Anthropic researchers' plans to 'escape' the Bay Area
A Tencent Tech report republished by 36Kr says some of Anthropic's earliest researchers are considering buying land in remote parts of the US as a refuge if AI goes out of control. It traces a decade-plus of the Bay Area AI-safety scene: from the LessWrong and effective-altruism network, to the 2021 split from OpenAI that created Anthropic, to the Berkeley coworking space Constellation, and FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried's $500m investment in Anthropic. The piece also cites Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, who resigned in early September and posted on X that people building AI "genuinely believe it may kill us all before 2030" — a post it says drew 174 million views.
It shows how AI-safety fears shape the personal choices of people at a leading lab, though the reported land-buying plans remain anecdotal.