An AI researcher at Anthropic has resigned from the company, warning that those building the technology “earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”
His concerns were publicly backed by another Anthropic researcher who said he personally believes there is a greater than 10 per cent chance that AI could cause human extinction within the next decade.
A Resignation That Shook the AI Industry
ValidViewNetwork gathered that an AI researcher at Anthropic, Jacob Coxon, has resigned from the company, warning that those building the technology “earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”
Coxon, who said he had spent the past three years doing pre-training research at both Anthropic and OpenAI, made the announcement in a series of posts on X on Tuesday, September 9, 2026.
“Neither company is acting responsibly,” he wrote.
“They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives”.
A Colleague’s Confirmation
Coxon’s concerns were publicly supported by Evan Hubinger, an Alignment Science Lead at Anthropic, who posted a reply on X saying Coxon was correct.
“We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10 per cent within the next decade,” Hubinger wrote.
“I believe Anthropic is trying its best, but we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not clearly on track to”.
The Growing Call for Caution
Coxon is one of a growing number of AI experts to call on the industry to slow down.
In July, more than 1,300 employees of frontier AI companies signed a statement saying there was a “real risk that capability development rapidly accelerates beyond our ability to understand or control the resulting systems”.
The letter called on the US government to support an international effort to develop tools that can “deliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development”.
Both Anthropic and OpenAI responded to the initiative, with Anthropic stating that its own research on recursive self-improvement “points to the need for tools to deliberately pace the frontier of AI development so society can prepare” .
The UN Warning
The resignation came just a day after UN rights chief Volker Turk warned that artificial intelligence could pose a threat to humanity.
“I share the concerns of industry insiders that advanced AI could pose an existential risk to humanity,” Turk said.
“I am calling here, today, for an all-out effort to put cast-iron guarantees in place around the safety and security of AI before it is too late”.
A Lesson for Nigeria
The warnings from Anthropic researchers are a reminder that the race for AI supremacy is not just a technological competition, it is a gamble with humanity’s future.
The same tech executives who privately acknowledge the existential risks of their own creations continue to accelerate development, driven by profit and competitive pressure.
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Their families are protected, but the rest of us are not.
For Nigeria, the lesson is clear: Africa cannot afford to be a passive observer in the AI revolution.
The same leaders who ignore AI governance will never allow their own children to be victims of a technology they do not understand.
Nigeria must develop its own regulatory frameworks, invest in AI safety research, and ensure that the continent’s voice is heard in global conversations about the technology that will define the next century.
Demand AI governance. Invest in safety research. And never forget that technology without ethics is a weapon aimed at us all.