Disgruntled AI researcher: This technology 'could kill us all by the end of the decade'

A researcher who worked for both OpenAI ( OPAI.PVT ) and Anthropic ( ANTH.PVT ) says the companies are "gambling with our lives," prompting him to resign and leave the industry.

"Do not underestimate the power of this technology," Jacob Coxon wrote in a widely shared thread on Tuesday evening. "These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources. We have all witnessed the progress in each of these domains, and progress is not slowing."

Coxon, who said he resigned from Anthropic this week, said the threat is coming from inside the house.

"The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt. 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. No other human activity poses this level of danger," he wrote.

Anthropic and OpenAI are arguably the two frontrunners in the furious race to develop and scale artificial intelligence. Both are set to go public at massive valuations as markets continue to bet heavily on the technology's potential, despite a historic debt run-up across the industry.

Claude Code AI parent Anthropic, which could file paperwork for its initial public offering as soon as this month, is expected to debut near $2 trillion, double what the company was worth four months ago. OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, is expected to go public later this year or early in 2027. Investors also expect its stock to debut above 13 figures.

Coxon, who was also interviewed by the Wall Street Journal , is a 27-year-old British researcher whose job was to train new AI models via vast data consumption. In his X thread, he described each firm's thinking about the stakes of AI.

"At OpenAI, many have not deeply internalized the civilizational stakes," he wrote. "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."

He ended with a challenge for those continuing to work in the industry:

"Do you want to kick off a superintelligent (Reinforcement Learning) run without a rigorous understanding of its mind? Should you put your head down because 'it's happening anyway' — or take this moment to call for different conditions?"