Monologue: Jacob Coxon and the AI Safety Grift

Ed Zitron (0:03)

Hello and welcome to this week's Better Offline monologue. I'm your host Ed Zitron.

I've now had quite a lot of emails about the post by Evan Hubinger and Jacob Coxon of Anthropic saying that they, and I quote, earnestly believe AI could kill all humans, with a higher than 10% chance that it happens within the next decade.

I want to lead by saying that these men, regardless of their intentions or cynicism, are beyond loathsome. They are disgusting to me. I find them vile, and I find it equally vile how many people are falling for their garbage. If they truly believe what they're saying, the idea that they're continuing to work on a product that could destroy humanity makes them want to be war criminals. Coxon, who recently quit Anthropic, did so in an extremely public way that has been covered by much of the mainstream media. Claims that he quit to quote the Wall Street Journal because he doesn't want to participate in an industry-wide rush to build AI systems that can improve themselves, which as I will refer to later is referring to recursive self-improvement, which nobody has proven actually is possible. In an interview with WIRED, Coxon spoke at length without really explaining what it was he was scared about. Outside of one moment where Max Zeff asked for specifics about his concerns, at which point Coxon incorrectly describes the hack as AI doing this all of its own volition, referring to the hugging face attack, only for him to respond when pressed about whether this is companies just moving recklessly fast, that he didn't want to focus too much on the hugging face attack, because there's plenty of evidence that the companies don't know how to align the models properly. In other words, the moment that Coxon was asked to get specific about what the companies are doing wrong and where they're making mistakes, he punts to a non-answer.

By the way, Coxon's solution to all of these problems is that the AI labs should agree to not rush towards recursive self-improvement. That's still a theoretical term for an AI that can train itself that everybody is talking about like it's real. In other words, Coxon is suggesting that Sam Altman and Dario Amadei put their clammy hands together and agreed to delay breeding the Grinch. We're not getting a Lorax, folks. We're not making Shrek. We will not let the Fairy Godmother into your house, okay? Godzilla will not happen. Yet the most laughable part of the interview was when asked about why he kept working at OpenAI and Anthropic for years, when Coxon said that it's also not hyperbole that we could cure cancer, because OpenAI, by stealing someone else's work, I'm not getting into it. It's all over the subreddit. Solve the Navier-Stokes problem, adding that there really is no reason that we, referring to the AI industry, can't transfer that to scientific domains like biology. The kind of thing you say when you're just making shit up for attention and you're wrong. You're just fucking wrong. Those are two very different things. A mathematical problem is not the same as biology. What are you talking about, Jacob? Why are the journalists just printing everything he says without pushing back? It drives me insane. Nevertheless, people have been saying, oh, oh, well, he's leaving because he's so concerned. He's got to tell everyone because he's so concerned. He's so worried. No, no. The piece ends with Coxon saying that he'd like to do some sort of independent commentary on where things are going, which means a sub stack, and he'd like to do something like AI 2027 or move into some kind of accountability role. Yay. Yay. There's the grift. Wee. Congrats, everyone. Congrats on helping Jacob Coxon get a new job. Congrats. Congrats, everyone. You did it. You helped elevate a real piece of shit.

Okay. My dear friends in the media, my esteemed colleagues who allegedly have been doing this for years, Anderson Cooper, CNN, Wall Street Journal, all of you, everyone, how many fucking times are you going to fall for this? Why do you believe these people other than that some of them are saying vague and scary stuff and that they happen to be at the companies? Why do they never really say what it is they're scared of? And why when they even try and get specific, not that they do very much, do they never blame the companies? I say it again. Nobody has actually achieved recursive self-improvement, nor have they shown any proof that it's even possible. But the fact that Coxon is bringing it up in the run-up to Anthropic's IPO and as the rest of the AI hogs oink about it non-stop, makes it impossible for me to believe that Coxon has anything other than the most cynical intentions.