A chilling warning from a researcher who just quit one of the world’s top artificial intelligence companies sent shockwaves across the political spectrum this week, as public figures from both parties reacted with alarm.
Jacob Coxon, who spent the last three years doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic, announced his resignation from Anthropic in an extraordinary thread posted to X on Tuesday. He accused both companies of “gambling with our lives” in their race to build increasingly powerful AI systems.
Coxon warned that people should “not underestimate the power of this technology,” arguing that capabilities being pursued right now could soon surpass anything currently available. “These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources. We have all witnessed the progress in each of these domains, and progress is not slowing,” he wrote.
He went further, accusing the two companies of racing “straight to self-improving superintelligence” without adequate safeguards. “The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade,” Coxon wrote. Two other researchers from the company reportedly echoed similar warnings.
The reaction was swift and came from unlikely corners. Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau and MAGA-aligned billionaire investor Bill Ackman each offered the identical one-word reply: “Concerning.” Democratic 2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang urged AI companies to “adjust” course “before it’s too late.” Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed called it a defining political question of the era, while Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) used the moment to push for his bipartisan “AI Kill Switch Bill.”
Conservative podcaster Patrick Bet-David compared the AI race to nuclear proliferation, questioning who could realistically be trusted to stop pursuing the technology. Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin called the thread “terrifying,” while broadcaster Piers Morgan recalled a past interview with the late physicist Stephen Hawking, who reportedly warned that AI “learning to self-design” posed the biggest threat to mankind. Progressive commentators including Krystal Ball and David Hogg also weighed in, with Hogg sarcastically noting the irony of AI companies “spending tens of millions of dollars” lobbying the very lawmakers who could regulate them.
Journalist Isaac Saul summed up the astonishment shared by many online, saying it was “truly incredible” to watch some of the smartest people in the industry repeatedly warn that the technology they refuse to stop building could kill everyone.
With Silicon Valley racing full-speed toward more powerful AI systems and warnings like Coxon’s now coming directly from insiders, pressure is mounting on Washington to act before, as several commentators put it, it’s too late.
