Wall Street Lunch: Anthropic Alignment Lead Says AI Could Kill All Humans Within Next Decade

AI could potentially cause catastrophic harm to humanity within the next decade, with Anthropic’s alignment work still lacking a clear solution for the risks posed by increasingly capable systems, according to Evan Hubinger, Alignment Science Lead at Anthropic (ANTHRO).

Hubinger said in a post on X that he "earnestly" believes AI could kill all humans, putting his personal estimate of the probability at more than 10% within the next decade. He said Anthropic is “trying its best,” but that the company does not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and is not clearly on track to do so.

In addition, Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon publicly resigned. "I spent the last three years doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic," Coxon posted. "Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives."

Coxon warned that there will soon be "superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources."

"The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade," Coxon warned.

Looking to geopolitics, three weeks until bootlegging starts back up at the Canadian border. The United States imposed sweeping import restrictions on Canadian alcoholic beverages, motorcycles, and dairy products (the three Cs of Carling, choppers and calcium), escalating the trade war. The import bans, which go into effect on Sept. 29, came after Canada's own retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods took effect after midnight on Tuesday. The U.S. bans spirits, including Canada’s famous whiskies, and beers. The dairy ban covers whey protein, invert molasses, cane molasses and non-alcoholic beer (somehow). In addition to the import bans, several cheese products were placed on a list facing a 50% tariff. So, no more Seven & Sevens, folks. You’ll have to make do with Sazerac & Sprite.

Among active stocks, Meta Platforms (META) is the top S&P gainer after unveiling its standalone AI agent Muse, which has yet to weigh on its view of humanity. KeyBanc analyst Justin Patterson says if “Muse can build a monthly (and ideally, daily or weekly) audience in the hundreds of millions over the coming months” it would be a success, with engagement the initial barometer and “monetization following over time.”

Casey's General Stores (CASY) is the biggest S&P decliner after a Q2 earnings beat failed to match more high-flying expectations. But the sell-side is coming to its defense. Jefferies analyst Corey Tarlowe recommended buying weakness on continued comparable sales growth, margin expansion and an unchanged outlook.

Chewy (CHWY) is choppy after it boosted its full-year outlook bu...