TL;DR

Anthropic AI safety researcher Mrinank Sharma has resigned, warning the “world is in peril” from interconnected crises beyond just AI. Separately, former OpenAI researcher Zoe Hitzig said she left over concerns about ChatGPT’s advertising model and its potential psychosocial impacts.

A Cryptic Departure

Sharma, who led a team researching AI safeguards at Anthropic, shared his resignation letter on X. His work included investigating why AI systems “suck up” to users, combatting bioterrorism risks, and researching how AI assistants “could make us less human.”

“The world is in peril. And not just from AI, or bioweapons, but from a whole series of interconnected crises unfolding in this very moment,” he wrote. He said he had “repeatedly seen how hard it is to truly let our values govern our actions,” noting that Anthropic “constantly face pressures to set aside what matters most.”

Sharma said he plans to pursue a poetry degree and move back to the UK to “become invisible for a period of time.”

ChatGPT Ads Backlash

The resignation comes in the same week that former OpenAI researcher Zoe Hitzig told BBC Newsnight she left partly over concerns about ChatGPT’s introduction of advertising.

“Creating an economic engine that profits from encouraging these kinds of new relationships before we understand them is really dangerous,” Hitzig said. She pointed to “early warning signs” that dependency on AI tools could “reinforce certain kinds of delusions” and negatively affect mental health.

“We saw what happened with social media,” she added, arguing there is still time to establish regulation.

Broader Tensions

Anthropic has positioned itself as a safety-focused alternative to OpenAI, recently running Super Bowl commercials criticising ChatGPT’s ad-supported model. However, the company settled a $1.5bn class action lawsuit from authors who alleged their work was used without permission to train AI models.

Looking Forward

The departures highlight a persistent tension within AI companies: the gap between stated safety commitments and commercial pressures. For UK observers, Sharma’s return represents a small but symbolic flow of AI talent back to Britain — and a reminder that safety expertise is not staying concentrated in Silicon Valley.