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Dramatic insider warnings over AI fall flat with some in Silicon Valley
Each September, a who's who of executives from across Silicon Valley descends on San Francisco's Palace Hotel to charm investors at a conference hosted by the investment bank Goldman Sachs. This past week, between talk of growth and potential returns, tech titans found themselves addressing the abrupt resignation of Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon. Coxon, a 27-year-old who worked at OpenAI before joining its chief rival Anthropic, said on Tuesday that people building artificial intelligence (AI) believed the technology could destroy humanity. They are gambling with our lives, he said, these will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything. Coxon is by no means the first AI insider to publicly sound the alarm.
Waymo pulls over, calls cops on juvenile riders who had 'ghost gun,' authorities say
Things to Do in L.A. Tap to enable a layout that focuses on the article. Waymo pulls over, calls cops on juvenile riders who had'ghost gun,' authorities say This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here . See more from the L.A. Times in Google Search. Two young people riding in an autonomous vehicle were arrested in San Francisco after authorities allegedly found them in possession of an illegal "ghost gun."
From Hacks to Bioweapons, Claude Misuse Is Now Everywhere
Plus: The US disrupts the internet's biggest black market, a Conti ransomware hacker gets prison time, Meta fails to stop AI-generated videos of child abuse. Meta failed to catch roughly 350 AI child abuse ads, according to new research this week, including some that included images of real kids. In one case, a child depicted in an ad was a member of a European royal family. Lawmakers have said they intend to investigate, and the San Francisco City Attorney's Office ordered the company this week to stop "allowing" AI child abuse ads. In other Meta news, the company announced a new personal AI agent this week that can book your plane tickets or sell your car, but it emphasized heavy investment in security and privacy features, seemingly anticipating mistrust from consumers.
US legislators push AI safety laws amid human extinction warnings
Current and former artificial intelligence researchers in the United States have issued dire warnings that the technology could soon lead to human extinction, capturing the attention of lawmakers in Washington. The most recent warning came in a lengthy social media post by Jacob Coxon, a San Francisco-based researcher who announced his resignation from Anthropic on Tuesday evening. 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," Coxon said in his post, which prompted a flurry of responses by AI experts also sounding the alarm. Evan Hubinger, a current Alignment Science lead at Anthropic, echoed his remarks, saying, "we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans!
Anthropic Staffers Again Sound the Alarm on AI Catastrophe
AI developers are issuing more and more frantic wake-up calls. Demonstrators participate in the Stop the AI Race protest march in San Francisco, California, on July 11, 2026. The protestors are making stops outside the offices of OpenAI, Anthropic and Google DeepMind. Get your news from a source that's not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Anthropic--saying that both that company and OpenAI, his previous employer, were "gambling with our lives" by developing models that could improve themselves at a rapid clip until they reach "superintelligence." In an alarming social media post, Evan Hubinger, who leads a team that tries to stress-test Anthropic's models for safety, essentially It's far from the first time researchers have tried to raise the alarm about AI's dangers, but Coxon's post and subsequent discourse went viral.
OpenAI not on track to reduce risk of 'catastrophic' loss of control, says board member
'If OpenAI rises to the occasion we could significantly reduce risk,' said Christiano. 'If OpenAI rises to the occasion we could significantly reduce risk,' said Christiano. OpenAI not on track to reduce risk of'catastrophic' loss of control, says board member US government adviser Paul Christiano warns of risks to AI industry as he joins OpenAI's non-profit foundation OpenAI is not on track to reduce the risk of "catastrophic" loss of control to an acceptable level, a member of its non-profit board has said, amid spreading public and political concern that super-advanced AIs could one day wipe out humanity. Paul Christiano, a US government technology adviser, said: "There is a meaningful risk that rapid acceleration in AI capabilities leads to catastrophic and irreversible loss of control in the very near term." He added: "I do not think that the AI industry in general, including OpenAI, is currently on track to reduce this risk to an acceptable level." Christiano used to run model alignment at OpenAI and made the statement on Wednesday as he joined the board of the San Francisco company's non-profit foundation.
This road map could help us decide whether to deploy solar geoengineering
A new report from the nonprofit Reflective lays out the experiments needed to better understand our ability to dim the sun. A San Francisco nonprofit has published a detailed road map of the experiments, studies, and infrastructure that it says would be needed to make informed decisions about the use of solar geoengineering, can reveal. Scientists have now spent half a century exploring the possibility that we could counteract climate change by releasing reflective particles into the stratosphere, mimicking the cooling effects of volcanic eruptions. But even after at least hundreds of studies on the concept, known as stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), big gaps remain in the scientific understanding of how well it would work and what else it might do--and there has been no systematic plan for clearing up that uncertainty. Reflective, a research organization that funds studies on solar geoengineering, has today attempted to fill that gap with the release of its SAI Research Roadmap . "Our mission is to equip the world with the data and tools required for informed decision-making about sunlight reflection fast enough to matter," says Dakota Gruener, the organization's cofounder and chief executive.
This AI entrepreneur is developing agents that can plan ahead for the unexpected
Danijar Hafner has a startup in stealth and a long track record of teaching AI agents about our world. Danijar Hafner's office in San Francisco's SoMa district sits mostly empty. His brand-new startup is still in stealth mode and doesn't even have its name on the door. On the day I visit, there's only one other person there, and little in the way of furniture. But what it lacks in decor, it makes up for in robots. Humanoids of various shapes and sizes hang like marionettes from racks that run down the center of the wide-open space.