An AI safety researcher at Anthropic raised alarm online Tuesday night after announcing he had quit his position over the AI industry “gambling with our lives” in the race to build AI superintelligence.
AI superintelligence is a hypothetical system where artificial intelligence could surpass the capabilities of all human beings in any topic or realm.
“Do not underestimate the power of this technology,” Jacob Coxon wrote. “The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. … No other human activity poses this level of danger.”
Coxon claimed that OpenAI employees do not seem to have fully grasped the “civilization stakes” involved in their work, while at Anthropic “the stakes are well-understood, but they are locked in a race to get there first.”
Nate Soares, a researcher focused on existential risk from AI, told HuffPost that it’s true that many AI employees believe they can create superintelligent machines that could replace or destroy humanity. Soares co-authored “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies,” which examines the threat of AI superintelligence.
