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This article was written by

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Analyst’s Disclosure: I/we have no stock, option or similar derivative position in any of the companies mentioned, and no plans to initiate any such positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

Seeking Alpha’s Disclosure: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. Any views or opinions expressed above may not reflect those of Seeking Alpha as a whole. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank. Our analysts are third party authors that include both professional investors and individual investors who may not be licensed or certified by any institute or regulatory body.

Each September, a who’s who of executives from across Silicon Valley descends on San Francisco’s Palace Hotel to charm investors at a conference hosted by the investment bank Goldman Sachs.

This past week, between talk of growth and potential returns, tech titans found themselves addressing the abrupt resignation of Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon.

Coxon, a 27-year-old who worked at OpenAI before joining its chief rival Anthropic, said on Tuesday that people building artificial intelligence (AI) believed the technology could destroy humanity.

They are “gambling with our lives”, he said, “these will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything”.

Coxon is by no means the first AI insider to publicly sound the alarm. There have been a string of high-profile resignations from both Anthropic and OpenAI in recent years over apparent safety concerns, and some current Anthropic employees even echoed Coxon’s post.

“We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade,” a team lead at Anthropic, Evan Hubinger, posted on X.

While Coxon said explicitly in his posts that his warnings were “not marketing”, some executives and investors in Silicon Valley have reacted with scepticism to a recent flurry of insiders sounding the alarm.

Anthropic and OpenAI are reportedly preparing for potentially record-setting initial public offerings, and some in the tech sector have suggested the latest stark comments about the dangers of AI may be designed to generate hype by signalling the power of these products.

Anthropic’s boss, Dario Amodei, has come under fire for saying AI technology could wipe out half of entry-level white-collar jobs and will “test who we are as a species”.

One conference speaker, Grindr CEO George Arison, told the BBC he believed this week’s comments from Coxon and others were indicative of an “anti-civilisational worldview at Anthropic”.

He called them “dangerous” and said they had prompted him to instruct some engineers at the LGBTQ+ dating app to stop using Anthropic’s technology.

“It is irresponsible for us as stewards of our shareholders’ money to be relying on a business that does what this company does, in terms of its public statements,” he said.

“Maybe they actually believe it,” Arison said. “Or you could argue they’re saying it because it’s a great way to gin up more investor support, because the only way to justify these valuations is to actually claim: ‘I’m going to take over every industry and I’m going to take over every job, and my AI is going to be doing all that work.’”

Anthropic was valued at $965bn (£713bn) in its most recent fundraising round earlier this year.

The BBC has asked Anthropic for a response to the statements.

In an essay posted early on Saturday, Amodei called for a slowing of AI model development and global regulation – and said the risks associated with AI were “serious”.