AI safety expert quits Anthropic and says the the ‘world is in peril’

An AI safety expert has quit one of the world’s leading artificial intelligence firms, warning that the “world is in peril”.

Mrinank Sharma, who previously worked at Claude maker Anthropic, said that we are in danger from “a whole series of interconnected crises unfolding in this very moment”.

Instead of continuing to work on the safety of artificial intelligence systems, he would work on poetry and move back to the UK and “become invisible”, he said.

It comes amid increasing concern over the safety of artificial intelligence systems, and the behaviour of the companies building them. Mr Sharma’s announcement came around the same time that an OpenAI researcher left the company over its decision to put ads into ChatGPT.

“It is clear to me that the time has come to move on. I continuously find myself reckoning with our situation,” Mr Sharma wrote. “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.

“We appear to be approaching a threshold where our wisdom must grow in equal measure to our capacity to affect the world, lest we face the consequences. Moreover, throughout my time here, I've repeatedly seen how hard it is to truly let our values govern our actions.

“I've seen this within myself, within the organization, where we constantly face pressures to set aside what matters most, and throughout broader society too.”

Mr Sharma said that he had been particularly proud of his work on examining “AI sycophancy and its causes”, as well as the ways that artificial intelligence could be used to enable bioterrorism.