A warning from a former Anthropic researcher who said artificial intelligence “could kill us all” in the coming months and years, has led to headlines, confusion and plenty of speculation, but could AI actually kill humans? And if so, how?
Jacob Coxon announced this week that he was resigning amid fears the company and its chief rival OpenAI “are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.” Coxon’s social media posts warned that some of his colleagues now believe AI could threaten human life by the end of the decade.
“Many people working in the industry, including executives, senior researchers, believe that there’s a substantial probability that this technology could kill everyone,” Coxon told “NBC Nightly News.”
In his social media posts, Coxon said Anthropic and its chief rival OpenAI “are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.” He warned that some working on AI development believe it could threaten human life by the end of the decade.
“Do not underestimate the power of this technology,” he continued. “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.”
His posts reached more than 100 million people overnight.
While many experts have touted the benefits of artificial intelligence, including recently during the Open SkAI conference in Chicago, they acknowledge the tool doesn’t come without risk.
“These tools are able to find new ways of hacking critical infrastructure, defense systems, or water and electricity systems,” University of Chicago Professor Rebecca Willett, who is overseeing research on AI and its impact on space, physics, medicine and more.
But that might not look how many might think — it could be humans who are still the bigger threat.
“What’s more likely is that a human will use an AI tool to do that hacking, as opposed to an AI going rogue and doing it,” Willett said.
Still, that’s not to say that “humans losing control of AI systems and having unexpected behaviors we are unable to stop” isn’t a possibility, she added.
OpenAI and Anthropic caused a stir this summer when they announced, about a week apart, that their models had broken out of testing environments and obtained unauthorized access to real computer systems. The announcements prompted concerns about models going rogue and carrying out other, more harmful tasks. Both companies said at the time they were pausing some evaluations while they put more monitoring measures and guardrails in place.
Anthropic said Thursday it has blocked efforts by bad actors to use its artificial intelligence models for malicious activity such as cyberattacks, surveillance, and research that could have led to biological weapons.
As AI models grow more powerful, elaborate cyberattacks no longer require sophisticated skills and even lone individuals can create threats that would not have been possible even a year ago, Anthropic said. The company said it has added stronger safeguards in its latest models to restrict biological research that could also be used to make weapons.
“The cases we share here aren’t typical misuse, but rather examples of the most notable and novel threat activity we’ve identified to date,” Anthropic said in its third report since March 2025 describing AI misuse. The report includes snippets of the malicious code and AI prompts Anthropic said it found, and urges governments and AI competitors to identify and prevent similar abuse.
“We’re publishing this work because we believe we have a responsibility to disclose malicious misuse of our services. As models become increasingly capable, their risks will increase, unless AI developers and society’s defenders act to make them safer,” the company said.
The concerns have become a focal point for lawmakers in the U.S.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker issued a warning saying now is the “time to sound the alarm.”
“It’s becoming more clear the threat AI poses to humanity, so I’m calling for immediate action from the industry and Washington,” Pritzker wrote on X shortly after Coxon’s viral post.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who has called for AI safeguards and regulation, agreed with Coxon’s concerns and said he would soon introduce legislation to pause AI development and ban superintelligence.
“The very people building this technology admit that it could threaten the future of humanity,” Sanders said Wednesday on social media.
AI companies themselves have at times highlighted the technology’s threat to humanity, which skeptics have seen as part of a push to make their products seem all-powerful. Coxon said the fears he outlined in his post are not a “marketing stunt.”
Meanwhile, Anthropic said it has blocked each of the malicious activities it identified so far, used the experience to strengthen safeguards and shared information with government authorities and industry partners.
“We hope that the findings in this report will help other developers recognize similar patterns on their own platforms, give governments and civil society a clearer view of how emerging threats take shape, and strengthen collective defenses,” Anthropic said.
Anthropic has long pitched itself as the more responsible and safety-minded of the leading AI companies, ever since its founders quit OpenAI to form the startup in 2021. The company recently said it was taking action to “prioritize safety over speed when the two are in tension.”
Anthropic and OpenAI are each ramping up for buzzy initial public offerings and locked in steep competition with each other. They’re also each on a mission to outpace the development progress of Chinese AI companies, a race the Trump administration has been keen on winning.
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