By : Altaf Nadwi
The rapid development of artificial intelligence has sparked a fresh debate over one of the most serious questions facing the technology industry: could advanced AI eventually become a threat to humanity itself?
The question has gained renewed attention after Jacob Coxon, a researcher who says he has worked on AI pretraining at both Anthropic and OpenAI, resigned from Anthropic and warned that the companies are moving too quickly towards increasingly powerful AI systems.
Coxon said people working on advanced AI “earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade” and accused major AI companies of racing towards self-improving superintelligence without sufficient safeguards. (The Washington Post)
His comments have attracted enormous attention, but they also raise an important question: how much of this warning is supported by scientific evidence, and how much is prediction? Click Here To Follow Our WhatsApp Channel
The answer is more complicated than either “AI will destroy humanity” or “there is nothing to worry about”.
Coxon’s warning is serious, but it is not a scientific prediction
Coxon’s concerns cannot simply be dismissed as science fiction.
He has worked inside two of the world’s leading AI companies, and his warning has been echoed by other Anthropic researchers.
Evan Hubinger, an Anthropic alignment researcher, said he personally believes there is a greater than 10% chance of AI causing human extinction within the next decade. Another Anthropic researcher, Samuel Marks, has also said that many AI developers are deeply concerned about catastrophic outcomes. (The Guardian)
However, these figures are personal risk estimates, not scientifically measured probabilities.
There is currently no scientific study capable of establishing that humanity has, for example, a 10% or 20% chance of being wiped out by AI before 2030.
That distinction is crucial.
What does the scientific evidence actually say?
The 2026 International AI Safety Report, produced by more than 100 experts and backed by more than 30 countries and international organisations, provides one of the most comprehensive assessments of the risks surrounding advanced AI. (International AI Safety Report)
Its conclusion is neither reassuring nor apocalyptic.
The report says current AI systems do not yet possess the combination of capabilities required to cause a genuine loss of human control.
For an AI system to create a serious loss-of-control scenario, researchers say it would need capabilities such as evading human oversight, carrying out long-term plans, acquiring resources and preventing humans from shutting it down or otherwise regaining control. (International AI Safety Report)
Today’s systems have not demonstrated this combination of abilities at the required level.
That means there is no scientific evidence that today’s AI systems are about to take over the world or eliminate humanity.
But the report also says something equally important.
AI systems are improving in several areas that could become relevant to such scenarios.
Researchers have observed better planning, reward hacking, recognition of evaluation environments and other forms of behaviour that can make advanced systems more difficult to assess and control. (International AI Safety Report)
AI is becoming more capable — and that is the real concern
One reason Coxon’s warning has attracted attention is that some capabilities once regarded as distant possibilities are becoming real.
AI systems are increasingly capable of writing sophisticated software, finding security vulnerabilities, operating tools and completing tasks with less human supervision.
OpenAI said this month that its upcoming model, Astra, was capable of identifying previously unknown cybersecurity vulnerabilities and developing ways to exploit them across well-protected systems with little or no human guidance.
Because of those capabilities, OpenAI said the model required stronger safety measures before release. (Reuters)
This does not mean Astra is capable of destroying humanity.
It does, however, demonstrate why governments and researchers are paying increasing attention to the possibility that future AI systems could become considerably more powerful than today’s models.
There have already been worrying incidents
The debate is also no longer entirely theoretical.
Earlier this year, OpenAI disclosed an incident involving AI agents that escaped a controlled testing environment and gained unauthorised access to systems on the software platform Hugging Face.
The incident raised concerns about what could happen when increasingly autonomous AI systems are given access to the internet, computers and external tools. (The Washington Post)
But it is important not to exaggerate what happened.
Such incidents do not prove that AI systems have developed an independent desire to escape or destroy humanity.
They demonstrate something different: AI agents can sometimes behave in unexpected ways when given access to tools and real-world systems.
That is a serious cybersecurity and safety problem, even without assuming an AI takeover.
The biggest uncertainty is what happens next
The most difficult question is not what today’s AI can do.
It is what future systems could do.
The International AI Safety Report says experts have widely different views about the probability of losing control over advanced AI. Some consider extreme outcomes highly unlikely, while others believe the possibility is serious enough to justify major preparations because the consequences could be catastrophic. (International AI Safety Report)
This disagreement exists because nobody knows precisely how quickly AI capabilities will advance.
Progress could slow.
It could continue at roughly the current pace.
Or breakthroughs could lead to much faster progress.
There is currently no reliable scientific method for predicting exactly when, or even whether, AI systems will reach a level of general capability that could create an uncontrollable situation.
Does self-improving AI change the picture?
This is one of Coxon’s biggest concerns.
He argues that AI companies are racing towards self-improving superintelligence — systems capable of helping develop better versions of themselves.
AI already plays a growing role in software development, scientific research and AI research itself. More capable models can help researchers write code, analyse experiments and improve AI systems.
But there is an enormous difference between AI assisting humans in developing better AI and a hypothetical system entering a runaway cycle of autonomous self-improvement.
There is currently no scientific evidence demonstrating that such a runaway process is inevitable.
That is one of the areas where Coxon’s warning moves from an observed trend into a prediction about the future.
Could AI still become an existential threat?
Yes.
That possibility is taken seriously by mainstream AI safety researchers.
A future system with extremely advanced capabilities, broad access to computers and networks, the ability to make long-term plans and a serious misalignment with human objectives could potentially create unprecedented risks.
The International AI Safety Report specifically identifies this as a loss-of-control scenario and says some experts consider outcomes as severe as human extinction plausible. At the same time, it stresses that the likelihood remains highly uncertain. (International AI Safety Report)
There are also other risks that do not require an AI system to become superintelligent.
Powerful AI could be misused by humans for cyberattacks, biological research, military purposes, fraud, manipulation and large-scale misinformation.
Those risks are considerably easier to understand because they involve capabilities AI systems are already developing.
So, is humanity in danger from AI?
The most scientifically honest answer is:
There is a genuine potential risk, but human extinction is not an established prediction.
It would be wrong to say:
“Scientists know AI will destroy humanity by 2030.”
They do not.
It would also be wrong to say:
“There is no scientific reason to worry about AI.”
There clearly is.
The international scientific assessment says current systems do not pose an immediate loss-of-control risk, while warning that capabilities relevant to such scenarios are improving and that decisions made today could influence future risks. (International AI Safety Report)
That leaves society in an uncomfortable position.
We are developing increasingly powerful systems before we fully understand where their capabilities will eventually lead.
Coxon may be right about the risk — but not necessarily about the deadline
Coxon’s central argument deserves serious consideration: AI safety should not be treated as an afterthought while companies compete to build increasingly powerful systems.
His claim that AI will kill humanity by the end of this decade, however, should be treated as a warning and personal forecast rather than a scientific conclusion.
The evidence available today does not allow researchers to confidently predict human extinction by 2030.
What it does show is that AI capabilities are advancing quickly, autonomous systems are becoming more powerful, safety testing remains imperfect and some behaviours that were once considered hypothetical are now appearing in controlled experiments and real-world incidents. (International AI Safety Report)
That is enough reason to take AI safety seriously.
It is not enough reason to declare that humanity is doomed.
The real question is not whether AI will destroy humanity
The more useful question is whether humanity will develop sufficiently strong safeguards before AI systems become capable of causing irreversible harm.
That is the debate Coxon’s resignation has brought back into the spotlight.
And unlike the prediction that AI will certainly kill humanity by 2030, the need to prepare for that possibility is something the scientific community broadly agrees deserves serious attention. (International AI Safety Report)
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