Anthropic researcher warns AI could kill us all

0:00Welcome to Seeking Alphas Wall Street Lunch, our afternoon update on today's market action, news and analysis. Good afternoon, today is Wednesday, September 9th, and I'm your host, Kim Khan. Our thought story so far, as nice while it lasted, AI could potentially cause catastrophic harm to humanity within the next decade, with anthropic alignment works still lacking a clear solution for the risks posed by increasingly capable systems. Just according to Evan Huberinger, alignment science lead at Anthropic. Huberger 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 untracked to do so. In addition, anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon publicly resigned. I spent the last three years doing pre-training research at both OpenAI and Anthropic, Coxon posted.

1:00Neither 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. At OpenAI, many have not deeply internalized the civilizational stakes, he said. And Anthropic, the stakes are well understood, but they are locked in a race to get their first, they believe no one else will act responsibly, so they must do it themselves, despite the risk. The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade, Coxon warned. SkyNet begins to learn at a geometric rate. 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 seeds of carling, choppers, and calcium, escalating the trade war. The import bans which go into effect on September 29th came after Canada's own retaliatory tariffs on US goods took effect after midnight on Tuesday.

2:01The US banned spirits, including Canada's famous whiskeys and beers. The dairy ban covers way protein, invert molasses, cane molasses, and non-acaholic beer, somehow. In addition to the import ban, several cheese products replaced on the list of facing a 50% tariff. So, no more 7 and 7's folks, you'll have to make do with Sazarac in Sprite. Among active stocks, Meta platforms is the top S&P gainer after unveiling its standalone AI agent Muse, which is yet to weigh in on its view of humanity. Keeping 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 in the initial barometer and monetization following over time. Casey's general stores is the biggest S&P declineer after a Q2 earnings beat failed to match more high-flying expectations, but the sell side is coming to its defense. Jeffrey's analyst Corey Tarlow recommended buying weakness on continued comparable sales growth, margin expansion, and an unchanged outlook. Chewy is choppy after it boosted its full-year outlook but also reported a meaningful decline

3:04in liquidity. Free cash load declined by 15.5% while cash and cash equivalents tumbled 29%. In Jersey Mike's subs issued its first earnings report as a public company, with same-store sales up 2.3% in Q2. CEO Charlie Morrison said an acceleration in COMPS has continued into the third quarter as we seek to broaden our consumer base, grow our digital channels, bring thoughtful innovation to the market, and of course continue to deliver on our vision of being the world's most beloved destination for authentic sub-sandwiches. And in other news of note, NASA's seeking proposals to develop technologies needed to establish a sustained human presence near the moon's south pole, where the focus on generating power, extracting oxygen, and producing materials beyond Earth. The agency announced the solicitation as part of its effort to close critical infrastructure gaps that could hinder long-duration lunar missions. NASA's inviting proposals from private companies, academic institutions, and nonprofit organizations, along with international partners participating through US-led teams.

4:05The five tech areas it's focusing on are vertical solar arrays, oxygen extraction, radio isotope nuclear generators, manufacturing in space, and innovative nanomaterials. And the NFL season kicks off tonight with a rematch of the Seahawks Patriots Super Bowl, putting Draft King's and Fam dual in focus. In anticipation of that, privately held Fanatics has launched a unified mobile app that combines its sports book, online casino, and prediction market products, and a bid to become a broader, super app for sports fans. And let's have noted that Fanatics is carving out notable sports betting market share in several states as it offers popular betting promotions that tie into its apparel business. So far, no prediction market is available for when the first NFL game will be played on the moon. That's all for today's Wall Street Lunch. Look for links for stories in the Schoenert section. Don't forget, these episodes will be up with transcriptions at SeekingOffa.com, slash WSB. And for a wealth of coverage on stocks and ETS, go to SeekingOffa.com, slash subscriptions.