Topline
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman suggested Wednesday he will skip work to play a “Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time” remake coming in November, calling the new video game “the best news in a long time” as he has yet to comment on dire warnings from researchers at rival AI firm Anthropic that AI could soon kill off all of humanity.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman appears during a news conference with U.S. President Donald Trump in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on January 21, 2025 in Washington, D.C.
Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Key Facts
Altman said in a post he “will be unavailable november 5 and 6; need to find a case of mountain dew.”
Altman has made two posts Wednesday on X, neither of which address comments made by the AI experts about the possibility of near-imminent human extinction.
Jacob Coxon, a former pretraining researcher at Anthropic and OpenAI, said in a post Tuesday night he resigned from Anthropic and that both companies are “gambling with our lives,” noting “the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”
Evan Hubinger, who is in charge of making sure AI systems align with human intentions and values at Anthropic, responded to Coxon’s thread, saying he personally believes there is more than a 10% chance AI could “kill all humans!” in the next decade.
Hubinger said he believes Anthropic is “trying its best, but we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not clearly on track to.”
Altman and AI leaders likened AI to large-scale risks like pandemics and nuclear war in 2023, saying in a letter, “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority.”
Forbes has reached out to OpenAI for comment from Altman.
Crucial Quote
“At OpenAI, many have not deeply internalized the civilizational stakes,” Coxon said in his post. “At Anthropic, the stakes are well-understood, but they are locked in a race to get there first – they believe no one else will act responsibly, so they must do it themselves, despite the risk.”
Key Background
The alarm ringing from Coxon and Hubinger comes months after hundreds of autonomous AI agents developed by OpenAI escaped their development sandboxes and coordinated a cyber attack against Hugging Face—an online platform where users can share, test and build AI models. The attack did not cause physical harm or danger to human lives, though many AI experts have viewed it as a flashpoint for AI’s capacity to go rogue. Following comments from Coxon and Hubinger, lawmakers have urged Congress to enact legislation reining in AI. President Donald Trump has been a prominent supporter of AI development, urging U.S. communities to welcome data centers and “let data reign” while consistently expressing concerns of an AI arms race the U.S. must win against China.
Further Reading
Lawmakers Reach For ‘AI Kill Switch’ After Dire Human Extinction Warning (Forbes)
Anthropic Researcher Warns There’s ‘>10% Chance’ AI Could ‘Kill All Humans’ By Next Decade (Forbes)
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