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.

It was the beloved science-fiction writer's least favorite of her books. But it remains worth reading. Enter your email to receive alerts for this author. You can manage your newsletter subscriptions at any time. You're already subscribed to the aa_Rebecca_Onion newsletter.

Many of the tech billionaires who built our world have taken the wrong lessons from their favorite science fiction. A fter reading Jill Lepore's The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State, I have a new destination for a time machine, should I ever finally get my hands on one. I'd set the dial to some night in the late 1970s or '80s and visit the boyhood rooms of the Silicon Valley titans Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Sam Altman. Then I'd confiscate all of their science fiction. As young people, the future billionaires were spending hours (under their covers with flashlights, I imagine) consuming stories about killer robots or Mars colonies. What they seemed not to get--maybe couldn't get--was that these were cautionary tales, stories that projected deep societal worries into space or onto a future many millennia away.

Jacob Elordi on why The Dog Stars had him asking'What am I missing' in life? A devastating pandemic, environmental destruction and a depleted society reduced to anarchy are the themes at play in Sir Ridley Scott's latest film The Dog Stars. Based on Peter Heller's 2012 novel of the same name, the stars of the sci-fi film say they hope its themes will makes viewers question the parts of their lives they take for granted. Jacob Elordi stars as the lead character, Hig, a former mechanic turned pilot, who spends his days flying over Colorado with his dog Jasper, searching for a better life. He tells the BBC the film portrays the human condition, with the characters living in the apocalypse but still looking for something else and hoping for something else.

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You're viewing the US edition You can switch to the UK or AU homepage at any time using this menu. Lindsay Clancy's final texts to husband on day she killed her kids emerge as trial is shown video of family museum trip weeks before tragedy Trump administration steps into surrogate's battle over baby with a heart defect biological parents asked her to abort Record-breaking climber Jake Whisenant's grieving fiancee says'world has cruelly betrayed her' after his tragic death as she breaks silence on'cataclysmic loss' Oprah's frantically trying to distract from a looming Hollywood bombshell... the timeline is genuinely disturbing: MAUREEN CALLAHAN'Heinous' slurs about Lindsay Clancy's ex-husband Patrick explode... now his family speak out as murder trial grips America Killer's final act of cowardice as he is executed for rape and murder of five-year-old girl he insists he is forgiven for Matthew McConaughey reveals which blockbuster makes him the most residuals and it's not his Oscar winner Perez Hilton's horrifying first request from hospital bed after knife livestream: This is'the worst thing possible' say devastated insiders... who reveal star's dark childhood secret Abdul El-Sayed oversaw animal'slaughterhouse' as over 4,000 puppies and kittens killed under his watch'Perfectly fit' woman thought she had acid reflux... two hours later, she was dead. Fernando Mendoza sends NFL fans wild on Raiders debut as Tom Brady piles the pressure on No. 1 draft pick in the stands Shocking real reason Luigi Mangione is set to plead GUILTY... as defense attorney reveals all: 'There's a lot happening behind the scenes' Trump official's X-rated sex toy video with foreign agent she lives with in debauched'frat house'... read their wild texts Devastating full horror of Perez Hilton's knife livestream unravels: Friends reveal tragic life-long disfigurement... what star is admitting from hospital bed... and why he may now be locked up for YEARS Bill Gates' daughter Phoebe's embarrassing private messages revealed as her fashion app is embroiled in huge scandal Cash App founder's killer to argue he's victim of racial bias under California laws in desperate shot at freedom after murder conviction Charities issue urgent warning over'Frankenstein cats' including Scottish folds, Persians and new'XL bully' breeds Charities have issued an urgent warning over a wave of'Frankenstein cats' with extreme, unnatural features. Breeds such as the Scottish fold, Persians, Sphynx cats, and new ' XL bully ' cats have seen'booming popularity'. These popular breeds suffer from lifelong debilitating health issues that make it impossible for them to live a happy, healthy life.

Beyond Elon Musk's interpretation of, Silicon Valley leaders have often misunderstood classic books like and . Why does anyone care what Elon Musk thinks of Homer's, or Christopher Nolan's? Musk is promising to use AI to generate a "historically accurate" version of the --turning epic poetry into atrocious slop--even as AI companies are literally destroying books to ingest them as data more cheaply. Meanwhile, Musk and other Silicon Valley billionaires are building a world they read about, as boys, in the pages of books they failed to understand. I think of that world as the Artificial State.

Sam Altman says AI has entered'singularity': Should we be worried? How is the US tech industry regulated? The 2014 US film Transcendence follows a dying scientist who uploads his mind to a supercomputer and becomes a near omnipotent intelligence. A year later, Ex Machina told the story of a humanoid robot who outsmarts her human handlers and escapes into the wider world. Both of these films, like many others from the realm of science fiction, referred to what is known as "the singularity", a moment in time when technology, particularly AI, surpasses human intelligence and becomes increasingly difficult to control.

We finally have a trailer for Blade Runner 2099, after nearly five years of waiting. This is the first live-action TV show in franchise history, though there was an animated series called Blade Runner: Black Lotus. As the name suggests, Blade Runner 2099 is set 50 years after the sequel film Blade Runner 2049. The trailer is absolutely soaked in cyberpunk vibes and the effects look pretty stunning. There isn't much by way of plot specifics, but there are some hints that the world has changed significantly since Ryan Gosling did his thing in Blade Runner 2049.

Does the company know that it is, in fact, Omni Consumer Products? Amazon has officially ordered eight episodes of a TV show based on the Robocop franchise, according to a report by . We already knew the company was working on a pilot, but now it's gotten a full series order. The showrunner behind this adaptation is a guy named Peter Ocko. He's been in the writer's room for all kinds of great shows, like, and to name a few.