US legislators push AI safety laws amid human extinction warnings

Current and former artificial intelligence researchers in the United States have issued dire warnings that the technology could soon lead to human extinction, capturing the attention of lawmakers in Washington.

The most recent warning came in a lengthy social media post by Jacob Coxon, a San Francisco-based researcher who announced his resignation from Anthropic on Tuesday evening.

“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,” Coxon said in his post, which prompted a flurry of responses by AI experts also sounding the alarm.

Evan Hubinger, a current Alignment Science lead at Anthropic, echoed his remarks, saying , “we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade. I believe Anthropic is trying its best, but we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not clearly on track to”.

Coxon declined Al Jazeera’s request for an interview. Hubinger did not respond.

On Wednesday, congressman Josh Gottheimer, a Democrat, and Mike Lawler, a Republican, introduced a bipartisan House bill aimed at preventing AI systems from operating on their own without human oversight.

The Stop Rogue AI Act would ensure that federal agencies have the tools and ability to spot dangerous AI systems running on their networks and shut them down before they can cause harm.

Independent Senator Bernie Sanders and House congressional Representative Greg Casar, a Democrat, also ramped up calls for their proposed legislation that would ban the development and deployment of artificial superintelligence. The legislation would also pause AI development until federal safety rules are put in place. Sanders is also reportedly convening a bipartisan briefing to address the elevated risks posed by AI.