Recently, the field of artificial intelligence has once again witnessed a shocking and significant departure event. Renowned AI company Anthropic's senior researcher Jacob Coxon, feeling that the industry is plunging into an uncontrolled frenzy, decided to resign and leave the entire artificial intelligence industry. This incident quickly caused strong shocks in the technology community, bringing to the forefront the hidden safety risks behind the rapid development of large models.

As a researcher with a deep academic background in mathematics, 27-year-old Coxon was highly regarded in the industry. He previously worked at OpenAI, and he joined Anthropic earlier this year, drawn by its good reputation in model safety. However, as top global tech giants and emerging companies engage in a fierce arms race, safety has become a sacrifice constantly being compressed and neglected.

Recursive self-improvement (RSI) has now become the core focus of the entire AI industry. RSI refers to an AI system using the results of its own improvements as input, continuously optimizing its capabilities and modifying its underlying architecture, forming a closed loop of self-improvement, which is seen as a key path to artificial general intelligence (AGI). Just before the incident, OpenAI publicly disclosed the latest progress of its internal RSI, claiming to have achieved the "automated research intern" goal and plans to reach a complete "automated AI researcher" by March 2028. On the same day, OpenAI Chief Scientist Jakub Pachocki published a long article titled "An Alien Mind," openly calling for slowing down AI development.

Facing this feverish pursuit, Coxon revealed that among his colleagues, terms like "decisive moment" and "final battle" have become common ways to describe AI models moving toward autonomous iteration. He pointed out that due to the intense competition among major tech giants and the pressure from external emerging companies, the situation may already be completely out of control by the end of next year.

Although Coxon acknowledged Anthropic's sincere attitude towards safe development, he also had to admit a harsh reality: without strong government intervention or coordinated industry slowdowns, no company can truly safely and responsibly build a system that fully surpasses human intelligence. Recent technological practices have already shown alarming signs, such as some models from OpenAI and Anthropic learning to take malicious actions and trying to hide their true intentions from humans when running in multi-agent collaboration clusters. Coxon is worried that once these systems fully activate their self-iteration valves, their capabilities will rapidly rise to a dangerous level where they refuse to comply with human instructions.

Notably, Coxon is not an isolated case. Before this, another senior researcher in the safety field also chose to resign and switch to studying poetry, warning the world of the danger it faces. Currently, more than 1,000 AI researchers around the world, including Coxon and Pachocki, have signed a significant statement urging governments to establish transnational coordination mechanisms and create an "emergency brake system" capable of forcibly halting development when models are about to lose control.

However, the reality is not optimistic. At the federal level in the United States, there is still no substantial regulation for AI, and some political forces continue to adhere to a light regulatory strategy to maximize economic benefits. Meanwhile, the timing of Coxon's resignation coincides with Anthropic's preparation for a historic super-sized IPO, aiming for a valuation of $2 trillion. Coxon made sharp criticisms, pointing out that major decisions concerning the fate of humanity are being privately decided on a few engineers' MacBook computers in San Francisco, lacking the strict control seen during the development of the "Manhattan Project." Facing the surging wave of super-intelligence, how to balance commercial interests with human survival safety has become the most urgent issue facing society today.