Tech Brew Ride Home · Thursday, September 10, 2026
AI researcher Jacob Coxen announced he is leaving the AI industry due to concerns that companies are rushing to develop AI systems that they will be unable to control. Coxen, who previously worked at OpenAI and Anthropic, expressed fears that the rapid development poses existential risks to humanity.
“The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt, he wrote. 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.”
“Neither company is acting responsibly. Coxen wrote on X. They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.”
“We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans, wrote Evan Humburger, a current Anthropic employee who leads the lab's alignment stress testing team and a reply on X. I personally think it is greater than 10% within the next decade.”