Jacob Coxon
Former Anthropic pretraining researcher (resigned Sept 2026) · as of 2026-10-04 · source
His September 2026 resignation thread, saying labs are 'gambling with our lives', drew 100M+ views and preceded Dario Amodei's pacing essay.
Role changes
- 2026-10-04 Bloomberg: will testify at the NYC Council's Oct 5 AI-safety hearing at Speaker Julie Menin's request source
- 2026-09-08 Resigned from Anthropic, warning that labs are racing to self-improving superintelligence source
News mentioning Jacob Coxon (9)
- Sen. Bernie Moreno writes to Dario Amodei attacking Anthropic's 'alarmist' superintelligence warnings ahead of its IPO ★★★
On Oct 5, 2026 Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) sent Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei a letter accusing him of an "alarmist approach" and "panic-inducing commentary" on superintelligence (SI). He called it hypocritical to invite millions of Americans to invest in Anthropic's IPO, at a valuation near $2…
- NYC Council AI hearing: Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and Meta testify under oath, SpaceXAI defies subpoena, Coxon says humanity 'more likely than not' loses control ★★★
On Oct 5, 2026 the New York City Council held a Committee of the Whole hearing (all 51 members) on AI risks. Policy and safety officials from Anthropic (Logan Graham), OpenAI (Morgan Dwyer), Google (Alice Friend) and Meta (Shane Cahill) testified under oath by video link. None would guarantee…
- Departing OpenAI safety lead David Robinson writes in The Atlantic: 'I Quit OpenAI Because Its Culture Is Broken' ★★★★
On Oct 3, 2026 David Robinson, who led the writing of OpenAI's safety reports for its frontier launches, published an essay in The Atlantic explaining his resignation. He argues that OpenAI's "iterative deployment" (trial and error) "guarantees periodic failures", cites the Hugging Face breach by…
- NYC Council subpoenas SpaceXAI for an Oct 5 sworn AI-safety hearing; Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and Meta agree to testify; 10-bill package includes a kill-switch mandate ★★★
New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin called a rare Committee of the Whole hearing (all 51 members) on AI risks for Oct 5, 2026. On Sept 25 she unveiled a 10-bill package (third-party validation and a kill-switch mandate, a first-in-the-nation whistleblower bounty, 24-hour incident reporting…
- Dario Amodei publishes "We Must Pace the Frontier", calling for a deliberate slowdown ★★★★
On September 12, 2026 Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published 'We Must Pace the Frontier'. The essay argues that AI capability, especially through recursive self-improvement, is outpacing alignment and security, and lays out a three-part plan to slow the frontier. Anthropic unilaterally committed to…
- Sam Altman rules out a 2026 OpenAI IPO, calling it "ill-advised" given AI safety concerns ★★★
In a Fortune interview published 2026-09-12, the same day as Dario Amodei's "We Must Pace the Frontier", Sam Altman said OpenAI will not go public in 2026: "given everything happening with safety, right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public." He said OpenAI might join a collective…
- Thune, Cruz and Klobuchar negotiate a Senate bill imposing a 'duty of care' on frontier AI developers and letting the government block unsafe model releases ★★★★
On Sept 11, 2026 Reuters reported that Senate Majority Leader John Thune, Commerce Chair Ted Cruz and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (with Maria Cantwell involved) were drafting a bipartisan bill that would put a legal "duty of care" on the biggest AI developers to prevent catastrophic risks and would let the…
- Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigns, warning labs are "gambling with our lives" ★★★★
On Sept 8, 2026 pretraining researcher Jacob Coxon (OpenAI, then Anthropic) quit Anthropic in an X thread saying both labs are "racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives". Press reported 100M+ views within about a day. Anthropic alignment lead Evan Hubinger…
- Jan Leike resigns, saying OpenAI's safety culture 'has taken a backseat to shiny products'; Superalignment team dissolved ★★★★
In mid-May 2024 both leads of OpenAI's Superalignment team left: chief scientist Ilya Sutskever announced his departure on May 14 and Jan Leike posted 'I resigned' hours later. On May 17 Leike explained in an X thread that 'safety culture and processes have taken a backseat to shiny products' and…
Posts (4)
- Forget superintelligence: error-prone AI nearly sparked world war three this month original ↗ Timnit Gebru and Emily M. Bender (The Guardian, opinion) · other · 2026-10-01
The 'Stochastic Parrots' authors use the SOCPAC chatbot-intelligence incident to argue that misplaced faith in unreliable AI, not superintelligence, is the present danger. It is the main counter-voice to the September 2026 wave of extinction-risk politics. - If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: One Year Closer original ↗ Eliezer Yudkowsky, Nate Soares, Duncan Sabien (MIRI) @allTheYud · lesswrong · 2026-09-16
MIRI's one-year retrospective on its bestseller, reading the 2026 agent incidents and the Coxon and pacing week as evidence for its thesis, and in an unusual tone of cautious hope. - "Jacob is correct": Anthropic alignment lead puts AI extinction risk above 10% this decade original ↗ Evan Hubinger @EvanHub · x · 2026-09-09
A serving Anthropic alignment lead publicly backed Coxon and said Anthropic has no plan yet to align superintelligence. Press worldwide quoted it. - "I resigned from Anthropic today": labs are "gambling with our lives" original ↗ Jacob Coxon @hilbertspaess · x · 2026-09-08
The most-viewed AI-safety post of 2026 (press: 100M+ to 153M views within about 36 hours). It set off the week of events that led to Amodei's "We Must Pace the Frontier" and to public CEO support for a slowdown.
Videos (3)
- BREAKING: OpenAI Whistleblower Jacob Coxon Warns Of ‘Human Extinction’ At NYC Council Hearing Forbes Breaking News · 2026-10-05
- Let's Lower the P(doom)! Nate Sharpe · 2026-09-25
- Anthropic CEO reacts to 'AI could kill us all' warning CNN · 2026-09-15
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