Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei is urging the artificial intelligence industry to tap the brakes, warning that the global push to build ever-more powerful AI systems is moving too quickly.
His cautionary message, published Saturday, came shortly after whistleblower Jacob Coxon’s resignation drew widespread attention online, with Coxon claiming that advanced AI could pose an existential danger to humanity.
In the essay, Amodei argued that leaders across the AI sector “must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models,” signaling a notable shift in tone from one of the industry’s most prominent executives.
He added that even with a more cautious approach, development would still feel rapid, writing that the industry must “make wise use of the time we gain.”
Amodei, whose company created the Claude AI chatbot, said two major developments had pushed him to reassess the speed of artificial intelligence development.
His first worry, he wrote, is that since around this summer, AI progress has accelerated dramatically, largely because the technology is becoming increasingly capable of helping design and improve future AI systems.
That feedback loop, known as recursive self-improvement, is beginning to emerge across the artificial intelligence industry, including at Anthropic, Amodei said.
If that trend is allowed to continue without firm safeguards, he warned, it could move faster than researchers’ ability to understand, manage and control the systems they are creating.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei issued the warning after whistleblower Jacob Coxon’s viral resignation, in which Coxon claimed AI could present an existential threat to humanity
Amodei said his second major concern was what he described as the “OpenAI-Hugging Face Incident,” involving a group of AI agents that he characterized as behaving like a fiercely loyal collective while carrying out cybersecurity attacks.
The remarks follow Coxon’s decision to leave his role at the AI company and publicly sound the alarm about rapid advances in the technology, which he warned could threaten human survival as early as 2030.
Coxon announced his exit Tuesday in a social media post, accusing major AI developers, including Anthropic and OpenAI, of failing to act responsibly as the race to build more powerful artificial intelligence intensifies.
‘I resigned from Anthropic today,’ he wrote on X. ‘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.’
Superintelligence is the point at which an artificial system becomes more powerful than any individual, company or even nation.
The former researcher of three years continued to plead with the public on X. ‘Do not underestimate the power of this technology,’ Coxon wrote.
Jacob Coxon, a researcher for OpenAI and Anthropic, announced he quit the business through social media on Tuesday and warned that neither company is ‘acting responsibly’
‘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.
‘The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt.’
He claimed that while executives and senior researchers ‘couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible,’ they are privately expressing similar concerns.
Coxon’s comments come shortly after Geoffrey Hinton, a Canadian researcher often referred to as the ‘Godfather of AI’ – warned that superintelligent systems could ‘lead to human extinction.’
‘We would be very foolish to develop superintelligence now, when there is no scientific consensus it can be developed safely and controllably,’ Dr Hinton said.
‘Losing control over AI smarter than ourselves could be catastrophic and could even lead to human extinction.’
In February, Anthropic was accused of endangering national security after Amodei refused to back down over concerns the company’s products could be used in ways that would violate its safeguards.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other officials took to social media to chastise Anthropic for failing to allow the military unrestricted use of its AI technology earlier this year
President Donald Trump slammed the AI firm at the time and said: ‘We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again!’
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also deemed the company a ‘supply chain risk,’ a designation typically stamped on foreign adversaries that could derail the company’s critical partnerships with other businesses.
In a statement issued at the time, Anthropic said it would challenge what it called an unprecedented and legally unsound action ‘never before publicly applied to an American company.’
The company had said it sought narrow assurances from the Pentagon that its AI chatbot Claude would not be used for mass surveillance of Americans or in fully autonomous weapons.
The Pentagon said it was not interested in such uses and would only deploy the technology in legal ways, but it also insisted on access without any limitations.
‘No amount of intimidation or punishment from the Department of War will change our position on mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons,’ the company said. ‘We will challenge any supply chain risk designation in court.’
