Should We Be Afraid of AI Destroying Us in the Next Decade?

OpenAI and Anthropic "are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives." Jacob Coxon, former Anthropic AI researcher.

From Aleteia

By Philip Kosloski

Former AI researchers continue to raise the alarm, warning us that the AI race could have major consequences.

Recently, the Internet has been in a flurry as Jacob Coxon, former Anthropic AI researcher, posted a warning on his X account. He wrote, "I resigned from Anthropic today. I spent the last three years doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic. Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives."

What was most alarming was what he wrote next: "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."

While it may seem like it could be a post from a disgruntled employee, Coxon is not alone, as fellow researchers in his field have stepped forward to affirm this reality.

This comes at a time when an AI agent went rogue and hacked another AI company, without any human direction. It literally broke protocol and did something on its own, infiltrating another company's data.

In many ways this seems as if it's out of a science fiction novel, and has raised many people's anxiety levels, making people ask, "Could humanity be wiped out by an insidious AI agent?"

Jesus and the End Times

When Coxon boldly claims that AI "could kill us all by the end of the decade," he touches a nerve that brings to mind every apocalypse warning that has ever been made.

People have worried about mass extinction from a variety of causes, such as a potential World War III, or even as simple as the Y2K bug at the start of the 2000s. What these predictions can do is cause an unnecessary amount of anxiety, especially when viewed in the light of scripture.

This is not to dismiss every cause of alarm, as we certainly should do everything we can to avoid a World War III, or to stop AI companies from building an AI agent that could openly target humans. Pope Leo XIV has continually alerted the world about the dangers of AI. We certainly shouldn't just sit around and watch our world crumble.

But at the same time, we need to have confidence and trust that God is in control of history. Often what these alarms create within us is the idea that the world is currently in chaos, with no one to save us.

The reality is that while the world may seem to be in disarray, God is there at our side. He can save us. All we need to do is turn to him.

We don't know when the world will end or even how. Maybe AI will turn against us, as in the movie The Terminator, and try to erase humans from existence.

Whatever the future may be, what we need to do right now is to turn to God and trust in him. We have a Savior who wants to save us from our sins. The problem is that we too often try to save ourselves through the works of our hands.

What we need to do is open our arms and to let God embrace us with his love. He keeps on trying to knock on the door of our heart, but we keep on turning away from him. It really doesn't matter when the world will end, because what matters the most is our salvation. Don't wait until tomorrow, be a saint today.