The AI Researcher Who Just Quit Anthropic Says It's 'Crunch Time for Humanity'

The AI Researcher Who Just Quit Anthropic Says It's'Crunch Time for Humanity' Jacob Coxon talks to WIRED about the "mini Manhattan project" inside Anthropic, the problem with alignment, and why AI labs have just a few years left to make their systems safe. Artificial intelligence researcher Jacob Coxon sent shock waves through Silicon Valley and beyond on Tuesday by announcing his resignation from Anthropic and delivering a grave warning that the AI race is putting all of our lives at risk. In his post on X, which now has more than 100 million views, Coxon wrote that many of the people building AI share his views and believe time is running out to ensure AI systems are built safely . "The consensus is that the next year or two is crunch time for humanity," Coxon, who worked on the pretraining stage of AI development, said in an interview with WIRED. "These are actually just literal quotes from my colleagues at Anthropic. They'll say things like'endgame' or'crunch time,'" he says. "From their perspective, this is when Anthropic and its competitors decide the fate of humanity." It's far from the first time someone has sounded the alarm about AI, but it comes at a delicate moment.