People who build AI

Jack Clark

co-founder of Anthropic

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Records

AI is a tremendously powerful technology — and getting more powerful all the time. It is a technology that is smarter and more capable than most of us as individuals, and is on a trajectory to be more capable than all of us in the aggregate. It is a technology that we do not fully understand given that it is more grown than made, and one can concoct plausible scenarios by which AI could kill every single person on the planet.

Exact quote, beginning

Jack Clark

co-founder of Anthropic

In the text of his May 2026 Oxford lecture, published in his own newsletter, Clark wrote that one can concoct plausible scenarios by which AI could kill every single person on the planet, and that treating the technology as risk-free would be an act of hubris or insanity.

Anthropic co-founder and Head of Public BenefitMay 20, 20262026 Cosmos HAI Lab Lecture, University of Oxford

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Surrounding words

That means we need to be eyes wide open about what the continued success of this technology means, so let me be very clear: AI is a tremendously powerful technology — and getting more powerful all the time. It is a technology that is smarter and more capable than most of us as individuals, and is on a trajectory to be more capable than all of us in the aggregate. It is a technology that we do not fully understand given that it is more grown than made, and one can concoct plausible scenarios by which AI could kill every single person on the planet. To think building this technology is without risk would be an act of hubris or insanity. And yet building this technology is one of the best ways that we as a species can advance ourselves — can expand the frontiers of science and technology by equipping ourselves with a tool that can help us think about the greatest

What this quote does not say

The post is an authored, lightly edited version of the talk rather than a word-for-word recording transcript.
The linked YouTube recording could not be opened, so the wording was not compared against audio and no timestamp is supplied.

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Given all of this, I think there’s a ~60% chance we see automated AI R&D (where a frontier model is able to autonomously train a successor version of itself) by the end of 2028. Based on the above analysis, you might ask why I don’t expect this in 2027?

Exact quote, beginning

Jack Clark

co-founder of Anthropic

In a May 2026 Import AI essay, Clark wrote that he puts roughly a 60% chance on a frontier model autonomously training a successor version of itself by the end of 2028, and 30% on it happening in 2027.

Anthropic co-founder and Head of Public BenefitPublished May 4, 2026 · date of remarks not establishedImport AI 455

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Surrounding words

… may be possible to see the emergence of fully autonomous corporations that are run by AI systems themselves, which would exacerbate all of the above issues, while also posing many novel governance challenges. Staring into the black hole: Given all of this, I think there’s a ~60% chance we see automated AI R&D (where a frontier model is able to autonomously train a successor version of itself) by the end of 2028. Based on the above analysis, you might ask why I don’t expect this in 2027? The answer is that I think AI research contains some requirement for creativity and heterodox insights to move forward - so far, AI systems haven’t yet displayed this in a transformative and major way (though some of the results on accelerating math research are suggestive of this). If you had to push me for a 2027 probability, I’d say 30%. If we don’t see it by the end of 2028, then I think we will have revealed some fundamental deficiency within the current technological paradigm and it’ll require human invention to move things forward. have written this essay in an attempt to coldly and analytically wrestle with something that for decades has seemed like a science fiction ghost story.

What this quote does not say

This estimates automated AI R&D, not the probability of catastrophe or extinction.
The risk classification depends on the surrounding essay's discussion of alignment failure and recursive self-improvement; the estimate itself is a capability forecast.

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Quote located in the captured page; spacing normalised for display.

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I think that the older you get you learn how distributed and emergent the world is, and how in many senses the world is more antifragile than people think. I think when you’re younger, at least my experience being younger, you think that there must be many pivotal acts that can happen in the world. But it’s quite difficult to do pivotal acts in the world.

Exact quote, beginning

Jack Clark

co-founder of Anthropic

Asked what had moved him away from earlier arguments for drastic interventions up to kinetic action, Clark said at a May 2026 Oxford fireside chat that pivotal acts are rare and hard to carry out, and that safety is better built from interlocking layers of intervention.

Anthropic co-founderMay 20, 2026Fireside chat following the 2026 Cosmos HAI Lab Lecture, University of Oxford

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What has happened in the intervening years to move you personally away from arguments that are of this illiberal or authoritarian category? Was it just that the situation didn’t play out how you thought it would, or did you change? Jack: I think that the older you get you learn how distributed and emergent the world is, and how in many senses the world is more antifragile than people think. I think when you’re younger, at least my experience being younger, you think that there must be many pivotal acts that can happen in the world. But it’s quite difficult to do pivotal acts in the world. The world’s a very complex system, and pivotal acts in the name of safety or in the name of violence do get done but rarely. They’re very hard to do. And it’s more that by building some system of interlocking stacks of different interventions on safety, you end up in a world that captures this dynamic ecosystem of AI agents and also has some amount of safety. Where I feel most confused, though, is how you scale this into the future.

What this quote does not say

The publisher describes the transcript as lightly edited.
The answer is a qualification of an earlier Import AI line, not a fresh risk claim; the interviewer's premise (that Clark once argued for drastic interventions up to kinetic action) is the interviewer's characterisation, not Clark's wording.

How this was checked

Quote located in the captured page; spacing normalised for display.

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Statements they signed

FROM THE SIGNED STATEMENT

It is hard to predict exactly how much this will accelerate AI progress, but there is a real risk that capability development rapidly accelerates beyond our ability to understand or control the resulting systems.

Signed statement: “Pacing the Frontier” (frontier-lab employees, Guidelight + Encode AI)

Jack Clark

co-founder of Anthropic

Signed as part of a group statement. Not spoken.

Jack Clark signed “Pacing the Frontier,” which asked the U.S. government to support an international effort to build tools for slowing automated AI development when needed.

Co-Founder and Head of Public Benefit, AnthropicDate not establishedPacing the Frontier

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Surrounding words

Mark Chen Chief Research Officer, OpenAI Jasjeet Sekhon Chief Strategy Officer, Google DeepMind Dario Amodei CEO, Anthropic Jack Clark Co-Founder and Head of Public Benefit, Anthropic Anca Dragan VP, AI Safety & Alignment, Google Wojciech Zaremba Head of AI Resilience, OpenAI Foundation Dawn Song VP, AI Research, Meta Chris Olah Co-Founder & Interpretability Research

What this quote does not say

Jack Clark appears once in the statement's roster; the roster's wording is “Co-Founder and Head of Public Benefit, Anthropic.”

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The organiser's own roster lists this person as a signer.

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FROM THE SIGNED STATEMENT

It could bring risks, including large-scale job displacement, as well as opportunities such as major gains in living standards.

Signed statement: “We Must Act Now” (Stanford Digital Economy Lab/economists)

Jack Clark

co-founder of Anthropic

Signed as part of a group statement. Not spoken.

Jack Clark was listed as a signer of “We Must Act Now,” which called for guardrails and institutions to steer powerful AI toward complementing people and benefiting society.

Date not establishedWe Must Act Now

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Surrounding words

LawZero and Mila Gillian Hadfield, Johns Hopkins University Raffaella Sadun, Harvard Business School Tyler Cowen, George Mason University Reid Hoffman, Greylock Wojciech Zaremba, OpenAI Foundation David J. Deming, Harvard University Jack Clark, Anthropic Ronnie Chatterji, OpenAI Dean Ball, OpenAI Jeff Dean, Google Joshua Gans, University of Toronto Abhishek Nagaraj, University of California, Berkeley Jeffrey Sachs, Columbia University Peter McCrory, Anthropic Alex Imas,

How this was checked

The organiser's own roster lists this person as a signer.

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an AI reviewer that read the whole source