TL;DR
A departing AI-company employee said nearly everyone there believes their product might kill every human alive and nobody is stopping it; anyone who can hold both beliefs at once is either someone who does not care whether others live or someone who thinks this power belongs in their hands.
When Jacob Coxon quit his job at Anthropic, he left behind a line that set off a news cycle: almost everyone at the company, from executives to rank-and-file researchers, believes their technology could kill every human on the planet, and few are doing anything about it. The press spent a week arguing about whether AI really can end the world.
But the more awkward question comes after that: if they truly believe it, why are they still building the thing?
Their reasons do not hold up
One defence is that they have to get there before China does, because a humanity-ending AI built in China would somehow be worse.
Sam Altman put it more plainly: AI will probably, most likely, sort of lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime there will be great companies.
If something had a one-in-ten chance of killing billions, a normal person would stop. The only people who genuinely believe it and carry on anyway are those who, in their bones, do not care whether others live, and those who think this kind of power belongs to them alone — fascists.
Saying they do not believe it is worse
There is a third reading: plenty of people in these labs do not believe the doomsday talk at all. They go along with it because it is making them rich and powerful.
None of these options is acceptable. Anyone willing to gamble humanity on a product, or even to pretend they are, should not be deciding how that product shapes society.
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