Anthropic researcher resigns, warns AI could spiral out of control as soon as next year

A 27-year-old British researcher who worked on pretraining at Anthropic has publicly resigned, warning that the race to build recursive self-improving AI could lead to human extinction before the decade is out. Jacob Coxon walked away from one of the most prominent AI safety companies in the world around September 8-9, and his parting message was not a polite LinkedIn post about “exciting new chapters.” It was a warning that the people building these systems genuinely believe they could produce catastrophic outcomes, and that the timeline for things spiraling out of control could be as soon as next year. The insider alarm What makes Coxon’s resignation particularly difficult to dismiss is what happened next. His own colleagues at Anthropic started publicly agreeing with him. Evan Hubinger, who holds the title of Alignment Science Lead at Anthropic, backed up Coxon’s claims on social media. His personal estimate: a greater than 10% chance of AI leading to massive human fatalities within the next decade. Hubinger went further, acknowledging that Anthropic lacks a clear plan for ensuring alignment with superintelligent systems. Samuel Marks, another Anthropic researcher, echoed simila...