A former Anthropic employee said in a departure letter published Monday that he is leaving the company as he reckons with a “world in peril.”
Mrinank Sharma, who said he led the safeguards research team at Anthropic, posted on Monday a letter he sent to colleagues announcing his departure. Sharma explained why he was leaving the artificial intelligence company and outlined his future plans.
“I achieved everything I wanted here,” Sharma wrote, citing projects like developing defenses to reduce the risks of AI-assisted bioterrorism and a final project on understanding the effects of AI on humanity.
He also said it was time to move on because he was constantly grappling with the perils of AI, bioweapons, and a “whole series of interconnected crises unfolding at 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,” he wrote.
He added: “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 the broader society too.”
Sharma said he plans to pursue work aligned with his integrity, explore a degree in poetry, and devote himself to courageous speech.
Neither Sharma nor Anthropic immediately responded to requests for comment from Business Insider.
Sharma is the latest Anthropic employee to publicly announce a departure.
Harsh Mehta, who worked in research and development, and leading AI scientist Behnam Neyshabur, said in X posts last week that they’d left Anthropic to “start something new,” while praising the company for its talent and strong culture. Dylan Scandinaro, a former AI safety researcher at Anthropic, recently joined OpenAI as its head of preparedness.
Anthropic, meanwhile, has announced other recent hires, including CTO Rahul Patil, who previously served in the same role at Skype, in October.
The AI company has been in talks to raise a new round of funding that could value Anthropic at $350 billion.
On Thursday, Anthropic rolled out Claude Opus 4.6, an upgraded model designed to boost office productivity and coding performance, with a larger context window to handle longer documents and more complex work in a single session.
Read Sharma’s full letter below.
Dear Colleagues,I’ve decided to leave Anthropic. My last day will be February 9th.Thank you. There is so much here that inspires and has inspired me. To name some of those things: a sincere desire and drive to show up in such a challenging situation, and aspire to contribute in an impactful and high-integrity way; a willingness to make difficult decisions and stand for what is good; an unreasonable amount of intellectual brilliance and determination; and, of course, the considerable kindness that pervades our culture.I’ve achieved what I wanted to here. I arrived in San Francisco two years ago, having wrapped up my PhD and wanting to contribute to Al safety. I feel lucky to have been able to contribute to what I have here: understanding Al sycophancy and its causes; developing defences to reduce risks from Al-assisted bioterrorism; actually putting those defences into production; and writing one of the first Al safety cases. I’m especially proud of my recent efforts to help us live our values via internal transparency mechanisms; and also my final project on understanding how Al assistants could make us less human or distort our humanity. Thank you for your trust.Nevertheless, it is clear to me that the time has come to move on. I continuously find myself reckoning with our situation. The world is in peril. And not just from Al, 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.It is through holding this situation and listening as best I can that what I must do becomes clear.’ I want to contribute in away that feels fully in my integrity, and that allows me to bring to bear more of my particularities. I want to explore the questions that feel truly essential to me, the questions that David Whyte would say “have no right to go away”, the questions that Rilke implores us to “live”. For me, this means leaving.What comes next, I do not know. I think fondly of the famous Zen quote “not knowing is most intimate”. My intention is to create space to set aside the structures that have held me these past years, and see what might emerge in their absence. I feel called to writing that addresses and engages fully with the place we find ourselves, and that places poetic truth alongside scientific truth as equally valid ways of knowing, both of which I believe have something essential to contribute when developing new technology.* I hope to explore a poetry degree and devote myself to the practice of courageous speech. I am also excited to deepen my practice of facilitation, coaching, community building, and group work. We shall se what unfolds.Thank you, and goodbye. I’ve learnt so much from being here and I wish you the best. I’ll leave you with one of my favourite poems, The Way It Is by William Stafford.Good Luck,MrinankThe Way It IsThere’s a thread you follow. It goes amongthings that change. But it doesn’t change.People wonder about what you are pursuing.You have to explain about the thread.But it is hard for others to see.While you hold it you can’t get lost.Tragedies happen; people get hurtor die; and you suffer and get old.Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.You don’t ever let go of the thread.William Stafford
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