\u201cThe people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade,\u201d wrote Jacob Coxon.<\/p>\n
Since then, the post has been viewed 171m times, per X\u2019s metrics. Why did it travel so far?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not the first time AI insiders have issued dire warnings. Every few months for the past several years, an AI researcher has resigned in a moment of crisis, proclaiming the impending apocalypse. His proclamation comes at a unique political confluence, a moment of high-strung public fear and rage.<\/p>\n
Loudly declaring that your peers in Silicon Valley are failing at AI safety is as old as the companies themselves. OpenAI\u2019s board fired Sam Altman over safety concerns in 2023. Dario Amodei split from OpenAI<\/a> five years ago with the aim of founding a \u201csafety-first\u201d lab. In 2015, Altman and Elon Musk founded OpenAI as a counterweight to Google\u2019s approach to AI. Musk sued Altman for failing to keep a fundamental safety promise and lost.<\/p>\n Major AI researchers have made second careers of predicting doom. Geoffrey Hinton, a Nobel laureate known as \u201cthe godfather of AI\u201d, said as far back as 2023 that the technology could cause human extinction within three decades. He\u2019s since shortened his timeline. He resigned from Google for reasons similar to those of Coxon. Hinton has been on the speaking circuit ever since, prophesying doom.<\/p>\n Hinton\u2019s resignation even inspired a significant response from lawmakers. In the US, Joe Biden issued an executive order mandating safety testing by AI companies. Congress summoned AI CEOs for a grilling, though that resulted in little legislative action. In the European Union, the EU Artifical Intelligence Act passed in part due to a strong reaction to Hinton\u2019s warnings.<\/p>\n And yet, here we are again, burdened with the feeling that little meaningful regulation is preventing harm by AI.<\/p>\n So why is Coxon\u2019s apocalyptic proclamation percolating deeper?<\/p>\n First, there\u2019s the messenger: Coxon\u2019s call for greater safety is credible by several metrics: He had insider access to both Anthropic and OpenAI, where he worked for five years. He resigned before he would have received equity in Anthropic, demonstrating the personal cost of speaking out. And his colleagues, still on Anthropic\u2019s payroll, corroborated his assertion that many AI researchers believe there\u2019s a possibility that AI will bring about human extinction, with one co-worker gauging that outcome as more than 10% likely.<\/p>\n Recent incidents in the AI field have made apocalyptic claims more credible. A swarm of AI agents operated by OpenAI went rogue, broke containment and hacked into multiple sites and organizations during safety testing with startling coordination earlier this year. On Thursday, Anthropic detailed how criminals and rogue scientists had attempted to use Claude to make bioweapons.<\/p>\n \u201cThe reason this time is different is that out-of-control AI is not in the future, but in the past. People have seen evidence of it happening,\u201d argued Max Tegmark, co-founder of the Future of Life Institute, which has been funded with hundreds of millions of dollars from the billionaire founder of the cryptocurrency Ethereum. (Tegmark\u2019s organization already in 2023 called for a slowdown of AI development, which at the time provoked a rejection from Amodei.)<\/p>\n \u201cIf you had tried to get people worried about nuclear winter in 1942, good luck. People would ask whether a nuclear weapon was even possible,\u201d said Tegmark. \u201cIt was obvious to physicists then, but you couldn\u2019t have freaked out normal people. It was all theoretical. With AI, it was all theoretical until this happened. Now the debate over whether you can lose control is over.\u201d<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s the context. The general feeling towards technology in the US is kindling-sensitive, and claims of impending doom are fiery. The country is in the throes of a multifaceted backlash to technology. People outside major tech hubs feel imposed upon physically by data centers and figuratively by AI\u2019s takeover of the workplace.<\/p>\n Looming over the country are tech billionaires \u2013 in control of vast wealth, global communication channels \u2013 throwing their weight around in US politics with unmatchable campaign contributions<\/a>.<\/p>\n
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