Sacramento — California’s largest public pension fund is riding high this year, buoyed in large part by a red-hot stock market and eye-popping valuations tied to artificial intelligence companies. But at this week’s meeting of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System board, the mood shifted from celebration to unease as members grappled with a darker question: what happens if the AI boom goes wrong?
The discussion was sparked by the resignation of Jacob Coxon, a researcher who left AI company Anthropic and went public with warnings that the industry’s leading firms may be putting humanity at risk. In a social media post, Coxon — who previously worked at OpenAI — accused both Anthropic and OpenAI of “gambling with our lives” in their rush to build increasingly powerful, humanlike artificial intelligence systems. He suggested the consequences could arrive within the next several years.
The comments rattled more than just Silicon Valley. They reached the boardroom of CalPERS, the pension system that manages retirement funds for millions of California’s public employees and retirees, with assets totaling roughly $655 billion.
During Monday’s meeting, CalPERS Board President Theresa Taylor raised Coxon’s resignation directly with Chief Investment Officer Stephen Gilmore, framing the issue in stark terms.
“This is humanity,” said Taylor, a retired state worker and former union leader, as she pressed the board to consider whether CalPERS should speak out publicly on the risks posed by unchecked AI development.
Taylor noted that even in the wake of Coxon’s warning, the chief executives of both Anthropic and OpenAI — Dario Amodei and Sam Altman, respectively — have called for the industry to slow down its race toward more advanced AI systems, an acknowledgment that even top developers see cause for caution.
Taylor argued that CalPERS has a stake in the conversation beyond its investment portfolio. While the board’s primary duty is to safeguard the fund’s financial performance, she suggested that ignoring the societal risks of AI would be shortsighted.
“If we don’t have retirees, if we don’t have state workers because of AI, we don’t have a pension fund,” Taylor said, making the case that protecting the workforce and the public at large is inseparable from protecting the fund’s long-term stability.
Despite the pointed exchange, the board did not commit to issuing any formal statement on AI risks, nor did it signal any change to its investment strategy involving artificial intelligence companies. Gilmore, addressing the board, acknowledged the uncertainty surrounding the technology’s trajectory, saying the future holds “a very wide distribution of possible outcomes.”
Taylor responded with a mix of skepticism and concern, noting that while investors continue to chase the financial upside of the AI boom, the ultimate result could look nothing like what anyone expects.
“We’re waiting for the money,” she said, “and unfortunately the outcome could be something entirely different.”
For now, CalPERS — like many major institutional investors — remains deeply intertwined with the fortunes of the AI sector, even as some of its own leaders openly question whether that reliance carries risks far greater than market volatility.
Original source: CalMatters
