GoKawiilA string of posts on X from an AI researcher who says he quit a job at Anthropic over ethical concerns has gone viral, prompting thousands of responses and reigniting debate over the potential future dangers of artificial intelligence.
Jacob Coxon, an AI researcher who also worked at OpenAI on pretraining AI models, resigned from Anthropic over concerns that AI development could lead to human extinction. “Neither company is acting responsibly,” he wrote. “They are racing to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.” Superintelligence refers to a hypothetical scenario in which AI’s “cognitive” abilities vastly exceed those of humans across every domain — science, math, strategy, creativity and problem-solving.
The threaded post on X from Coxon has more than 156 million views as of this writing and has been liked more than 752,000 times.
I resigned from Anthropic today. I spent the last three years doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic. Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives. More thoughts below. — Jacob Coxon (@hilbertspaess) September 9, 2026
The statement quickly spread on social media and was featured on major news sites. It even drew a comment from Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, who responded on X, “It’s becoming more clear the threat AI poses to humanity, so I’m calling for immediate action from the industry and Washington.”
In less than 24 hours, the statement also drew responses from others at Anthropic who, rather than debating with Coxon, confirmed that the threat that AI will overtake and potentially eliminate humans is not a wild fantasy but a reality for AI researchers.
“Jacob [Coxon] is correct here,” wrote Evan Hubinger, a team leader at Anthropic in AI alignment stress testing, on X. Hubinger wrote in his response, “We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade.”
Hubinger said, “I believe Anthropic is trying its best, but we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not clearly on track to.”
Representatives for Anthropic and OpenAI didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Resignations that act as warning signs
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