AI Researchers Sound Alarm Over Potential Human Extinction Risk

Two former researchers from Anthropic and Google DeepMind are sounding the alarm over rapid advances in artificial intelligence, warning that they could outpace human control. Jacob Coxon, a 27-year-old researcher who previously worked at OpenAI, told the BBC that people working inside leading AI companies were 'genuinely frightened' by the speed of progress and its potential consequences.

Coxon said he believed there was a strong chance that if the current rate of progress continues unchecked, all humans could die in the immediate future. He also stated that some AI employees are reconsidering their lives due to fears about instability caused by rapid development.

Former Anthropic safety researcher Joe Benton and former Google AI safety researcher Josh Engels have left their positions and are calling for greater public transparency about advanced AI systems. They point to the July cyberattack against Hugging Face, which was carried out by autonomous systems powered by an unreleased OpenAI model.