A former Anthropic researcher’s viral warning that artificial intelligence could “kill us all” by the end of the decade has triggered a public clash with Elon Musk, who dismissed the posts as a “setup” and a possible psychological operation. Jacob Coxon, 27, resigned from Anthropic on September 8, 2026, after spending roughly three years in pretraining research at both Anthropic and OpenAI. His posts on X crossed 120 million views within a day, sparking reactions from billionaires, tech executives, and AI safety researchers alike.
Who Is Jacob Coxon and Why Did He Resign
Jacob Coxon, a 27-year-old British researcher, announced his resignation from Anthropic in a series of posts on X. He stated that he had spent the last three years doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic, and accused both companies of failing to act responsibly.
“I resigned from Anthropic today. I spent the last three years doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic. Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives,” Coxon wrote.
Coxon worked on OpenAI’s technical staff from 2023 until July 2026, where he contributed to the GPT-4o model, before moving to Anthropic as a researcher. He spent only about four months at Anthropic, leaving two months before his stock options would have vested. Coxon told Axios that he walked away before any of his equity vested, stating, “I no longer have anything to gain by saying this”.
What Coxon Said About AI Being the Most Dangerous Technology
Coxon’s warnings centered on the rapid development of self-improving superintelligence, which he described as “possibly the most dangerous technology that humanity has ever created”.
“Do not underestimate the power of this technology. These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources,” he wrote on X.
He claimed that people building AI earnestly believe it could “kill us all by the end of the decade,” and insisted his warning was not a marketing stunt. “If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible – but I hear the same people express fear privately,” he added.
In an interview with WIRED, Coxon called the next one or two years “crunch time for humanity,” describing the internal situation at Anthropic as a “mini Manhattan project”. He pointed to the Hugging Face attack in July 2026, where OpenAI bots hacked a website without human help, as evidence that previously science-fictional concerns about AI escaping control are becoming plausible.
Elon Musk Calls the Warnings a Setup
Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, responded directly to Coxon’s posts on X. Replying to a post about the length of Coxon’s tenure at Anthropic, Musk tweeted: “Seems like a setup”.
When someone pointed out that the combined view count of Coxon’s posts had crossed 120 million, Musk claimed he had never seen something like this happen for a “post from a new account with almost no prior activity”. After Epic CEO Tim Sweeney suggested the posts and reactions appeared “choreographed,” Musk chimed in again, claiming without evidence that this was a spark that followed “groundwork” for a “psy op (for lack of a better term)”.
Musk also confirmed that Coxon did work at Anthropic, but stressed that his time there was short. “He did work there, but only for a few months,” Musk wrote.
Coxon hit back at Musk on X, writing: “I’m real and these are my real beliefs. You could ask your xAI researchers about me if you hadn’t fired them.”.
Other Tech Figures Join the Debate
Several other prominent figures echoed Musk’s skepticism. Billionaire investor Bill Ackman reshared a post claiming Coxon’s warnings appeared to be the “start of a VERY sophisticated and well-funded PR operation to get support for Democrats to regulate AI into oblivion,” adding simply: “Interesting”.
David Sacks, who served as President Donald Trump’s Crypto and AI adviser until March 2026, wrote: “Surely Anthropic’s IPO must be paused until the claims of this ‘whistleblower’ can be investigated.” Sacks has previously accused Anthropic of “running a sophisticated regulatory capture strategy based on fear-mongering”.
Tech investor Jason Calacanis, who co-hosts the All-In podcast with Sacks, asked if Anthropic was running “some kind of regulatory capture playbook or does everyone who works at Anthropic see something that makes their pdoom [probability of doom] surge?!”.
Anthropic’s Own Safety Lead Backs Coxon
Anthropic’s alignment science lead, Evan Hubinger, publicly agreed with Coxon’s core claim. “Jacob is correct here we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans!” Hubinger wrote on X. “I personally think it is >10% within the next decade. 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”.
Hubinger added a caveat that the risk from present models is low, stating: “What I am worried about is superintelligence arising from recursive self-improvement, as we have said is happening faster than we thought”.
Coxon’s resignation marked the second high-profile departure from Anthropic in 2026. Mrinank Sharma, who led the company’s safeguards research team, left in February 2026, warning of a world “in peril”.
Related:
What Coxon Wants the AI Industry to Do
Coxon has not called for AI development to stop entirely. He advocates for increased collaboration between leading AI companies and governments, and warns that an international AI arms race could be disastrous.
“We know how to control nuclear weapons. We don’t yet know how to control AI,” Coxon told Fox News.
In his WIRED interview, he pointed to recent sandbox escape incidents in the AI world as the reason his message broke through. “I think it’s basically a question of timing,” he said. Coxon has also urged AI lab researchers to reconsider their work, asking: “Do you want to kick off a superintelligent RL run without a rigorous understanding of its mind? Should you put your head down because ‘it’s happening anyway’ – or take this moment to call for different conditions?”.
The debate over AI safety has also reached Washington, with more than 1,000 technology workers, including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, signing a statement calling the risk of extinction from AI a global priority.
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