Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark said AI could significantly transform industries within 18 months and may become capable of designing its own successors by 2028.
During his Oxford University lecture, Clark warned that governments are racing to gain AI dominance, making slower and safer AI development unlikely.
Clark compared the risks of AI to the world’s lack of preparation during COVID-19 and said advanced AI carries a “non-zero chance” of causing catastrophic harm.
Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark on Wednesday, May 20, 2026, gave a lecture at University of Oxford where he talked about the impact AI can have on life and careers. He predicted that AI is changing the world and that companies using AI in the coming future will see a good amount of revenue growth within the next 18 months. He also said that by 2028, AI systems will be capable enough of designing their own successors.
Jack Clark talked about how AI is evolving the world and said that in the coming future AI might be able to replace species. He said that AI will work with humans on Nobel Prize-winning discoveries within months, highlighting how much AI can affect life.
He also mentioned that humans should develop AI moderately so that society gets more time to understand the power of the technology. However, according to him, that may not be possible because world leaders are competing with each other to gain more advantage from AI technology.
Clark also compared AI to COVID-19, saying that some people still do not understand the power of AI and remain in denial about its impact. He said that just as the world failed to prepare for COVID, the same could happen with AI. As quoted by The Guardian, he said: “If we stand by and let synthetic intelligence multiply, then we’ll eventually be forced into reactivity.”
He also mentioned that there is a possibility that the technology could harm everyone. He said the technology has “a non-zero chance of killing everyone on the planet” and added that it is important to acknowledge that the risks associated with AI have not disappeared.
See Also: Chinese AI firms threaten national security through illegal extraction from US companies: Anthropic
Jack Clark is the co-founder and one of the senior figures at Anthropic, the company behind the chatbot Claude. Anthropic was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees, including siblings Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei. They reportedly left OpenAI over disagreements related to AI safety and concerns that the company’s priorities were shifting away from responsible development.
Anthropic has also recently been involved in a disagreement with Donald Trump. Reports claimed that Trump directed US federal agencies to stop using Anthropic’s AI tools and gave them six months to phase out the technology, citing security concerns. The conflict reportedly began after Anthropic refused to allow its AI systems to be used for mass surveillance or autonomous weapons, saying such uses violated the company’s safety principles.
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