Anthropic AI Safety Researcher Has Held the Situation, Listened, and It Is Clear What Must Be Done

Up until today, Mrinank Sharma was the head of the safeguards research team at Anthropic, the company behind popular AI chatbot Claude. He stepped down on Monday and publicly published the letter he shared with his team before departing, in which he expressed a deep concern for… something.

In the letter, Sharma talks extensively about contributing to AI safety, citing successes in his role including “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.†His final project, he wrote, was “understanding how Al assistants could make us less human or distort our humanity.â€

He also said that the work is more important than ever because of a vague and mostly undefined threat that is looming on the horizon. “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,†he wrote.

While he doesn’t name those perils, he did leave a, let’s call it helpful, footnote to further explain: “Some call it a ‘poly-crisis,’ underpinned by a ‘meta-crisis.’†Okay! To better understand that idea, he cited the book “First Principles and First Values,†by David J. Temple, and it’s quite the rabbit hole to fall down.

A couple of things about that text: First, the subtitle is “Forty-Two Propositions on CosmoErotic Humanism, the Meta-Crisis, and the World to Come.†CosmoErotic Humanism, according to the Center of World Philosophy and Religion, is a “world philosophical movement aimed at reconstructing the collapse of value at the core of global culture,†and is “not merely a theory but a movement that changes the very mood of Reality.†Those are definitely words put in order.

In an effort to simplify the concept of CosmoErotic Humanism, it basically posits that we are experiencing a fundamental crisis of humanity caused by the loss of a shared understanding of the world and seeks to create a new shared story that frames the evolution of humanity as the “Love Story of the Universe.â€

Second, the author of the book, David J. Temple, is not really a person. It is a pseudonym that encompasses a collection of writers associated with the Center for World Philosophy and Religion, including Marc Gafni and Zak Stein as the primary authors. Gafni, it’s worth noting, has been accused of sexual assault by multiple victims, including two women who were underage at the time of the alleged misconduct, and was banned from the Jewish Renewal movement of which he was previously a part. Maybe not the kind of person you’d like at the center of crafting society’s “love story.â€

Back to Sharma, he said that while he was proud of the work he did to safeguard AI, he knew that it was time to move on, and seemed to suggest that maybe Anthropic was not living up to its carefully curated public image as the “good†AI company. “Throughout my time here, I’ve repeatedly seen how hard it is to truly let our values govern our actions,†he wrote. “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.â€

Gizmodo reached out to Anthropic for comment on Sharma’s departure but did not receive a response at the time of publication.

Understandably, Sharma said that he wanted to do work that allows him to act in line with his principles and maintain his integrity. “It is through holding this situation and listening as best I can that what I must do becomes clear,†he wrote. So what clarity has he found, you might be wondering? Will he be acting as a whistleblower and sharing what he has seen from inside the industry and Anthropic, in particular? Perhaps he’ll act as a prominent voice to prevent AI from being used in dangerous and reckless ways?

“I hope to explore a poetry degree and devote myself to the practice of courageous speech,†he wrote. Good luck, man.