion at OpenAI. Elon Musk chimed in too, writing simply: \"Dario is right.\"\n\n## Not everyone buys it\n\nNot everyone takes Coxon's warning at face value. According to the Washington Post, he's become a target of the right, with some conservative commentators framing his exit as part of a broader push to justify regulation that would box in smaller AI competitors. The skepticism has a specific target: Anthropic has spent months lobbying Washington to constrain AI models across the board, rivals included, and critics argue that doom narratives conveniently serve that agenda.\n\nDoom sells attention.\n\nIt can also sell a case for rules that entrench whoever's already ahead, which is exactly why some in the industry wave off Coxon's account as strategy dressed up as conscience.\n\nCoxon isn't the only one walking out the door. Mrinank Sharma, Anthropic's head of AI safety, also resigned this month, writing in his own departure letter that \"the world is in peril,\" and citing not just AI but a tangle of overlapping crises.\n\nTwo senior departures from the same lab, in the same stretch of weeks, both pointing at existential risk. That's harder to write off as one disgruntled employee.\n\nWhether Coxon has the timeline right is unknowable. Nobody, including the people building these systems, has a reliable model for exactly when AI crosses into genuinely dangerous territory. But the fact that Amodei, the CEO who employed Coxon, is now publicly arguing for the same slowdown gives the warning a weight that a lone X thread never could. The chief executive and the researcher who just quit his company are both saying slow down. That isn't hype. It's agreement, from two people on opposite sides of a resignation, about the one thing that actually matters.\n\n[Hundreds Banged Pots Outside Sam Altman's G20 AI Summit in Chapel Hill](https://startupfortune.com/hundreds-banged-pots-outside-sam-altmans-g20-ai-summit-in-chapel-hill/)\n\nWhile Sam Altman, Jensen Huang and Alex Karp pitched AI as essential infrastructure at the G20 Innovation Ministerial in Chapel Hill, hundreds of protesters banged pots and pans outside the Carolina Inn to mimic data center noise. The demonstration tied together job-loss fears, UNC's Flock surveillance cameras and a wave of over 30 North Carolina... - [protesters banged pots outside Sam Altman's AI summit](https://startupfortune.com/hundreds-banged-pots-outside-sam-altmans-g20-ai-summit-in-chapel-hill/) - [G20 AI summit Chapel Hill data center noise](https://startupfortune.com/hundreds-banged-pots-outside-sam-altmans-g20-ai-summit-in-chapel-hill/)\n\nWhat happens next depends on whether OpenAI, Google DeepMind and the rest actually pace their models the way Amodei is now asking, or whether competitive pressure just keeps everyone racing anyway. Coxon has already made his bet. He's out of the industry, and he says the people still inside it are counting down two years at a time.\n\n**Also read:** [Obama Tells Democrats AI Is Moving Fast and Turning Dangerous](https://startupfortune.com/obama-tells-democrats-ai-is-moving-fast-and-turning-dangerous/) • [PwC Merges Its US and India Arms Into a 40,000 Person Firm to Beat AI to the Punch](https://startupfortune.com/pwc-merges-its-us-and-india-arms-into-a-40000-person-firm-to-beat-ai-to-the-punch/) • [AI Just Helped Healthtech Startups Mint Twice as Many Unicorns in 2025](https://startupfortune.com/ai-just-helped-healthtech-startups-mint-twice-as-many-unicorns-in-2025/)\n\n*This article is posted in [AI News](https://startupfortune.com/category/ai/), check it out for more related stories.*\n\n## Join the discussion\n\n[Open in the community →](/community/)\n\nAlmost there. Sign in and your reply posts straight away.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/jacob-coxon-says-his-former-anthropic-colleagues-are-genuinely-frightened-of-ai", "canonical_source": "https://startupfortune.com/jacob-coxon-says-his-former-anthropic-colleagues-are-genuinely-frightened-of-ai/", "published_at": "2026-09-13 08:58:09+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-09-13 09:01:23.514115+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-safety", "ai-policy", "artificial-intelligence", "ai-agents"], "entities": ["Jacob Coxon", "Anthropic", "OpenAI", "Dario Amodei", "BBC", "Laura Kuenssberg", "Mrinank Sharma", "Donald Trump"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/jacob-coxon-says-his-former-anthropic-colleagues-are-genuinely-frightened-of-ai", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/jacob-coxon-says-his-former-anthropic-colleagues-are-genuinely-frightened-of-ai.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/jacob-coxon-says-his-former-anthropic-colleagues-are-genuinely-frightened-of-ai.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/jacob-coxon-says-his-former-anthropic-colleagues-are-genuinely-frightened-of-ai.jsonld"}}