Jacob Coxon left OpenAI for Anthropic because of its reputation for AI safety. Now he’s walking away from the industry entirely.
By Jon Small | edited by Dan Bova | Sep 10, 2026
When the people building AI start walking away in fear, it’s worth taking notice.
Jacob Coxon, a researcher at Anthropic who previously worked at OpenAI, is quitting the AI industry over concerns that companies are racing to build systems that could eventually become impossible to control. “We’re on track for a lot of the most aggressive of these scenarios,” Coxon told The Wall Street Journal, warning that by the end of next year, “things could be out of control already.”
Coxon left OpenAI earlier this year for Anthropic because of the company’s reputation for AI safety. But he now believes even Anthropic can’t responsibly pursue AI that can outperform humans across a range of tasks without government intervention or an industrywide slowdown.
