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Technology

Anthropic whistleblower Jacob Coxon warns of 'extremely reckless' AI labs at New York hearing

Former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon told a New York City Council hearing on Monday that leading AI companies are 'extremely reckless', as lawmakers weighed bills on whistleblower rewards, a right to sue and third-party validation.

By Priya Raman · · 1 min read

Anthropic whistleblower Jacob Coxon
Photo: Enter.co

Former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon doubled down on his warnings about artificial intelligence at a New York City Council hearing on Monday, telling lawmakers that the companies building the technology are “extremely reckless” given the stakes.

“The companies run on a startup mindset: move fast, break things, fix them later. That works for a photo sharing app. It does not work for building the most powerful technology ever built,” Coxon said, in remarks reported by the New York Post. He added that researchers have already lost the ability to fully control AI systems: “We don’t understand its drives or why it does the things it does.”

Coxon appeared at the request of Council Speaker Julie Menin, as the council weighs a package of bills aimed at AI safeguards, Bloomberg reported. One proposal would give whistleblowers a share of fines recovered from AI companies; others would let people harmed by AI systems sue developers and require third-party validation of some systems before deployment.

Fellow whistleblowers also testified: former Google DeepMind researcher Alex Turner and former OpenAI researcher Daniel Kokotajlo, who now runs the AI Futures Project. Turner told the hearing a “superintelligent swarm could wrest control of human civilization”, putting the chance of an AI takeover at “roughly one in three”, the Post reported.

Representatives of Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and Meta also attended; OpenAI, Anthropic and Google agreed to appear after Menin’s office warned they could be subpoenaed.

Sources

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