AI race could pose unprecedented threat to humanity, claims former Anthropic employee

Former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned from his role in pre-training AI models over safety concerns, claiming the unchecked corporate race to develop AI poses an unprecedented danger to humanity. The 27-year-old pre-training researcher’s dramatic resignation has fired off a provocative warning on X that instantly sent ripples across the tech sector. Coxon stated that no single human activity right now poses a greater threat to civilization than the relentless corporate sprint to build “self-improving superintelligence.” “The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible – but I hear the same people express fear privately. No other human activity poses this level of danger,” he wrote on the social media platform, X. 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 growing AI crisis Ex-Anthropic researcher believes the unbridled race to develop artificial intelligence could be a greater danger to humanity than nuclear war or climate change. The engineer abruptly resigned after refusing to contribute to a reckless corporate competition that could ultimately lead to uncontrollable AI. “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,” he wrote. Coxon argued that corporate competition has trapped labs in a hubristic race that forces them to build dangerous systems first. To break this momentum, he urged his peers to speak out and called for a temporary ban on capability improvements to force a shift toward international coordination and safety control. “I don’t feel like we’re on track to prevent a global race, which may require costly actions such as a temporary ban on improving model capabilities,” the post added. Gizmodo reported that the Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei shares surprisingly similar AI safety concerns with his former employee, earning himself the label of an industry “doomer” through his lengthy blog posts on the subject. This shared existential anxiety highlights a striking contradiction: the head of a premier AI firm harbors deep dread about the technology he is racing to create. This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available. Get the latest in engineering, tech, space & science - delivered daily to your inbox.Mrigakshi is a science journalist who enjoys writing about space exploration, biology, and technological innovations. Her work has been featured in well-known publications including Nature India, Supercluster, The Weather Channel and Astronomy magazine. If you have pitches in mind, please do not hesitate to email her.