Inside the Discussions at AI Companies Over a Superintelligence Doomsday

When Jacob Coxon, an Anthropic researcher, publicly quit the artificial intelligence start-up this week, citing his concerns over the powerful technology, the internal messages began flying.

“It’s what we’ve all been saying,” one Anthropic employee wrote about Mr. Coxon’s comments, in a group chat among workers that was viewed by The New York Times. “It’s just public-facing now.”

“Jacob took the group chat public,” another employee wrote. “That’s a good thing.”

The reactions inside Anthropic were echoed by A.I. researchers at OpenAI, Meta and Google, who parsed Mr. Coxon’s social media posts that described how OpenAI and Anthropic were “gambling with our lives” with the technology. Many convened in office messaging channels, encrypted chats and private dinners, with the goal of organizing to raise awareness about the risks of A.I., according to a dozen employees across the companies.

For those who have made A.I. their life’s work, Mr. Coxon’s message was not new. But his comments snowballed into such a global conversation that many saw it as a moment to call for increased caution. Some A.I. workers are now speaking up to top executives to urge a pause in developing the fast-evolving technology until it has the proper safeguards, six of the people said.

The conversations underline the tensions within the leading A.I. labs over the safest ways to develop the technology. Even as employees become emboldened to call for a slowdown in A.I. development, companies like Anthropic and OpenAI are juggling priorities.

Both are planning blockbuster initial public offerings within the next year. The companies are also fearful they could face antitrust concerns if they agreed among themselves to take a breather in A.I. development, two people with knowledge of the matter said. And Chinese start-ups have produced competitive A.I. models, raising the possibility that U.S. companies would fall behind if they slowed down.