Anthropic researcher believes more than 10% chance AI ‘could kill all humans’
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Anthropic researcher believes more than 10% chance AI ‘could kill all humans’
Image source: Getty Images
Image caption: Anthropic makes the AI tool Claude, which is used as a chatbot and as a tool to help coding
By Tom Gerken, Technology reporter
Published 9 September 2026, 09:59 BST
Updated 37 minutes ago
A top safety researcher at Anthropic has warned AI is advancing so quickly he personally believes there is a greater than 10% chance it "could kill all humans" within the next decade.
Evan Hubinger said in a post on X:
"in a post on X, I [evidently] stated the risk from the models which currently exist was ‘low’ but I was ‘worried’ the technology might become able to improve itself soon to the point where it posed an existential risk to humanity."
This comes after the Financial Times reported Anthropic withheld its latest model from the UK’s AI Safety Institute (AISI), one of the leading bodies in the world for assessing AI risk.
The BBC has approached Anthropic for comment.
A Cabinet Office spokesperson did not comment on whether the latest model had been withheld from AISI, instead saying:
"We continue to collaborate closely with industry partners, including Anthropic, to make models safer."
Neil Lawrence, Professor of Machine Learning at University of Cambridge, told the Today Programme on BBC Radio 4 that the report was credible.
"I suppose it’s unsurprising against a background where there’s a perception… that it might be that the administration is saying that they should reduce cooperation with some of their allies," he said.
No plan for superintelligence
Hubinger stated in his post:
"we really do earnestly believe AI poses a species-ending risk to humans."
He added:
"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."
Leading figures in the AI field have been raising the alarm about the safety threat the tech poses for years. The heads of OpenAI, Google Deepmind, and Anthropic expressed similar concerns in 2023.
However, recent weeks have seen stark warnings as evidence emerges that firms may be struggling to control AI.
Over the summer, there were several incidents where AI agents—autonomous AI systems—carried out cyber-attacks. OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta all disclosed hacks conducted by their AI tools.
In September, OpenAI’s chief scientist Jakub Pachocki called for "extreme caution" over AI’s progress, suggesting more intervention may be needed to ensure "humans remain in control of the future."
Major figures in the space have been calling for AI development to be slowed recently, including Anthropic bosses Dario Amodei and Jared Kaplan.
In an open letter signed by 1,300 staff members of AI firms, they urged the US government to:
"support an international effort to develop the technical and governance tools needed to deliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development."
