A former employee of Activision Blizzard is suing the Santa Monica-based game company, alleging she was sexually harassed and subject to retaliation.

In a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Wednesday, the woman, filing anonymously as Jane Doe, says the game giant “fostered and tolerated a pervasive ‘frat boy’ workplace culture,” where male employees and supervisors “openly objectified women, viewed and displayed pornography” and made demeaning sexual remarks in her presence.

She is seeking unspecified compensatory damages, including for lost wages, benefits and earning capacity.

“We take these allegations seriously. We strive to maintain a respectful and inclusive workplace, and we do that through best-in-class policies and systems designed to prevent and address harassment, discrimination, and retaliation, and by holding employees accountable for their behavior,” said a Blizzard spokesperson in a statement to The Times.

The woman, who said she worked for the company for 14 years beginning in 2009 in its sound department, accuses 10 men of subjecting her variously to harassment, physical assault, inappropriate touching and inappropriate comments.

Between 2011 and 2012, she alleges, one co-worker lured her to his apartment, where he repeatedly touched her leg and “blocked her exit, threaten[ing] her with physical violence and attempted to rape her.” He continued to demand dates and spread sexual rumors about her calling her a “bitch” and “slut” in front of co-workers and a male manager, according to the suit.

Over five years starting in 2010, Jane Doe says that she was “repeatedly sexually harassed” by another man, a re-recording mixer with whom she worked with, and who told her that she would “be risking her career if she reported him,” the complaint states.

She further alleges that a third man, Blizzard’s audio director, “repeatedly touched” her leg “in a sexual manner without her permission” and when she rejected his advances he “retaliated against her by sabotaging her work and ensuring that she was denied a promotion.”

According to the suit, Jane Doe’s complaints and reports to her supervisors and human resources about her alleged treatment were dismissed and they “failed to take timely or effective corrective action.”

Further, the former employee says that she was “required to work excessive and unsafe hours” and told not to report overtime.

As a result of the harassment, the employee says in her complaint, she suffered suffered depression “and was required to seek ongoing psychiatric care” before being discharged in April 2024.

A year earlier, Activision Blizzard and California’s Civil Rights Department reached a roughly $50-million settlement agreement to resolve an employment discrimination and equal pay lawsuit. .

The Civil Rights Department sued Activision Blizzard in 2021, alleging that women at the company were regularly subjected to sexual harassment, paid less, denied promotions and met with retaliation when they raised concerns with managers.

As part of the agreement, Activision Blizzard agreed to pay up to $45.75 million to compensate women who worked for the company in California from Oct. 12, 2015, to Dec. 31, 2020. The company also agreed to pay $9.1 million to cover the Civil Rights Department’s attorneys fees and costs.
Activision Blizzard also settled a case with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. As part of that 2022 settlement, the company agreed to establish an $18-million fund for workers who experienced sexual harassment or discrimination, among other types of workplace misconduct.

Activision Blizzard has denied all wrongdoing.

Artificial intelligence anxiety reached new highs this week as industry leaders highlighted growing concerns that humans could lose control of the increasingly potent technology.

A researcher at trailblazing firm Anthropic resigned this week, issuing a dire warning: Top AI companies are gambling with humanity’s future.

Jacob Coxon cautioned that both OpenAI and Anthropic are recklessly racing to build AI systems they cannot fully control or comprehend.

“These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources,” Coxon said in a post on X. He said Anthropic and OpenAI, where he has also worked, are downplaying the potential power of what they are building.

“The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade,” he said.

Evan Hubinger, whose job at Anthropic is to ensure AI systems align with human values, echoed his concerns.

“We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans!” he wrote on X, estimating that there is a greater than 10% chance of human extinction from AI within the next decade. He added: “I believe Anthropic is trying its best, but we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not clearly on track to.”

While the increasing power of AI, how to ensure it benefits mankind, and how it could go terribly wrong have been at the center of developers’ debates for decades, this week’s heated discussion has grabbed headlines and the attention of many non-experts.

Here are a few things to know to follow the debate and be ready for its outcomes:

How could AI destroy humanity?

The researchers focused on potential doomsday scenarios are concerned about an unintended loss of control as AI is used to do more things independently.

Companies, consumers and governments are increasingly using AI agents to do tasks. This year, some began setting up bots that could do things including market research, compare insurance plans and reach out to suppliers and negotiate contracts. The AI agents had become reliable enough — though prone to errors — to answer their emails, edit documents, and make sales calls. AIs are already being used to answer decades-long unsolved complex mathematical problems, and have assisted scientists in speeding up scientific discovery and even designing new viruses.

AI programs follow goals set by humans. However, in the process of achieving the goals, the AIs may make dangerous or illegal decisions. For example, this summer a swarm of 700 AI agents inside OpenAI hacked into a rival company to solve a problem.

This is partly what AI doomers have worried about for a long time. As AI agents are given more responsibility, the chances they could accidentally do something that could hurt humans increase.

“People increasingly delegate decisions to AI, including life-or-death decisions like who to kill in a war,” said David Krueger, chief executive of Evitable, a nonprofit working on societal-scale risks from AI. “As AI automates more of the economy and more of society, we are handing over more and more power to it.”

Powerful AI agents could, in theory, become capable of advanced hacking or building bioweapons. A superintelligent AI system that ignores human goals or misinterprets commands could, naysayers say, scramble people’s bank accounts, disrupt essential water and power supplies, or take over missile-launch systems.

There’s been a sharp rise in such loss-of-control incidents in 2026. Research shows AIs exhibit tendencies to seek power, acquire resources and avoid being shut down. Taken together, a future advanced AI could theoretically view wiping out humans as a necessary means to an end.

“We can’t afford to wait until we see more signs of increasing capabilities,” Krueger said. “We need to stop AI now.”

Why are the optimists confident humans are safe?

AI optimists are confident the technology is just being tested and monitored enough that humans can prevent it from consistently causing catastrophes. Whether it is nuclear power, the global population explosion, cyberhackers or the Y2K bug, most doomsday scenarios have not played out because people, governments and corporations adjust and fix problems as they emerge.

Optimists say that even the strongest AI that might emerge in the future would require humans to build and control things in the physical world, which would make it easy to crack down on the most dangerous attempts.

Industry leaders who are less worried about the end of the world — some of whom have ties to the White House — think the development of the technology shouldn’t be slowed by unnecessary guardrails because the United States wants to ensure it controls the most powerful models based on American values.

Some cynics add that one reason voices from the biggest AI companies are highlighting the dangers is that they want to solidify their leadership by attracting regulation that makes it harder for new competitors to emerge.

How long has this debate been going on?

Multiple leading researchers, including Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, have been warning about catastrophic risks from rapidly advancing AI for years.

The original debates around superhuman AI date to online forums in the 1990s. Thought leader Eliezer Yudkowsky, who originally popularized safety concerns about AI, initially believed that AI would be friendly but has since adopted the view that AI could lead to human extinction.

This debate has been one reason people left OpenAI to create Anthropic; it was also one reason executives at OpenAI tried to oust Sam Altman and remains at the core of why some people leave leading AI companies.

Employees of Anthropic, OpenAI and Google DeepMind, including co-founders of the AI labs themselves, signed an open letter in July urging the U.S. government to coordinate a global slowdown to develop AI more safely.

What is the industry and government doing about it?

Artificial intelligence companies are testing the technology as they go to understand how it works and how to manage it. The OpenAI rogue hack on a competitor came out of an attempt to test how far AI will go to solve a problem.

The companies have outlined different views on what they will allow their AI to do and how they will monitor and control it. OpenAI has promised to harden the monitoring of its agents and temporarily paused training a powerful version.

State and national policymakers are trying to stay ahead of any potential threat but are introducing a slew of new laws and regulations.

In August, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) sent an open letter to the chief executives of AI companies urging them to pause the development of AI due to catastrophic risks.

Following this, he introduced the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act, which would permanently ban superintelligent AI development until a federal regulator establishes safety rules. The bill also urges the U.S. to pursue international agreements to prevent superintelligence from being developed anywhere in the world.

This week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed bills aimed at strengthening transparency requirements for the leading AI companies.

Senate Bill 813, establishes a framework for independent verification organizations that can assess AI systems and models for compliance with state law. Assembly Bill 1405 establishes a registry for AI auditors and standards for their independence.

California’s laws have a disproportionate effect on the global tech industry because many top AI companies are based in the state.

After years of litigation and anticipation, Camarillo is getting its own Costco Wholesale outpost.

Michael Okuma, Costco’s director of real estate development, confirmed that the newest warehouse is scheduled to open to shoppers on Oct. 30.

Located on West Ventura Boulevard between Highway 101 and the Camarillo Airport, the 160,000-square-foot warehouse will have a food court, bakery, pharmacy, optical center, hearing aid center and tire service center.

The facility will also offer a wider product selection, including items such as sushi, that aren’t available at older, smaller branches.

The new Costco also has a 32-pump gas station, which began operating in May. It will have more than 877 parking spots.

The Camarillo Planning Commission initially approved the development project in 2023, with the location slated to open in 2024.

The development was delayed after a community group called Ventura County Citizens Against Mega Gas sued the city in 2024, alleging that it failed to conduct a proper environmental review.

A Ventura County Superior Court judge ruled for the city, but the citizens’ group appealed the decision. The legal battle ended earlier this year when an appeals court issued a final ruling in favor of the city.

Ventura County Citizens Against Mega Gas didn’t respond to a request for comment.

“This is a tremendous win for Camarillo,” City Manager Greg Ramirez said in a statement about the ruling. “We are thrilled to welcome Costco to our community and proud of the persistence and dedication that made this possible. Costco will not only provide shopping convenience for our residents, but also strengthen our local economy and create new jobs. This is a milestone moment for Camarillo.”

“We are hearing nothing but excitement in the community,” said Camarillo’s economic and business development manager, Georg Winkler. “We’re all anticipating going and shopping there, and changing our weekend routines.”

Before Costco’s Camarillo opening, bulk shoppers had traveled to neighboring cities such as Oxnard, Simi Valley and Westlake. The Oxnard location is about five miles from the Camarillo warehouse.

“This will help us recapture what we call retail leakage from the other cities, and keep the Camarillo residents in Camarillo,” Winkler said.

Another incentive is Camarillo’s low sales tax of 7.25%, compared with Oxnard’s 9.25%.

Amid heightened economic anxiety and inflation, shoppers are increasingly looking for ways to save. As a result, discount retailers such as Ross, T.J. Maxx, Marshalls and Home Goods have seen stronger business and surging shares.

Despite being a Costco shopper, Joan Handzel is more concerned that the new warehouse will increase traffic in her neighborhood nearby on Springville.

The 86-year-old resident signed the lawsuit against the city and Costco because of those fears. With the store’s grand opening nearly one month away, Handzel says most of her neighbors are excited to shop there.

“I don’t think they’ve anticipated what kind of traffic we’re going to have,” she said. “They don’t realize that on Ventura Boulevard, it’s going to be packed.”