Why did Jacob Coxon, Anthropic & OpenAI Previous Employee, Quit?

Jacob Coxon, a 27-year-old pretraining researcher who previously worked at both OpenAI and Anthropic, publicly announced his resignation on September 9, 2026. In a thread posted to X, he cited severe concerns about the speed at which leading AI labs are pushing toward superintelligent systems.

He stated, "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."

Key Points from His Resignation:

Internal Concerns: He claimed that many researchers and executives privately believe AI could pose an existential threat to humanity by the end of the decade, even if their public statements sound more measured.

Capabilities Risk: He warned that upcoming superhuman models could soon be capable of hacking critical systems, revolutionizing technical fields overnight, and acquiring real-world power and resources faster than safeguards can be built to control them.

Here is an after the fact interview with Coxon by CBS News: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNut8Ub-lvQ

His departure triggered broader discussion within the AI safety community, with Anthropic's Alignment Science Lead, Evan Hubinger, publicly agreeing on X that the existential risks surrounding recursive self-improvement and superintelligence alignment remain very real.

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