SAN FRANCISCO: An artificial intelligence researcher who left OpenAl to join Anthropic has decided to leave the industry, accusing both US companies of ‘gambling with our lives’ in the race to develop Al models capable of self-improvement.
Jacob Coxon, 27, spent the past three years pretraining Al models, first at OpenAl and then, this year, at its rival Anthropic, which he considered more cautious in its approach. Pretraining is the stage where Al models absorb vast quantities of data.
‘Neither company is acting responsibly.
They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives, Coxon said on Tuesday.
‘The people building Al earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade,’ he said in a post on X. ‘This is not a marketing stunt,’ he added.
Superintelligence is the theoretical point when Al’s capabilities exceed human intelligence.
Anthropic safety executive Evan Hubinger backed up Coxon on X.
‘We really do earnestly believe Al could kill all humans!’ he said, adding that he estimated that risk at more than 10 percent over the next decade.
Hubinger said Anthropic is ‘trying its best’, but does not yet have a plan to ensure an Al system that surpasses human capabilities would obey its creators.
Coxon’s resignation comes as Anthropic prepares for its market debut, following a summer marked by unauthorised hacks carried out by Al tools during testing.-AFP