Jacob Coxon’s AI warning puts old climate posts under scrutiny

Two older accounts

Coxon’s current X account, @hilbertspaess, was created in 2026. Users found two earlier accounts with the same name, one active from 2021 and another created in 2023. The connection to the second is less clear, though its posts resemble the first in style and subject. Archived data shows the first account was called “Jacob Coxon” by November 2021. One user collected its posts in a searchable database.

The old posts range from climate skepticism to a remark about the Holocaust:

Some posts are plainly provocative. Others convey apparent doubt about the seriousness of climate change. The authors of the report asked Coxon to comment and confirm whether he wrote them; he did not respond.

A warning that travelled

Last month, Coxon’s post saying the AI industry was “playing with our lives” drew more than 800,000 likes. His warning spread from Silicon Valley to Capitol Hill, giving AI safety advocates fresh arguments. He was not the first person in the industry, or the first whistleblower, to warn that the technology could endanger humanity.

Soon afterward, prominent industry figures including Elon Musk, Dario Amodei and Sam Altman called for AI development to slow. Lawmakers joined them. Amodei, Altman and other AI company leaders later met President Trump at the White House and signed an AI safety agreement.

Coxon appeared on Fox News almost immediately after his post went viral, where he played down climate risks. Speaking to Sean Hannity, he agreed with a post by President Trump that catastrophic global-warming scenarios are exaggerated. Climate change, Coxon said, is a slow process; talk of the end of the world is “completely absurd.” Past disaster warnings, he added, had often been fearmongering. AI was different, he argued, because it is advancing so quickly that people may not be able to respond before it is too late.

Different standards for different risks

I think the contrast is more revealing than the old posts alone. Coxon’s argument for urgency on AI rests on speed and the danger of reacting too late; on climate, he points to a slower timeline as a reason not to panic. Those are different claims, but the gap invites scrutiny when both are framed as threats to human survival.

What remains unclear is whether the old accounts are his. The reporting offers evidence linking the first account to his name and says the second resembles it, but Coxon did not confirm authorship. Without that confirmation, the posts complicate his public argument without settling what he believes—or how consistently he applies it.