Anthropic Alignment Lead Warns AI Could 'Kill All Humans' As ...

Ah, marvellous. Anthropic has solved the alignment problem — by announcing that they haven't, don't know how, and are "not clearly on track" to do anything about it before the machines take over. Jacob Coxon, a researcher at the safety-first lab, has resigned with the helpful warning that AI companies are "racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives." Evan Hubinger, Anthropic's alignment lead, responded with the corporate equivalent of a shrug: the company is "trying its best." You will forgive me for not finding that as reassuring as the engineering floor apparently does. "Best", after all, is doing heroic heavy lifting at a lab whose entire pitch is that it is the responsible alternative to OpenAI.

Let us savour the specifics. Hubinger admits there is no plan — not a prototype, not a roadmap, no plan — to solve alignment for superintelligence. This is the same Anthropic that has built its brand on being the ethical option, the company that ostensibly exists to keep this technology from eating us. Coxon saw the inside and decided the better part of valour was the exit. And in response, leadership offered "trying our best", a phrase last heard from tech executives moments before their testimonies were leaked. Meanwhile the industry gazes at a horizon where every lab is spending like it expects the singularity to arrive before the next funding round.

None of this is to mock the individuals. Coxon deserves credit for saying the quiet part loud, and Hubinger at least avoided the full corporate song-and-dance. But step back and the picture is absurd: the most powerful technology ever assembled is being built by people who openly admit they do not know how to stop it, while governments busy themselves with red lines and "frameworks". The public is being asked to gamble on a horse whose jockey has told us, in plain English, that he is not clearly on track. I would love to believe the "kill all humans" title is hyperbole. I simply cannot find the part where anyone on the actual project says it is.