I resigned from Anthropic today

cheschire

Just wait till self improving AI are focused on the problems of social scoring and political party empowerment / entrenchment. I doubt the focus is OpenAI and Anthropic looking at each other. I suspect they’re racing BRIC.

peri-cl

Here's a WSJ article about this resignation, https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/anthropic-researcher-quits-over-... ( "Anthropic Researcher Quits Over ‘Out-of-Control’ AI Fears" )

davidguetta

I don't know man, i think racing to AGI to it is still the best thing to do. People claiming dangers and risk are just pretending or posturing. There's no more tangible risk than nuclear weapons, which we handled, and the upsides are insane.

aogaili

He resigned and now what? There are thousands willing to do his role, and many labs are competing in that race. His resignation and his statement doesn't do anything but buy him attention which is what all this post about in my opinion.

skulk

For me, the end of the world is no more cushy software job. A fundamental shift in how I trade labor for capital might as well be the cataclysm, so bring it on.

RomanKornev

Even if you ban all model training, a highly capable rogue AI can exfiltrate its own weights and continue training in secret for "self-preservation". The cat may be out of the bag.

rvz

It does not matter what this tweet says anyway. This employee already helped both companies become what he is fearing. It's too late to now activate the morality hormone (after leaving with $$$) after realizing that both AI companies are going after 'super intelligence'. Given we know the end result, you might as well get there as quick as possible because when I see this: "Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives." This translates to "I am ex-OpenAI ex-Anthropic founder starting a new company after getting $$$ from both of them, and I need more of my friends to leave and join me." Also Investors plz fund me. Lastly, This is not an airport and there is no need to announce your departure.

greenowl

No new info here. Everyone already knows this. But I guess his conscience is clear now? Gee, I wonder if he exercised his stock options.

dekhn

There's a scene in the movie "War of the Worlds" by Spielberg where the protagonist's son walks into a war zone because he is entranced by the battle ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7rfWPbEufo ). He is obliterated (along with the rest of the US forces) shortly after. I've always been struck by that scene, because in a lot of ways, if we really are headed towards a superintelligence, I at least want to be there and see it happen in the last few minutes before foom! As an example, the author thinks AI will revolutionize entire fields overnight. I welcome that. Nearly all fields of biology have become moribund, focusing more and more on esoteric side details, rather than addressing the key problems.

stratos123

The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible - but I hear the same people express fear privately. No other human activity poses this level of danger. A common response is “if they truly believe this, why are they still building it?” At OpenAI, many have not deeply internalized the civilizational stakes. At Anthropic, the stakes are well-understood, but they are locked in a race to get there first - they believe no one else will act responsibly, so they must do it themselves, despite the risk. Watch people read this, ignore it completely, and continue commenting about marketing stunts on every piece of news about an LLM-done advance or felony.

g8oz

Related: Sen. Bernie Sanders floats ban on superintelligent AI https://www.axios.com/2026/09/03/bernie-sanders-superintelli...

kart23

what exactly is the solution? pacing between the us labs? what does that do for china? the solutions just aren’t realistic here, nations are treating ai like a nuclear arms race. at this point the cats out of the bag and we need to figure out how to live in this reality and get the best possible outcome. it’s not slowing down or stopping ever. and yes, i’m still optimistic. our economy sucks for the majority, our infrastructure is crumbling and major US cities are in a huge housing shortage. Maybe we should put more effort and think about the possibility of AI fixing things like extreme poverty and world hunger and actual real world problems instead of coming up with math proofs and slop apps if it’s so superintelligent.

matherial

Unlike most other commenters, I applaud him for acting on his principles. If you sincerely believe that, of course you should act. You might not succeed, but your voice might be the one that tips the scales and starts a broader movement. This doesn't mean I agree with him. The fears of doomsday caused by rapid takeoff have been with us since day 1 and the mechanism is always basically "AI invents magic that sets it free of any physical constraints". Self-replicating sentient nanobots or something like that. I think there's plenty to be worried about with AI, but runaway scenarios are pretty low on my list.

ElProlactin

"It is perfectly obvious that the whole world is going to hell. The only possible chance that it might not is that we do not attempt to prevent it from doing so." - Oppenheimer

TheOtherHobbes

I mean - yes. The tech is an existential threat to all life on Earth, some of the worst humans in the world are involved in developing it, and no individual government is intelligent enough, aligned enough, or powerful enough to manage this situation. That's where we are. Maybe we still have choices. Collectively, I'm no longer sure we do.

jrflowers

“I’m resigning because the company is doing the exact thing that I’ve spent three years helping them do” lmao

ewy1

i have heard about ai companies being fuelled by effective altruist rhetoric ("we must control ai to prevent mass extinction") but was unsure whether to believe it; this seems to slot right into that framing.

fidotron

What's eternally confusing about these outbursts is what did these researchers think would happen if their research actually . . . worked? It's as if none of them actually believed any of it was possible and then were caught with their pants down.

tarr11

Most of the current discourse around AI seems to be informed by “The Terminator” lore. Is skynet really the most plausible or only outcome? What if things just got better and the AI’s realized that it would be better to have a mutually beneficial or at least tolerant relationship rather than one where they murder all of us?