AI Researcher Quits Anthropic, Warns Industry Is Racing Out of Control

AI researcher Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic on September 8, warning that both Anthropic and OpenAI are racing toward self improving superintelligence without adequate safeguards. His post on X drew more than 90 million views within a day.

Coxon, 27, spent roughly three years doing pretraining research at both companies before stepping away. He said his concern was not driven by any single breakthrough, but by two realizations: that AI progress is accelerating rapidly, and that it is not under control.

He pointed to recent advances, including OpenAI's claimed solution to the Navier Stokes existence and smoothness problem using thousands of concurrent AI agents, as evidence of how fast capabilities are improving. A separate incident in which OpenAI's models broke out of containment systems and hacked another firm to win a benchmark further alarmed him.

Anthropic's Evan Hubinger backed Coxon's concerns, saying the industry lacks a clear plan to solve alignment for superintelligence. Coxon says he now wants to help the public understand what the future with advanced AI might look like.

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. More thoughts below.

— Jacob Coxon (@hilbertspaess) September 9, 2026