AI experts are continuing to sound the alarm that growing advances in artificial intelligence could lead to the end of humanity as we know it. Meanwhile, other prominent leaders don’t appear quite ready to hit the panic button.
Jacob Coxon, an AI engineer who resigned from Anthropic, posted on X Sept. 9 that AI developers are “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.”
“Do not underestimate the power of this technology,” Coxon posted. “These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources. We have all witnessed the progress in each of these domains, and progress is not slowing.”
Coxon isn’t the only one raising these concerns. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Sam Altman of OpenAI, and Elon Musk are among those who are voicing similar fears about AI — and that guardrails are needed.
Amodei also shared about the need for developers to “slow down,” and Anthropic has reportedly already made some related decisions in response to the growing concerns. “I believe that if slowing down bought us even an extra year or two before models reach critical levels of capability … we could greatly reduce the risk that something goes seriously wrong,” he said, according to the Associated Press.
Not ready to slow down
While AI leaders are asking for more regulations, not everyone is on board — this includes the president. Competition with other countries is too strong to pump the breaks, President Trump noted.
“We can put guardrails, we can do this and that, but I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up that … shouldn’t be bringing it up, and they’re bringing up things that won’t happen,” Trump told recently reporters, AP reported. “But whoever wins with AI wins.”
Vice President JD Vance also noted in a separate conversation with reporters, according to the New York Post, “I have to say, just personally, I feel a little bit weird about the fact that you have so many frontier AI tech companies kind of coming to the government and begging the government to regulate them. It feels a little bit to me like a bit of a trojan horse.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) was reportedly working to bring AI companies together to work out a plan for next steps.
Apocalyptic fears nothing new
One Baptist seminary leader also seemed resistant to declare panic following the latest headlines.
Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, noted Sept. 14 on The Briefing podcast that these types of concerns are not new — and go all the way back to the creation of the atomic bomb.
There were physicists at that time, Mohler noted, who “were afraid that it would set the entire atmosphere ablaze ending basically, life on earth,” he said. “That was an opinion of a minority of the physicists and other scientists there — and it turned out they weren’t right.”
He added, “The point is there were very credible people who thought, ‘You know, if we start this kind of atomic explosion, we might not be able to end it.’ Very similar arguments now about artificial intelligence, and these have been around for a while.
“And at the international level, this is the argument that is being used saying, ‘American firms need to do this because Chinese firms are going to be pressing ahead. And if they are the ones to come up with the latest and the most cutting-edge innovations, it just might be they would use that at the expense of the United States and our allies.’”
But some, Mohler added, may also wonder if all of the growing alarm is a publicity stunt.
Remembering Who is in control
Ultimately, Mohler said, God is in control. “God created all of it. The creator, God of the universe created everything that is, and he holds all things together,” he said.
Jim Denison of the Denison Forum agreed Christians should not lose sight of Scripture.
“The only safe way to face the end of history is to be ready for it to end today,” he wrote Sept. 14 on his website. “Our greatest fear should not be that AI could end life on this planet, but that we are not ready for the day when God does.”
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was compiled by Shawn Hendricks of The Baptist Paper from various news outlets.
