NYC Council hearing on AI risks: What Jacob Coxon, others told policymakers

The New York City Council held a hearing on Monday, October 5, to discuss the risks that artificial intelligence (AI) poses to humanity. Former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, who resigned last month over AI safety concerns, reiterated his warnings about the potential for AI to lead to human extinction by the end of the decade.

AI safety researchers from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Meta testified before the Council, sharing their concerns about a reckless culture at tech firms racing to develop advanced AI technology without fully understanding how to control it. The tech industry representatives called for greater oversight by local governments, as they acknowledged the potential dangers of advanced AI systems.

The hearing comes as New York Governor Kathy Hochul and other policymakers worldwide explore measures to strengthen AI safety and transparency. Some industry leaders, such as Elon Musk and Donald Trump, dismissed these concerns as trivial, while Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei had previously called for a slowdown in frontier AI efforts to allow for safer development.