Mrinank Sharma, 29, announced he was leaving tech giant Anthropic’s safeguards research team to “devote myself to the practice of courageous speech"
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An AI safety boss has warned "the world is in peril" after he quit his Silicon Valley tech job to write poetry.
Mrinank Sharma, 29, announced he was leaving tech giant Anthropic’s safeguards research team to “devote myself to the practice of courageous speech".
The Oxford graduate's exit comes a week after the $350 billion (£255bn) company released a powerful revamp of their Claude chat tool, named Opus 4.6.
Today is my last day at Anthropic. I resigned.
Here is the letter I shared with my colleagues, explaining my decision. pic.twitter.com/Qe4QyAFmxL— mrinank (@MrinankSharma) February 9, 2026
In his resignation letter, Mr Sharma announced he was taking a degree in poetry and was leaving Anthropic because he faced “pressures to set aside what matters most”.
“I continuously find myself reckoning with our situation. The world is in peril," he wrote.
"And not just from AI, or bioweapons, but from a whole series of interconnected crisis unfolding in this very moment."
Mr Sharma already has a published book of poetry, in which he describes himself as a “poet, mystic and ecstatic DJ and facilitator”.
He signed off his resignation letter, which was posted on social media platform X, with a poem from the American poet William Stafford.
Mr Sharma, who left Oxford with a PHD in Machine Learning, had led Anthropic’s safeguards team for the last year.
The department had focused on tackling AI security research, including examining “model misuse and misalignment” and exploring AI “catastrophe prevention”.
They also examined the risks of overly sycophantic AI bots and how such tools risked disempowering human users by making them overly reliant on chatbots.
AI safety leader Ethan Perez said Mr Sharma’s work at Anthropic had been "critical to helping us and other AI labs achieve a much higher level of safety than we otherwise would have”.
Anthropic bosses have repeatedly warned that powerful AI bots could spell disaster for humanity or even extinction.
The company's chief executive has claimed the technology could wipe of half of all white collar jobs.
In a recent blog post, Dario Amodei warned AI tools of “almost unimaginable power” were “imminent” and that the bots would “test who we are as a species”.
He also claimed that selling powerful chips to Chinese companies was "like selling nuclear weapons to North Korea”.
Anthropic’s AI bots have struck fear into investors, who believe their technology may rip apart the software industry, leading many to sell off their technology stocks over the past week.
Despite Mr Amodei's warnings, Anthropic has ploughed ahead with launching ever more powerful AI bots.
It is currently raising more than $20bn for its technology and is reportedly laying the groundwork for a public listing.