Topline
Elon Musk questioned and criticized statements made by an ex-Anthropic researcher who raised alarm about the danger posed by AI to humans after quitting the company, as the billionaire boosting unsubstantiated claims of the move being a conspiracy or a public relations stunt despite other AI researchers flagging similar concerns.
SpaceXAI founder and CEO Elon Musk mocked and questioned ex-Anthropic researcher who warned that rapidly improving AI poses a serious threat to human life.
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Key Facts
The former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon raised his concerns in a series of X posts on Tuesday accusing both OpenAI and Anthropic of not acting responsibly by “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.”
Coxon’s post that people building AI believe it could “kill us all by the end of the decade,” and this was not a “marketing stunt,” has garnered more than 23 million views on X.
Reacting to a post about the length of Coxon’s tenure at Anthropic, first chimed in on Wednesday evening tweeting: “Seems like a setup.”
When someone pointed out that the combined view count of Coxon’s posts had crossed 120 million, Musk claimed he doesn’t think something like this has ever happened for a “post from a new account with almost no prior activity.”
When Epic CEO and billionaire Tim Sweeney claimed that the posts and reactions appeared “choreographed,” Musk chimed in again claiming without any evidence that this was a spark that followed “groundwork” for a “psy op (for lack of a better term),” presumably against AI.
Tangent
A few other figures echoed Musk’s criticism about the post and cast doubts about Coxon’s intent, including billionaire Bill Ackman, who wrote “Interesting” as he reshared a post claiming the posts appeared to be the “start of a VERY sophisticated and well-funded PR operation to get support for Democrats to regulate AI into oblivion.” David Sacks, who served as President Donald Trump’s Crypto and AI adviser till March, also took a shot at Anthropic and wrote: “Surely Anthropic’s IPO must be paused until the claims of this ‘whistleblower’ can be investigated.” Sacks has previously accused Anthropic of “running a sophisticated regulatory capture strategy based on fear-mongering.” Tech investor Jason Calacanis, who co-hosts the All-In tech industry podcast with Sacks, also directed his criticism at Anthropic. Calacanis asked if Anthropic was running “some kind of regulatory capture playbook or does everyone who works at Anthropic see something that makes their pdoom [probability of doom] surge?!”
What Do We Know About Jacob Coxon?
Axios reported that Coxon had been at Anthropic for just four months, which means he left the company two months before his stock options in the company were vested. The reported noted that the researcher still holds equity from his previous employer, OpenAI, where he also worked as a pre-training researcher. In his X posts, compared working at the two companies and said staffers at OpenAI have not “deeply internalized the civilizational stakes,” but added that the issue was “well-understood” at Anthropic. However, he noted that despite this the Claude-maker was “locked in a race to get there first” as they believe “no one else will act responsibly, so they must do it themselves, despite the risk.”
Has Coxon Responded To The Criticism?
After Musk’s “seems like a setup” jibe, Coxon responded to him on X and wrote: “I’m real and these are my real beliefs. You could ask your xAI researchers about me if you hadn’t fired them.” In a follow-up post, Coxon urged Musk to help, saying: “You’ve talked a lot about how you feel forced into this race, and the dangers of advanced AI.”
Tangent
Despite being criticized by Musk, Coxon’s remarks have received support from several other AI researchers. Evan Hubinger, the Alignment Science Lead at Anthropic, reshared Coxon’s X posts and wrote that he and his colleagues do “earnestly believe AI could kill all humans,” and said that he personally thinks there is a more than 10% chance of it happening in the next decade. Hubinger then added: “I believe 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.”
further reading
Anthropic Researcher Warns There’s ‘>10% Chance’ AI Could ‘Kill All Humans’ By Next Decade (Forbes)
Ted Cruz Says He Prefers ‘American Killer Robots’ Over Chinese After AI Extinction Warning (Forbes)
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