A Colorado cybersecurity expert voices concern over rapid artificial intelligence advancements, echoing industry warnings about potential risks.
COLORADO, USA — A Colorado computer science professor says warnings this week from former researchers at major artificial intelligence companies about the technology’s risks are worth taking seriously — but he stopped short of predicting a robot uprising.
The researchers, who previously worked at Anthropic and Google, cautioned this week that artificial intelligence is advancing too quickly with too few safeguards, raising the possibility that it could eventually threaten humanity.
Jacob Coxon, identified as a former Anthropic and OpenAI researcher, prompted a new debate with his warnings this week – claiming current AI models cannot yet outsmart humans to a degree that would cause extinction, but warning “there’s a very real possibility” that could change within the next year or two as AI systems begin improving themselves.
Steve Beaty, a Metropolitan State University of Denver computer science professor specializing in AI and cybersecurity, said he shares some of that concern.
“I don’t necessarily share all of the ‘gloom and doom’ if you will… but I do think there are some very important things that we need to work through with this technology,” Beaty said. “It has shown itself in the last… six months, and even more recently, as something that we need to be concerned about.”
Beaty said AI differs from past technologies because it improves itself.
“That’s a problem here, very specifically because this is the first technology that improves itself,” he said. “I don’t know if we’re going have ‘Terminators’ wandering around, but I also think it can be an existential threat to professions, to people individually, and so those are the concerns I can see in the more immediate future.”
Beaty points to other technology advancements that were eventually regulated: cars, air travel, even the slow-to-regulation social media. Beaty said even if we reach federal agreement, the U.S. still faces global competition.
“So even if the United States tomorrow put a complete moratorium on working on AI, then we just turn other places,” he said, adding that other countries would gain a competitive advantage.
Colorado became the first state to pass an AI regulation law, aimed at preventing companies from using AI to discriminate in employment, finance or health care decisions. The law was supposed to take effect this summer, but Elon Musk and the U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit to stop it.
President Trump also issued an executive order blocking states from enforcing their own AI regulations, calling instead for a national standard — one that does not yet exist, and one that a divided Congress would likely struggle to reach agreement.
Beaty’s advice for protecting personal information: avoid entering sensitive details like birthdays, addresses or bank information into free AI tools, and strengthen basic cybersecurity with randomized passwords, password managers, two-factor authentication and biometric logins.
He said the stakes are too high for the conversation to stay confined to Silicon Valley boardrooms.
“It affects all of us,” Beaty said. “So it’s important that everybody has their voice in this.”
