Artificial Intelligence “Will Kill Us All Within This Decade”

A researcher at Anthropic has resigned from the company, warning that the race to develop artificial intelligence could pose an existential threat to humanity within the current decade. Jacob Cookson, the researcher, stated in a post on a social media platform that AI developers “firmly believe it could wipe us all out by the end of the decade,” dismissing such concerns as “not a marketing gimmick” and describing AI as an unprecedented risk. The post, published yesterday, garnered widespread engagement and was viewed by more than 40 million people, according to the circulating post. Cookson wrote: “I resigned from Anthropic today. I spent the past three years working on pre-training research at both OpenAI and Anthropic.” He added that the two companies “are not acting responsibly,” but are “racing directly toward self-improving artificial general intelligence,” warning that this race “risks our lives.” The researcher, who previously worked on AI model training research at OpenAI and Anthropic, highlighted the potential future risks of AI and criticized what he described as the companies’ lack of concern about the possibility that this technology could lead to catastrophic outcomes for humanity. Cookson’s comments sparked widespread debate on social media, with some users expressing concern over what he revealed about the nature of work inside AI companies, while others argued that he was exaggerating the risks, and some called for halting the race to develop more advanced systems.