Anthropic researcher quits over AI fears as youth group in the US sounds alarm
By Carson DuRall
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OMAHA, Nebraska (KETV) — Gen Zs across the country are starting to speak out about the potential harms of artificial intelligence and the way it affects young people.
Just a few days ago, an Anthropic researcher quit over AI fears, warning it could have deadly consequences.
He said, “The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”
“Seeing these headlines that AI poses a risk of ending humanity and posing an extinction threat is horrifying,” Maddie Freeman, NoSo Collection Collective founder, said.
NoSo is a youth-run nonprofit fighting to help youth reclaim their control over technology.
Data shows 67% of kids say they’ve used an AI chatbot.
“We really want you to be more critical about the systems are engaging with and also know that, you know, the AI future is not an inevitable future, but it’s something that giant billion-dollar companies are pushing and really want us to feel kind of powerless to,” Freeman said.
Freeman said AI is making it hard for young professionals trying to break into the workforce.
“Now every job posting has hundreds and maybe thousands of applicants. And a lot of times, AI is the thing sorting through that pool. So AI has a lot of bias,” Freeman said.
She said AI is also stunting kids’ educational growth; some of them are now outsourcing all their thinking to AI systems instead of using it to help them learn.
“That has really negative impacts on our way of actually learning and being able to ingest content. And then use that knowledge critically. And then the other kind of harm that we saw is that people feel like there’s kind of this loss of creativity and agency,” Freeman said.
Freeman also said we’re losing control over whether or not we want AI to impact our lives, and change needs to happen now.
“I personally don’t necessarily think we fully can see yet how much these technologies are impacting us,” Freeman said.
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