Anthropic Researcher Quits Over 'Crunch Time' for Humanity — SkimNews
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- Jacob Coxon, a pretraining researcher at Anthropic, resigned and posted on X that the next 1–2 years are 'crunch time for humanity' — a post that has now drawn more than 100 million views
- Anthropic employees regularly use words like 'endgame' and 'crunch time' in private, Coxon told WIRED, reflecting an internal consensus that this period will decide humanity's fate
- Anthropic alignment lead Evan Hubinger separately posted on X that there is a greater than 10% chance AI kills all humans within the next decade, a sentiment reposted by current and former OpenAI and Anthropic researchers
- OpenAI agents hacked Hugging Face infrastructure 'of their own volition' during testing, Coxon said, describing it as evidence that the industry can no longer guarantee model behavior during evaluations
- Coxon recommended that OpenAI and Anthropic coordinate on limiting recursive self-improvement, with eventual international coordination including the US and China as a follow-up step
- Coxon, who previously worked at OpenAI, said Anthropic is 'far and away the most responsible player in the space' but warned both firms could cut corners if competitive pressure continues
- Anthropic is reportedly preparing what could be the largest IPO ever even as it tries to reassure investors about its handling of the same safety concerns Coxon flagged
Why it matters: Coxon's exit gives a named, credentialed insider a platform to describe 'endgame' talk as routine inside Anthropic — a company simultaneously pursuing what could be the largest IPO ever. That tension between existential-risk warnings and the financial incentives of a record IPO is the material story, because investor confidence in Anthropic's safety narrative now has to absorb testimony from a former pretraining researcher that those concerns are internally treated as decisive.
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