What’s behind the AI industry’s latest warnings of doom?

The AI industry seems to be having its loudest debate yet about whether its technology poses an existential threat to humanity.

The current discussion began after AI researcher Jacob Coxon said that he’s resigned from Anthropic because he’s worried that the leading AI companies are “gambling with our lives.” Then Anthropic’s alignment leaned chimed in with a post declaring, “We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans!” adding that he personally thinks the chance is “>10% within the next decade.”

On the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane, and I discussed the latest apocalyptic warnings. I tried to articulate why I’m skeptical of many AI doomer narratives, while Kirsten asked if this was “just a weird way of flexing to show how far advanced their company’s AI model is,” particularly as these companies prepare to go public.

And Sean wondered how these concerns might show up in Anthropic’s S-1 filing for its IPO: “Are there junior lawyers right now who are going through and having to rewrite that entire section of the S-1 filing to say, ‘It’s a officially Anthropic’s position that there’s a more than 10% chance that we could develop something that would eradicate all of humanity and that would be materially bad for our business’?”