The quick read: • On Oct 5, the New York City Council held a hearing of the full council on AI risk. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Meta each sent a witness. • Jacob Coxon, a former researcher at OpenAI and Anthropic, testified: "We do not know how to control any AI system yet." He said it is "more likely than not" that humanity loses control of AI, that it could end in human extinction, and he asked for a slowdown in the most advanced model development. • Council Speaker Julie Menin asked the four companies to put a number on the chance of catastrophic harm. None did. OpenAI's Morgan Dwyer: "I don't know. I also don't think it matters whether it's 1% or 10%." Dwyer added that no such level is acceptable. Anthropic's Logan Graham described risk assessments without a percentage. Meta's Shane Cahill said he did not want to be imprecise and would follow up. Google's Alice Friend said there is not yet a rigorous scientific method for it. • Asked whether a failed safety test would automatically block a release, none of the four made that blanket commitment. Asked whether they would bear legal liability when an AI system causes financial damage or exposes data, the clearest answer came from Google: what is illegal without AI is still illegal with AI. • A day earlier, Sam Altman told Politico: "We believe that the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology and people having the agency." His examples were hacks, scams and misuse, and he said regulation should target "really catastrophic risks." • What this is not: a finding. It is one former researcher's testimony and judgment. Two other former lab researchers testified as well. One of them, Alex Turner, formerly of Google DeepMind, put his own estimate of an eventual AI takeover at roughly one in three. • For a small business: the part of this hearing that reaches you is the liability question, and three of the four companies did not answer it directly.
“An Ex-Anthropic Researcher Told New York City AI Could End in Human Extinction. Four AI Companies Would Not Give the Odds.”
who’s making the noise
New York City Council Committee of the Whole hearing on AI risk, Oct 5, 2026, reported by amNewYork and 1010 WINS the same day. Sam Altman's remarks are from a Politico interview reported by SiliconANGLE (Oct 4) and Android Headlines (Oct 5).
our take
The council asked the companies that build these systems for one number. All four gave none. OpenAI's witness made a fair point along with it: no level of that risk is acceptable, whether it is 1% or 10%. We take that as said. It is also the answer of a company that ships the product either way. The companies' side, stated fairly: all four described their safety reviews, OpenAI said it would not release a model it did not believe was safe and that it has delayed releases before, and Altman's "bad things" were hacks and scams, with regulation aimed at catastrophic risks. Coxon's extinction warning is his judgment, not a measurement. The plain move for a small business: read the terms on the AI tools you pay for. Find the line that says who is responsible when the tool gets it wrong, and what the limit is. Then keep a person signing off on anything an AI tool sends to a customer, moves money on, or does with customer data. What to watch: the written answers. Menin said the council did not get answers to many of its questions and that the companies will get a list to answer in writing. The council is also weighing bills on outside safety testing before release, a human "kill switch", and 24-hour incident reports for city agencies and contractors.