Congress Scrambles Over Anthropic AI Extinction Warnings — SkimNews
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- Jacob Coxon, a former Anthropic researcher who quit after four months and gave up his equity, ignited the frenzy Tuesday with an X post declaring that 'the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.'
- Current Anthropic employees Evan Hubinger and Samuel Marks echoed Coxon publicly on X, with Hubinger writing 'we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans!' and Marks stating the extinction risk 'could happen in the next few years.'
- Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) is pushing a bipartisan bill requiring AI developers to build a human-activated 'kill switch' into any AI system — one of the most concrete legislative responses floated so far.
- Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) announced they will soon introduce legislation to pause advanced AI development and ban superintelligence altogether.
- Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) proposed a bipartisan AI Select Committee, an idea Lieu has also privately pitched to House Democratic leadership; House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has not yet decided whether to pursue it, sources said.
- House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) plans to bring only a narrowly scoped data center regulation bill to the floor next week, with the House having just four session days before Election Day followed by a six-week recess.
- An anonymous committee ranking member dismissed Coxon as 'wrong,' telling Axios that 'anyone who has come to me with extreme predictions like that usually undermines their credibility,' even while acknowledging Congress needs to get 'a better handle' on AI.
Why it matters: With just four session days before Election Day, Speaker Johnson signaling only a narrow data center bill, and most Democrats explicitly saying they will tackle AI in 2027, the gap between rhetorical urgency and legislative capacity is now the story itself — the most concrete proposals (kill-switch mandates, superintelligence bans, a Select Committee) face a calendar that functionally forecloses action until next year.
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