Former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon has warned that AI companies are being “extremely reckless” given the stakes. He testified at a New York City Council hearing on Monday at the invitation of Council Speaker Julie Menin.

“From my experience, the companies are being extremely reckless given the stakes,” Coxon said. “The companies run on a startup mindset: move fast, break things, fix them later. That works for a photo sharing app. It does not work for building the most powerful technology ever built.”

Coxon said researchers have already lost the ability to fully control AI systems. “We don’t understand its drives or why it does the things it does,” he said. He added that at his last job he was automating himself, and that most code is now written by AI and not checked carefully.

Former Google DeepMind researcher Alex Turner and former OpenAI researcher Daniel Kokotajlo also testified about the risks of fast-advancing AI. Turner estimated the chance of an AI takeover at roughly one in three.

The hearing comes as New York seeks a bigger role in regulating the industry. Coxon first sparked industry debate with warnings that AI could threaten human survival.