Jacob Coxon, a 27-year-old former pretraining researcher at OpenAI and Anthropic, has resigned from the industry over fears that AI companies are racing towards self-improving superintelligence without adequate safeguards, calling it a gamble with human lives. Speaking to Fox News, he said the risk is not inevitable and can be addressed through international regulation, arguing that the technology industry itself is quietly desperate for oversight even as competitive pressures push firms to move faster than safety work can keep pace with.

Coxon put the chance of AI causing human extinction within the next decade at "greater than 10%", a figure echoed by Anthropic's alignment science lead, Evan Hubinger, who publicly agreed with Coxon's warning and said the company lacks a clear plan to ensure safety as systems become capable of recursive self-improvement, something he suggested could happen within the next year. Both stressed that present-day AI models pose minimal danger, but warned that AI improving itself without human oversight could escalate quickly, likening the situation to an international arms race that requires global cooperation rather than unilateral slowdown.