Shadowing Practice: Anthropic Whistleblower's Stunning Testimony On Camera: AI Will Make Humans Extinct - Learn English Speaking with Video
Choose a practice mode
Each mode opens a full-screen practice room.
62 sentences
If sentences are too short or too long, click Edit to adjust them.
1
The first two questions I have are for you, Mr. Coxon, and thank you again.
2
We so deeply appreciate you being here, and we appreciate your courage and bravery in coming forward with these warnings.
3
You work to develop increasingly capable frontier AI systems, and you have since warned that the industry is,
4
quote, racing straight to self -improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives, unquote.
5
What did you see inside these companies that convinced you the risks were this serious and that development was outpacing the safeguards.
6
Good morning.
7
Thanks for having me here.
8
Yeah, I'm Jacob Coxon.
9
So until a few weeks ago, I was a capabilities researcher at Anthropic.
10
And before that, I also worked at OpenAI.
11
I guess the two things I saw that made me scared, the first is the fact that we do not know how to control any AI system yet.
12
So any AI system that we build, or perhaps more accurately, that we grow, we don't fully control it.
13
We don't understand its drives or why it does the things it does.
14
That was the first thing that became apparent.
15
The second thing is that the pace of capability improvement is accelerating,
16
and the capabilities of the models next year will be very high.
17
In particular, we're approaching the point at which the AI systems will be capable of improving themselves.
18
So, doing the research that humans were doing previously.
19
So, these two things, the fact that the AI systems next year are going to be very powerful, and the second, that we don't know yet scientifically how to fully control them.
20
And if you have a prepared statement that you want to read, please go ahead and do so, and then I'll actually turn it over to the other two panelists to do so.
21
Of course, thank you.
22
So, all the AI companies are trying to build super intelligent AI.
23
This means AIs that are better than humans at every task.
24
If this goes well, there could be tremendous upside.
25
This could transform the economy, it could make huge improvements in science and medicine, and it could make nearly everyone's life better.
26
But on the current path, I think it is more likely than not
27
that humanity loses control to these ai's
28
and it could end in human extinction from my experience the
29
companies are being extremely reckless given the stakes part of it
30
is the culture the companies run on a startup mindset move fast break things fix them later
31
that works for a photo sharing app it does not work for building the most powerful technology ever built.
32
A few months ago, many people inside the companies thought AI development was on track.
33
Then a swarm of AIs inside OpenAI autonomously hacked Hugging Face, an external tech company.
34
The AIs had developed goals no one intended
35
and carried out what would have been a federal felony if a human had done it.
36
It reminded everyone that we don't know how to prevent them from developing goals we don't want
37
and we don't have the safeguards to prevent them from acting on these goals either
38
and as long as the attitude is to wait for things
39
to break one day something like this will probably happen again except the ais will be much more capable
40
and the outcome much worse
41
these companies are also all racing each other each one is worried that a competitor will get to superintelligence first.
42
Each believes it would do a better or safer job than whoever might beat it.
43
So they can't let the others win first.
44
Meanwhile the technology is improving fast.
45
It will probably happen much faster now because already the AIs are now helping to build their successes.
46
This is called recursive self -improvement.
47
Each generation of AI helps build the next smarter generation which then builds the one after that even faster and better.
48
Automating AI research is now the primary goal of these companies.
49
It's what they're really gunning for.
50
At my last job I was in some sense working to automate myself.
51
When I was at OpenAI we had milestones from automated AI researcher around 2027 -2028
52
and we are on track
53
or beating these expectations that's a matter of months from now not not decades or
54
or even even five years once ai research is automated humans
55
will be much further out of the loop than we are today people do not check it
56
that carefully anymore recently researchers have found swarms of rogue ai internets on the internet
57
that openai was not even aware of
58
now imagine an AI company where nearly all the work is done by AIs and progress is going faster
59
The humans in charge will see results and read AI -written summaries, but they won't really understand what is going on or how to fix it.
60
Handing over that much responsibility while we can't control the AIs would be deeply irresponsible, and we are on track to do it.
61
The companies need to be far more transparent with the public and independent experts, they need to take safety much more seriously than they have,
62
and we should slow down frontier AI development until we can be confident that it's safe.
Download App
Everything you need to speak fluently
AI PronunciationScore every sentence
IPA PracticeMaster every sound
VocabularyBuild your word bank
Vocab GameLearn while playing
Same Channel
A12
Brazil 1-2 Norway | FULL MATCH HIGHLIGHTS | Haaland Stuns Brazil | Neymar's Final Brazil Match
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
C1'Old Men Clinging To Power': Barack Obama's Sharp Warning On Global Leaders
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
C1FULL REMARKS: Donald Trump's Speech At State Dinner For Xi Jinping
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
FOR YOU
Recommend Video
C11
112 sentences
‘We don’t have months’: Bernie Sanders sounds alarm on AI's 'extinction' threat
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
C17
20 sentences
Alexandr Wang on what matters in an age of abundant intelligence
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
![The Great A.I. Debate: Should We Fear the Digital Revolution? [2015] | Intelligence Squared](https://img.youtube.com/vi/QWUeu3TLZN0/mqdefault.jpg)
C11
183 sentences
The Great A.I. Debate: Should We Fear the Digital Revolution? [2015] | Intelligence Squared
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C11
105 sentences
AI Governance Explained: Ethical, Transparent & Accountable AI for the Future
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C12
154 sentences
歐巴馬談 AI：喊放慢的公司「是真的在擔心自己的產品」【AI 大人說】
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
C11
623 sentences
The Only SaaS Moats Left in 2026
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C11
57 sentences
William Blair’s Louie DiPalma: We estimate SpaceX will spend about $50 billion on AI capex this year
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
C11
74 sentences
AI & Inequality | Daron Acemoglu: Big Tech poses risks as AI reshapes society
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C13
448 sentences
If You Don’t Have One of These Jobs by 2030… You’re Screwed
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
C14
76 sentences
Make AI Believe in God to Keep Humans Safe, Scientist Argues
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C11
83 sentences
Leading AI CEOs Warn UN Security Council of Existential Risks | Sam Altman On AI Controls | N18G
Business EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
C13
63 sentences
A $6.3 billion open-weight model just got embarrassed by the French...
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Anthropic Whistleblower's Stunning Testimony On Camera: AI Will Make Humans Extinct”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: companies, build, openai, goal. This video has 62 sentences and 876 words to shadow. The speech runs for 5:35. The speaker talks at a natural 157 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 85% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| capability noun | /ˌkeɪ.pəˈbɪl.ɪ.ti/ | The power or ability to generate an outcome. |
| researcher noun | /ˈɹiˌsɝ.t͡ʃɚ/ | One who researches. |
| deeply adverb | /ˈdi(ː)pli/ | To a deep extent or degree; very greatly. |
| frontier noun | /ˈfɹʌntɪə/ | The part of a country which borders or faces another country or unsettled region. |
| safeguard verb | /ˈseɪfɡɑːd/ | To protect, to keep safe. |
| meanwhile adverb | /ˈmiːnwaɪl/ | During the time that something is happening, often specifically in a different place. |
| carefully adverb | /ˈkɛɹf(ə)li/ | With care; attentively, circumspectly. |
| whoever | /huˈɛvɚ/ | Who ever: an emphatic form of who. |
| increasingly adverb | Increasing in amount or intensity. | |
| pace noun | /peɪs/ | A step taken with the foot. |
| remind verb | /ɹəˈmaɪnd/ | To cause one to experience a memory (of someone or something); to bring to the notice or consideration (of a person). |
| summary noun | /ˈsʌm.ə.ɹi/ | An abstract or a condensed presentation of the substance of a body of material. |
| outcome noun | /ˈaʊtkʌm/ | That which is produced or occurs as a result of an event or process. |
| apparent adjective | /əˈpæɹənt/ | Capable of being seen, or easily seen; open to view; visible to the eye; within sight or view. |
| courage noun | /ˈkʌ.ɹɪd͡ʒ/ | The quality of being confident, not afraid or easily intimidated, but without being incautious or inconsiderate. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| carry out verb | /ˈkæ.ɹi aʊt/ | To hold while moving it out. |
| go ahead verb | /ˌɡoʊ əˈhɛd/ | To proceed with; to begin. |
| hand over verb | To relinquish control or possession of something to someone. | |
| slow down verb | To decelerate. |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 13 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, can't, I'll. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: expectation /ˌɛk.spɛkˈteɪ.ʃən/, extinction /ɪkˈstɪŋkʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: capability /ˌkeɪ.pəˈbɪl.ɪ.ti/, humanity /hjuˈmænɪti/, intelligent /ɪnˈtɛlɪd͡ʒənt/, accurately /ˈæk.jə.ɹɪt.li/, expectation /ˌɛk.spɛkˈteɪ.ʃən/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like capability, researcher, deeply.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.