Demonstrators protest outside Anthropic’s offices in San Francisco, July 21, 2026. For years, the artificial intelligence industry raced to improve its technology as quickly as possible; now some researchers are increasingly sounding the alarm about the need to slow down. [Lucas Foglia/The New York Times]
SAN FRANCISCO – For years, the artificial intelligence industry raced to improve its technology as quickly as possible. Now some researchers are increasingly sounding the alarm about the need to slow down.
Jacob Coxon, an Anthropic researcher who previously worked at OpenAI, said Tuesday that he had resigned from Anthropic because “neither company is acting responsibly.” The two leading AI labs are sprinting to build “superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight and acquire real power and resources” without building in appropriate safeguards, he said in a social media post.
Coxon’s warning echoed concerns that other AI experts have voiced in recent months. Some AI leaders have long believed that the technology could create doomsday scenarios if left unchecked, and their concerns heightened after OpenAI’s models broke out of its systems in July and hacked Hugging Face, an AI model library.
