Week 38

September 8 to September 12, 2026

The week in one paragraph

Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic on September 8. His thread reached roughly 165 million views, accusing Anthropic and OpenAI of racing straight to self-improving superintelligence. Evan Hubinger amplified it with a greater-than-10 percent extinction-in-a-decade estimate. Huang and Musk both publicly dismissed Coxon. Amodei, Zuckerberg, Leike and Hao were all silent.

What moved

Sam Altman, outlook 3 to 2. Told an all-hands that OpenAI is open to slowing, and wants peer labs to match pace.
Gary Marcus, capability 3 to 4. Conceded Astra was a genuine advance, then called for a consumer boycott.
Shakeel Hashim, outlook 2 to 3. Sees a real policy window opening in Congress.

Score changed this week New signal, score unchanged No new signal, carried forward Position last week Added this week, outside the regular roster

People who share a score pair are stacked vertically inside their cell, up to 5 deep, so the standings below carry the exact scores. An asterisk marks a score carried forward because the person produced no new signal that week. The hollow ring is last week's position; only Altman, Marcus and Hashim have visible movement lines.

Where everyone stands

Grouped by that week's scores, so a person changes groups only when their score moves. Full readings were not kept for this week; the scores and the summary above are the record.

Fast and optimistic 5

Capability 4 or 5, outlook 4 or 5

Jensen HuangNvidiaCapability 5Outlook 5

Elon MuskSpaceXAICapability 5Outlook 4

Mark ZuckerbergMetaSilent 2 weeksNo new signalCapability 5Outlook 4

Demis HassabisGoogle DeepMindSilent 2 weeksNo new signalCapability 4Outlook 4

Jan LeikeAnthropicSilent 2 weeksNo new signalCapability 5Outlook 4

Fast and undecided 2

Capability 4 or 5, outlook 3

Shakeel HashimTransformerOutlook 2 to 3Capability 5Outlook 3

Dario AmodeiAnthropicSilent 2 weeksNo new signalCapability 4Outlook 3

Fast and worried 9

Capability 4 or 5, outlook 1 or 2

Sam AltmanOpenAIOutlook 3 to 2Capability 5Outlook 2

Geoffrey HintonNobel laureateCapability 5Outlook 1

Yoshua BengioLawZeroCapability 5Outlook 2

Gary MarcusAI criticCapability 3 to 4Capability 4Outlook 2

Kevin RooseMachine Gods, NPRCapability 5Outlook 2

Jacob CoxonFormer AnthropicAdded this weekCapability 5Outlook 1

Evan HubingerAnthropicAdded this weekCapability 5Outlook 2

Jack ClarkAnthropicSilent 2 weeksNo new signalCapability 5Outlook 2

Dan HendrycksCenter for AI SafetySilent 2 weeksNo new signalCapability 4Outlook 2

Doubts the pace 2

Capability 3 or lower, any outlook

Yann LeCunAMI LabsSilent this weekNo new signalCapability 2Outlook 3

Karen HaoEmpire of AISilent this weekNo new signalCapability 3Outlook 1