25 September 2026
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Jacob Coxon Resigns from OpenAI and Anthropic Citing Catastrophic AI Risks

Tracks the resignation of pretraining researcher Jacob Coxon from OpenAI and Anthropic, his public allegations of irresponsible scaling toward superintelligence, reactions from AI labs and researchers, and subsequent policy debates.

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Updated

Overview

Jacob Coxon, who spent three years on pretraining work at OpenAI and Anthropic, resigned publicly and accused both labs of racing recklessly toward self-improving superintelligence. He said lab leaders acknowledge catastrophic risks internally but keep accelerating. The announcement spread widely and drew responses from alignment researchers, including Evan Hubinger, who acknowledged substantial extinction risk. The Diary of a CEO host later read out the tweet on air. It says the people building AI earnestly believe it could kill everyone by the end of the decade, that this is not a marketing stunt, and that executives soften their public language. The host also read a quote-retweet from someone he described as a current Anthropic employee. That person agreed with Coxon, put the personal chance of AI killing all humans at more than 10 percent within the next decade, and said Anthropic has no plan yet to solve alignment for superintelligence. The host said the tweet had nearly 200 million views and used it to set up a debate on extinction risk. It remains disputed whether the resignation is legitimate whistleblowing or ideological posturing.

What changed

Dates show when each podcast discussion was published.

  1. New information

    The Diary of a CEO host read Coxon's tweet on air. It says AI builders earnestly believe the technology could kill everyone by the end of the decade and soften this in public. He also read an Anthropic employee's quote-retweet estimating a more than 10 percent chance within a decade and saying there is no plan yet for superintelligence alignment. The host said the tweet had almost 200 million views and built a four-guest extinction debate around it.

  2. New information

    The panel reviews Jacob Coxon's resignation statement following pretraining roles at OpenAI and Anthropic, where he warned that both organizations are irresponsibly racing toward superintelligence despite internal acknowledgments of catastrophic risk. Panelists debate the credibility and viral spread of the resignation, noting sympathetic acknowledgments from lab alignment researchers alongside skepticism regarding researcher motives and the viability of voluntary slowdowns.

Podcast discussions

Sources

  1. 01
  2. 02
    An Alien Mind
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Altman calls for pacing AI progress; Diamandis demands a published alignment plan

After OpenAI claimed a result on one of mathematics' Millennium Prize problems, Sam Altman called it "the strongest evidence yet" for pacing progress. On Moonshots with Peter Diamandis, the panel treated that as the start of an argument rather than the end of one. They discussed a reported researcher resignation and competing estimates of catastrophic risk. Diamandis demanded that the labs publish benchmarks for alignment instead of another model, and other panelists disputed that remedy.

· Updated 13 min read

Version history

  • 25 Sep 2026 · Version 2

    The Diary of a CEO host read Coxon's tweet on air. It says AI builders earnestly believe the technology could kill everyone by the end of the decade and soften this in public. He also read an Anthropic employee's quote-retweet estimating a more than 10 percent chance within a decade and saying there is no plan yet for superintelligence alignment. The host said the tweet had almost 200 million views and built a four-guest extinction debate around it.

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