Jacob Coxon, a pretraining researcher who spent three years across OpenAI and Anthropic, resigned this week and is leaving AI research entirely, telling the Wall Street Journal that the labs are racing toward systems nobody will be able to control.
Read the full story: Anthropic Researcher Quits, Warns AI Could Be 'Out of Control' →
Transcript
Jacob Coxon spent three years building AI models, first at OpenAI, then at Anthropic. This week he quit, and he's not joining a competitor. He's leaving AI research completely. He told the Wall Street Journal, quote, we're on track for the most aggressive scenarios, where by the end of next year things could be out of control already. He says colleagues inside Anthropic have started using the words crunchtime and endgame. On social media he put it even more bluntly.
Neither OpenAI nor Anthropic is acting responsibly, he says. They're racing straight toward self improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives. He's not asking one company to slow down alone. He wants the labs to coordinate, because unilateral caution doesn't stop a race. One insider, walking away, not toward a rival.