This is the full text of a post first published on Obsolete, a Substack that I write about the political economy of AI. I’m a freelance journalist and the author of a forthcoming book called Obsolete: The AI Industry's Trillion-Dollar Race to Replace Us—and How to Stop It (Sept 29). Consider subscribing to stay up to date with my work.

Last week, former OpenAI researcher Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic with a dire warning, writing, “The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt.” To AI insiders, this wasn’t news, but after the seemingly never-ending Holy Shit AI Is A Big Deal newscycle kicked off by revelations that OpenAI agents autonomously cyberattacked Hugging Face, Coxon's message broke through in a way nothing else ever has. Of course, his message's resonance has prompted conspiracy theories from the usual suspects. But no astroturf campaign can wrack up over 100 million views on X in a day. Because if it could, the AI industry would have a much better image.

As a journalist, sometimes you grind for months or years to land a scoop — exclusive, newsworthy [...]

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Outline:

(05:04) Leading the what now?

(09:03) What could possibly give you that impression?

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First published:
September 14th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Lv4C4bCi2JD3nTXgs/openai-says-it-s-not-responsible-for-the-leading-the-future

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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“OpenAI Says It’s Not Responsible for the Leading the Future Super PAC. But Only Its Employees Seem to Believe That.” by garrison

LessWrong (30+ Karma)

“OpenAI Says It’s Not Responsible for the Leading the Future Super PAC. But Only Its Employees Seem to Believe That.” by garrison