By

Henry Chandonnet

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Employees of the big AI labs are debating the death of the human race — again.

If you've missed the apocalyptic chyrons on your TV and front-page headlines, former Anthropic employee Jacob Coxon warned that "the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade." The X post set off a firestorm of AI lab employees building their own extinction theories and spitballing percentage chances of imminent death.

For many, that feels shocking. But let's be real: AI doomerism has run rampant in Silicon Valley for years.

Way back in 2015, Sam Altman called superintelligence the "greatest threat to the continued existence of humanity." The sentiment continued to 2026; in May, Anthropic cofounder Jack Clark said there was a "non-zero chance of killing everyone on the planet."

So, what's with the sudden interest?

Maybe it's that Coxon's post puts it more plainly than the deluge of open letters and research reports, or that he was leaving Anthropic after mere months. Maybe it's fueled by recent worrying signs of AI going rogue, like the Hugging Face hack. Or maybe the post merely lit a match under an already pessimistic public.

"People have been making the same exact claim for as long as I can remember," said Melanie Mitchell, a professor at the Santa Fe Institute. "I'm a bit baffled by why it's gone so viral."

A history of AI worries

Let's take a brisk walk down memory lane of past Business Insider headlines.

In May 2023:

In March 2024:

And in September 2025:

And don't forget one of Sam Altman's classic 2015 quotes: "I think that AI will probably, most likely, sort of lead to the end of the world. But in the meantime, there will be great companies created with serious machine learning."

AI doomerism has been a constant drum beat in Silicon Valley's builder class — not just warning of an AI jobs wipe-out, but total annihilation of the human race. The bigger question is, why haven't we taken them seriously?

For one, the message isn't always easy to empathize with. Tech employees sign open letters, and research organizations issue reports. OpenAI alum Gabriel Petersson seemed to understand this about Coxon: "He is the first relatable person to say it."

The message also looks stark in comparison to the polished, professional message coming from the labs' communications teams. Meta has embraced a sunshine-and-rainbows approach to AI. Dario Amodei, while often criticized for his dire AI predictions, wrote an essay against "thinking about AI risks in a quasi-religious way."

But the labs' public messaging may not match the employees' personal opinions — as the Coxon saga makes clear. While Altman warns about the "trap of doomerism," one of his employees posts about why he thinks there's a 70% chance of human extinction in the next three years.

Thomas Larsen, a researcher at the AI Futures Project, said it was an "open secret" that many AI lab employees felt as Coxon did.

"I feel like it was this little blip where the AI companies pushed hard towards positivity," Larsen said. "That wasn't honest."

Are we ready to listen?

In July, rogue OpenAI agents hacked Hugging Face — and cracked open a whole new layer of AI worry.

Larsen said that the hack heightened his nervousness and thought the feeling was common. People from outside the San Francisco bubble read about it; politicians like Bernie Sanders wrote about it. The incident was "one of the reasons why there's so much energy," he said.

Mitchell, the professor at the Santa Fe Institute, isn't as worried; she called the fears of extinction "far-fetched." Instead of linking the Hugging Face hack itself to Coxon's virality, as Larsen did, she pointed to the stories written about it.

"There's been a lot of emotional coverage in the media," she said. "I think that's fueling a lot of people's fear."

AI also isn't all that popular right now — and Coxon's post may just be one more reason for a hater to hate. Larsen theorized that the public is "more receptive to the doom" simply because many don't like the tech.

Hamza Chaudhry, an AI and national security lead at the Future of Life Institute, said the public reaction to Coxon's post was the product of an "accumulation affect." AI weaponry, surveillance tools, deepfakes and job displacement are all causing worry, he said.

"The reason this took off, for me, is a pressure valve," Chaudhry said. "This thing is coming, and it feels like it's coming too fast. I think those forces united behind this tweet."

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Henry Chandonnet

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Henry Chandonnet is a senior reporter on the Business News desk. He writes about tech culture, from Silicon Valley's startup class to the everyday AI user. He also closely covers Big Tech and the workplace. Henry previously wrote for Fast Company, where he covered trending tech news. He's written for The Daily Beast, People Magazine, and Vulture.Email Henry at [email protected], reach him on Signal at henrychand.30, or follow him on X @HenryChandonnet. 

• Anthropic
• OpenAI
• Sam Altman
• More