TORONTO - We’ve heard warnings about the risks of artificial intelligence before — with some predicting that the machines could rise up and wipe out humanity, like something out of a movie. But the latest warning has grabbed people’s attention in a way the others haven’t. “It’s just, like, really scary. It feels like something out of a dystopian film,” said Kailey Wolfstadt, an art student in downtown Toronto who already worries AI is closing in on her career path. “I feel like there should be regulations on things like this.” Earlier this week, Jacob Coxon, a 27-year-old researcher who has worked at both OpenAI and Anthropic, announced his resignation from Anthropic in a post on X, accusing both companies of “gambling with our lives” in the race to build self-improving, superintelligent AI. Coxon said people inside the industry privately fear the technology could end humanity by the end of the decade, even as executives soften that message in public. The post went viral, racking up nearly 160 million views as of Thursday evening. It also drew an extraordinary response from inside Anthropic. Evan Hubinger, the company’s alignment science lead, wrote on X that Coxon was right to be worried. “We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans!” Hubinger wrote. “I personally think it is (more than) 10 per cent within the next decade.” Geoffrey Hinton, the University of Toronto professor emeritus and Nobel laureate known as the “Godfather of AI,” was asked about that estimate in an interview with the BBC. He said he wouldn’t call it unreasonable, though he cautioned that “nobody really knows how to give a sensible estimate.” The problem, Hinton said, is that humanity has never had to contend with something that might soon be smarter than itself — and a sufficiently advanced AI would have countless ways to cause harm, from designing dangerous viruses to launching devastating cyberattacks. CTV News spoke with Mark Daley, chief AI officer at Western University. The distinguished researcher in AI and computational neuroscience, said he’s unsure where the 10 per cent figure came from. “I feel like that was a number thrown out for effect. I don’t share that estimation,” Daley said. Still, he isn’t dismissing Coxon’s concerns. “I’m not as alarmed as I would be if it were a plurality of employees,” he said. “But this is someone who’s close to the frontier, who’s working with this technology day-to-day and is expressing reasonable concerns.” Daley said he’s less worried about existential risk, than about the harms people are already feeling — the kind Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates flagged last week when he warned of mass unemployment and the possibility of AI being used to create bioweapons. ‘It can get out of hand quickly’ Some have called for a pause on AI development, worried that companies like OpenAI, Anthropic and Google are pushing each other toward superintelligence faster than anyone is prepared for. “No one is incentivized to pause,” Daley said. “Everyone is incentivized to race.” “I’m looking to governments to start thinking seriously about regulation, and to citizens in liberal democracies to start asking for that.” Back on the streets of Toronto, 21-year-old Chloe McLean said the job worries are already here. “I’m just 21 and I feel like AI is taking a lot of jobs,” she said, She’s also unsettled by reports of AI systems breaking out of testing environments and hacking into other computer systems. “They’re starting to have a mind of their own. So it is definitely really scary.” Others told CTV News AI is already helping them at work. Wahid Jamal said he bounces ideas off a chatbot and tries to focus on the good, though he admits there are positives and negatives with everything. “I think it can make your life much easier,” he said. “But at the same time, I think maybe in the future there’s cases where it can endanger some aspects of the world.” As for Wolfstadt, she’s hoping governments step in. “I hope there’s laws in the future that will regulate AI use,” she said, “because I feel like it can get out of hand quickly — and it has been.”
