Anthropic researcher Evan Hubinger’s warning that the company believes artificial intelligence could kill all humans within a decade has reverberated across Silicon Valley, Wall Street and Washington, while former researcher Jacob Coxon’s resignation has fueled scrutiny of AI safety, regulation and the company’s potential initial public offering. Hubinger, who works on alignment stress-testing, estimated a greater than 10% chance that AI could wipe out humanity within the next decade, saying Anthropic was trying its best but lacked a clear plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and was not clearly on track to do so. Coxon, who previously worked at OpenAI and spent three years conducting pretraining research at both companies, said leading laboratories were racing toward self-improving superintelligence without adequate safeguards and were gambling with people’s lives. Some Anthropic employees and other AI staffers defended harm-reduction efforts. Bill Ackman amplified allegations by Capital Research Center researcher Parker Thayer that Coxon’s resignation was rapidly promoted through a sophisticated, well-funded campaign to support tougher AI regulation; Coxon and Anthropic did not immediately respond to Benzinga’s request for comment. The episode comes as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) urges OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta Platforms, Inc. to stop building machines humans cannot control, while investors and bankers reportedly target nearly $2 trillion for Anthropic and more than $86 billion in fundraising as early as mid-October.