Rubbish Check
CNBC Top News · 9 September 2026
source R3/ 10
Lightly altered
Rubbish Rating — 1 = base fact, 10 = pure rubbish
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In short
Rubbish Talk rates CNBC's headline pairing a researcher's resignation with a ">10% chance of killing all humans" claim a 3/10 because the quote is real and accurately sourced, but the headline's generic "researcher" blurs that the resignation (Jacob Coxon) and the specific 10% figure (Evan Hubinger) came from two different people.
The Verdict
Lightly altered. The headline's core numbers and quotes check out against the primary posts, but collapsing two named individuals into one anonymous "researcher" nudges readers toward assuming the resigning employee made the statistical claim himself, when he didn't.
What actually happened #
Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned on Tuesday and accused Anthropic and OpenAI of "gambling with our lives" by racing toward self-improving AI. Evan Hubinger, an alignment lead at Anthropic, echoed Coxon's comments in a post on X late Tuesday, writing "Jacob is correct here-we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade." Coxon himself did not attach a specific probability to his warning; the greater-than-10% figure is Hubinger's personal estimate, offered separately.
Key facts #
- Coxon said in a post on X that he resigned out of concern that Anthropic and OpenAI are "gambling with our lives."
- Hubinger's exact wording was "I personally think it is >10% within the next decade", a personal estimate, not a company position or a poll of researchers.
- OpenAI's chief scientist Jakub Pachocki separately warned that no AI company has "solved alignment and monitoring to a sufficient degree to continue responsibly scaling at maximum speed for much longer."
- Hubinger was also one of roughly 1,400 AI researchers who signed the July "Pacing the Frontier" open letter urging U.S. government action.
- Coxon's original post had been viewed more than 70 million times, per the article, underscoring the story's virality rather than any new data point.
What to watch for #
Watch whether follow-up coverage keeps conflating "the resigning researcher" with "the 10% estimate" as the story spreads, since headline-only readers are likely to merge the two. Also watch the FRONTIER Act and Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act in Congress, both introduced this year, for whether this episode accelerates any actual legislative movement or stays rhetorical.
About this scoreThe R-Score is Rubbish Talk's editorial opinion on how far a headline's framing sits from what the underlying facts support. It is a judgement about presentation and emphasis, not an allegation that any outlet has acted dishonestly. Every figure we rely on is linked under Receipts so you can check it yourself.