It looks like science fiction has become reality again.
This time in a potentially horrific way.
Remember the Star Trek episodes A Taste of Armageddon, I Mudd, and The Ultimate Computer, where two societies wage war by computer rather than make peace; androids see themselves as the proper custodians for protecting humanity; and a supercomputer thinks it is better equipped to make decisions than people.
Remember 2001: A Space Odyssey and the HAL9000 computer that is given contradictory orders and interprets them by killing most of the Discovery ship's crew members.
The theme of the supercomputer thinking it is better able to care for humanity than humans themselves is repeated in the 1970 cult classic: Colossus: The Forbin Project, where a human-designed supercomputer takes control of nuclear weapons technology and takes charge of global society.
Or War Games, where the supercomputer Joshua wonders, "Shall we play a game?"
Finally, there are the Terminator films, which demonstrate what happens when artificial intelligence, in this case Skynet, gains enough sentience to wage war against the threat it perceives from humankind.
Has the Twenty-First Century equivalent of HAL9000, Colossus, Joshua, and Skynet finally arrived with the proliferation of AI Technologies that can threaten human existence?
Jacob Coxon thinks so.
A now-former employee at Anthropic, Coxon, released a social media post that basically said: All the dangers of artificial intelligence that you watched on Star Trek, 2001, Colossus, and The Terminator to humanity: Those perils are closer to reality than people think.
"I resigned from Anthropic today. I spent the last three years doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic. Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives. More thoughts below. Do not underestimate the power of this technology. These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources. We have all witnessed the progress in each of these domains, and progress is not slowing. The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible - but I hear the same people express fear privately. No other human activity poses this level of danger. A common response is “if they truly believe this, why are they still building it?” At OpenAI, many have not deeply internalized the civilizational stakes. At Anthropic, the stakes are well-understood, but they are locked in a race to get there first - they believe no one else will act responsibly, so they must do it themselves, despite the risk. Accepting this race and entering the “endgame” is a hubristic gamble that should not be launched from a private company’s Slack. Attempting to speedrun alignment should require extraordinary confidence that there are no better trajectories available. I am optimistic about the potential for coordination. Warning shots like the Hugging Face attack have made pacing agreements between U.S. labs more viable. I don’t feel like we’re on track to prevent a global race, which may require costly actions such as a temporary ban on improving model capabilities.
Accepting this race and entering the “endgame” is a hubristic gamble that should not be launched from a private company’s Slack. Attempting to speedrun alignment should require extraordinary confidence that there are no better trajectories available. If you are a lab researcher, I urge you to consider what the next few years will actually feel like. Do you want to kick off a superintelligent RL run without a rigorous understanding of its mind? Should you put your head down because “it’s happening anyway” - or take this moment to call for different conditions."
With his post going viral, Coxon and others who are in the field are coming out and sharing their views on networks like CNN and MSNOW.
Honestly, this should not be surprising. Blog for Arizona published an article abou this Blog last April.
Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, who has authored an AI for America plan, wrote on social media after hearing Coxon's revelations:
"AI is moving fast, and we need to act now.
Almost a year ago, I released AI for America because I believe we need to be proactive on AI, both harnessing its potential so it benefits working people and protecting against the worst outcomes it could lead to.
The reality is that the Big Tech approach of "build fast and break things" is not the right one for AI, and Washington needs to wake up and take this seriously."
Representative Yassamin Ansari has issued several posts since Coxon's statement came out including:
"This is absolutely terrifying. Jacob Coxon and Evan Hubinger, top researchers at Anthropic and formerly OpenAI, said these companies are creating technology that could "kill us all by the end of the decade." These revelations prove multi-billion dollar corporations are putting massive profits ahead of the interests of humanity. The federal government needs to take action NOW to limit tech that is spiraling out of control, and we must pass @RepCasar's legislation to halt new advanced AI development before it’s too late."
"Tragically, when I first saw the movie “Don’t Look Up” in 2021, it struck a chord with me. I felt viscerally that humans would find ourselves in a comparable place one day - and soon.
If you haven’t seen the movie, I’d recommend it. A quick recap: Humans were explicitly warned that a comet that could destroy Earth was heading rapidly toward us. And instead of doing anything to stop it, the president, elected leaders and billionaire CEOs just spewed some bullshit about all the “jobs the comet would create.” The media treated the comet as casual entertainment. The public was split and the entire thing gets politicized. The movie ends with nearly all of human life wiped out.
Just about a year ago I had the opportunity to join a bipartisan freshman class breakfast with Sam Altman. I was shocked when he said to us, “in 18 months, I’ll trust artificial superintelligence to run my company better than I can.” I regret I didn’t engage more on this issue immediately.
Now here we are - it’s 2026 and engineers at the world’s leading AI companies are telling us that there is a >10% chance that artificial intelligence could kill all humans. They’re not mincing their words in the slightest. Not because of present day AI capabilities, but because it is evolving so exponentially that we could be in a doomsday scenario in a year. One year.
This is fucking serious. We need to halt new advanced AI development. We need guardrails, transparency and emergency powers. We need more employees at these companies to speak out publicly, loudly and fearlessly until everyone is forced to listen. We need the media to be covering this 24/7 until elected officials are forced to act. We need the Trump Administration to treat this with the urgency it deserves. We need the ability to shut an AI model off if there’s a credible threat to human life. The list goes on - and we don’t even know what the full list entails because this is all happening so fast. That’s why we need urgent, bipartisan public hearings and committees dedicated to developing and enacting solutions expeditiously.
This isn’t partisan. Let’s stop with the bullshit and come together for the sake of our shared humanity. I’m a 34-year-old Democratic Congresswoman, and I’d like to live to see my late 30s. I know my Republican colleagues want the same for themselves and their loved ones.
None of us can afford to be complacent about this any longer."
"@SpeakerJohnson cancelled Congress for the last two weeks of September. He should reverse his decision and instead announce bipartisan public hearings on AI. We shouldn’t be allowed to leave DC until we’ve passed serious regulations."
Senator Ruben Gallego published a letter calling for the creation of a Bipartisan Senate Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence, writing:
“AI is likely to be one of the most transformative technologies in human history. It has already accelerated drug discovery, expanded access to expert-level knowledge across numerous different fields, and improved productivity across industries, with one leading estimate suggesting the technology could raise global GDP by as much as 7 percent or nearly $7 trillion over a ten-year period. But the same technology also presents serious and rapidly evolving challenges to our workforce, national security, elections, privacy, critical infrastructure, children, and the safety of the public.
"Congress does not need to resolve every disagreement among experts about timelines or probabilities to recognize that both the upside and the downside of this technology warrant an urgent and comprehensive response.”
“Artificial intelligence is moving quickly. Congress must move with it."
On social media, he posted:
"Right now, AI oversight in the Senate is scattered and incomplete. Nobody has the whole picture.
I'm calling on Senate leadership to form a bipartisan Select Committee on AI—one with the full mandate to investigate the risks to our workforce, elections, privacy, and national security.
This should not be a partisan exercise. We need immediate, meaningful, unified action to protect the safety of the American public."
This morning, the New York Times reported that Anthropic halted hacks into its systems by outside scientists who tried to access its AI models in order to further their bioweapons research.
That should be chilling to all readers.
Senators Amy Klobaucher and Ted Cruz are putting forth an AI regulation bill to be considered when Senators return from their Labor Day Holiday recess.
Hopefully, their staffers are getting all the paperwork together so they can commence work on Monday morning.
