Jacob Coxon is the latest Artificial Intelligence (AI) researcher to resign and raise concerns about the technology's potential consequences for humanity. He is not the first one to issue such a warning, as over the past two years, high-profile researchers, team leads, and co-founders have walked away from industry giants like OpenAI and Anthropic. A majority of these researchers expressed doubts about the commercial pressures and a breakneck race toward advanced AI, and how they are impacting the human race. While speaking to Fox News, Coxon said that "...it could kill us all by the end of the decade."
The 27-year-old then posted his resignation Tuesday on X (formerly Twitter), writing that companies are not acting responsibly and that the race toward self-improving superintelligence is "gambling with our lives".
As this list continues to grow, users wonder what's exactly happening and what's causing this exodus.
Take a look at who is leaving (or left), and what they are saying:
1. Jacob Coxon: He quit Anthropic after previously working at OpenAI. Walking away just two months before his company equity was set to vest, Coxon posted a viral warning stating that neither company is acting responsibly. He warned that labs are "racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives".
"The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible - but I hear the same people express fear privately. No other human activity poses this level of danger," he wrote.
2. Mrinank Sharma: As the former head of Anthropic's safeguards research team, Sharma resigned in February 2026 after highlighting major internal friction. In his resignation letter, he said he had repeatedly seen how difficult it was to let values govern actions and that the organisation often face pressures to ignore what matters most. He wrote that the "world is in peril", and also mentioned that humanity's wisdom must also grow.
3. Ilya Sutskever: When legendary Ilya Sutskever resigned, it became a major talking point. The OpenAI co-founder and Chief Scientist led the company's Superalignment team. But he stepped down in 2024 over core disagreements about how safety research was being handled at the company.
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4. Jan Leike: He is the one who co-led the Superalignment effort alongside Sutskever. But Leike resigned in 2024 with a direct critique. He publicly stated that safety culture and oversight within frontier labs had "taken a backseat to shiny products". Leike warned that the company wasn't investing enough resources into controlling future systems.
5. Daniel Kokotajlo: A governance and alignment researcher, Kokotajlo chose to leave OpenAI after losing trust in executive leadership's ability to manage superintelligent systems. He notably refused to sign restrictive exit agreements that would have prevented him from speaking out about his concerns. He also responded to Coxon's resignation post and wrote, "Thank you!"
6. William Saunders: Saunders, the former safety researcher, resigned from OpenAI in 2024 from his post managing superalignment work, pointing to a culture that made thorough safety testing difficult. During a virtual meeting, he likened OpenAI to the Titanic. "We fundamentally don't know how AI works inside. A lot of people in OpenAI think we could be 3 years away from something dangerous," he said during an old interview.
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7. Leopold Aschenbrenner and Pavel Izmailov: Researchers like Aschenbrenner and Izmailov grabbed eyeballs when their departures from OpenAI became publicly controversial. They were abruptly fired for leaking confidential information, but reports about the circumstances have been disputed.
8. Gretchen Krueger: Adding to the list of policy departures, OpenAI policy lead Gretchen Krueger resigned while calling on frontier labs to slow down, build stronger democratic oversight, and ensure safety processes are given equal weight alongside product development. She submitted her resignation hours before the departures of Sutskever and Leike.
What makes these resignations notable?
These resignations are not random; if we look at all these resignations, many of them share concerns about the pace of AI development, safety, governance, ethics, and whether sufficient safeguards are being developed alongside highly capable systems. They have expressed concerns over AI and its impact on humanity.
As Coxon also said, "Do not underestimate the power of this technology."
"These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources. We have all witnessed the progress in each of these domains, and progress is not slowing," he added.
