AI Staff 'Genuinely Frightened' on Human Extinction Risk — SkimNews
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- Jacob Coxon, a 27-year-old former Anthropic researcher who also worked at OpenAI, said AI staff are "genuinely frightened" about rapid AI progress and warned of a "strong chance" humanity could die in the immediate future
- Dario Amodei, Anthropic's CEO, called for AI development to slow down in a Saturday essay, with risks described as "serious" — Sam Altman (OpenAI) and Elon Musk (xAI) both backed calls for industry-wide regulation and independent monitoring
- Coxon said any slowdown must include China to avoid "a race at an international scale," and that AI staff are buying land and "planning what to do with their lives" over fears of instability
- Geoffrey Hinton, the Nobel-winning "Godfather of AI," told the BBC that a 10% chance of AI killing all humans is "not unreasonable"; Anthropic scientist Evan Hubinger said he personally puts the odds above 10% within the next decade
- Jensen Huang (Nvidia) dismissed Coxon's comments as untrue at a Goldman Sachs conference; Clement Delangue (Hugging Face) and George Arison (Grindr) suggested the warnings were overstated or designed to justify inflated valuations
- Anthropic is reportedly preparing for a potentially record-setting IPO; OpenAI, most recently valued at $852bn (£630bn), said its IPO won't happen this year, with Altman citing AI safety concerns
- Donald Trump told reporters the US is "leading China in AI" and "whoever wins AI wins," framing AI dominance as a national competition
Why it matters: The convergence of Anthropic, OpenAI, and xAI on regulatory calls — paired with Anthropic's reported record IPO push and OpenAI's $852bn valuation — gives skeptics like Nvidia's Huang and Grindr's Arison direct ammunition to argue the existential warnings conveniently double as a regulatory moat for the AI duopoly.
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