Tech panic has hit a new high-water mark, following a series of intense viral posts on X by an AI researcher.
Jacob Coxon, who previously worked at OpenAI and Anthropic, claimed last week that the industry must slow down or potentially risk the extinction of humanity.
The posts went viral, launching terrified headlines across the internet. But while the public discourse flew largely in one direction, experts told Straight Arrow that evidence that AI could wipe out humanity doesn’t really exist.
“It’s literally just vibes, there’s no evidence underneath it,” said Andrew Strait, a program director who has worked at Google’s DeepMind, the Ada Lovelace Institute and the U.K.’s Artificial Intelligence Security Institute.
But it is also a complicated issue that has alarmed people and shaped the discourse around how AI should be developed and regulated.
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