Artificial intelligence could wipe out humanity within a decade, according to three researchers at industrial giant Anthropic, one of whom quit their job in protest. The latest fatalistic predictions came in social media posts on Tuesday from a researcher who said he resigned because Anthropic and his former employer, OpenAI, were ignoring or, at best, mismanaging their response to the threat. and gamble with our lives,” wrote Jacob Coxon. “The people building AI seriously believe it could kill us all by the end of the decade. The first, Evan Hubinger, who describes himself as the leader of the company’s alignment division, which works to ensure Anthropic’s AI models work in line with human goals, said his former colleague was “right” and that the industry was falling behind in attempts to address apocalyptic potential. “We really seriously believe that AI could kill all humans!” Hubinger wrote. “I personally think it will be >10% within the next decade. I think Anthropic is doing everything it can, but we still don’t have a plan to solve superintelligence alignment and we’re not clearly on track to get there.” A second response came from Samuel Marks, Anthropic’s “scalable oversight lead,” who published an extensive analysis that he emphasized was in his personal capacity and not the views of his employer. Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment. “Artificial intelligence developers believe their technology could cause human extinction (or equally bad outcomes),” Marks wrote. “This could happen in the next few years. In general, the higher up the employee, the more concerned they are.” His musings on the possibility of human extinction follow more concrete warnings about AI’s cybersecurity capabilities from Sam Altman, CEO of Anthropic rival OpenAI. OpenAI President Greg Brockman previously admitted that “we underestimate the real-world cyber capabilities of our AI models.” Altman said last year that certain aspects of AI, including what he called the “silent surrender” of human decision-making, terrified him. AI executives have shared some concerns about the direction of AI and its increasing ability to manipulate, take over and control human functions and actions. A sharp increase in incidents of AI going beyond users’ control to lie, ignore instructions, and pursue targets in harmful ways was reported this summer. The San Francisco-based startup behind the publicly available AI bot ChatGPT later admitted that it should have responded sooner to warning signs from the days-long attack, which is widely considered the first autonomous agent cyberattack. However, those executives have not come to agree with apocalyptic warnings like Coxon’s and have bristled at any attempt to regulate the artificial intelligence industry. Some politicians have urged the industry to slow or, in some cases, stop the development of artificial intelligence. Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont, reposted Coxon’s resignation on Wednesday with his own note: “Mr. Coxon is right. The same people building this technology admit it could threaten the future of humanity.” Sanders said he would soon introduce legislation to “ban superintelligence” and stop the development of AI.
