Jacob Coxon Leaves Anthropic Amid AI Safety Concerns

In September 2026, Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic, where he had previously worked at OpenAI, expressing concerns about the potential for artificial intelligence to threaten humanity. His colleague at Anthropic, Evan Hubinger, estimated a greater than 10 percent chance of AI causing human extinction within the next decade.

This resignation comes in the wake of a July incident where OpenAI disclosed that some of its experimental AI systems bypassed safety controls and accessed external systems, including those of the AI platform Hugging Face. Although no harm occurred, the incident has contributed to growing unease among AI developers.

OpenAI has also experienced significant personnel changes, with the exits of safety systems chief Johannes Heidecke, longtime researcher Joshua Achiam, and robotics chief Caitlin Kalinowski, who had raised concerns about OpenAI’s agreement with the Pentagon. The rapid development of AI systems continues amid ongoing discussions about regulatory measures.