Artificial intelligence (AI) continues to raise ethical considerations for cutting-edge advances in technology.
This week, two high-profile executives left companies trying to make an impact in the AI space to pursue something in the real world.
Mrinanku Sharma, head of Anthropic’s safeguards research team, resigned from the company in 2023, just three years after joining the company.
“Today is my last day at Anthropic. I have resigned,” he wrote on social media platform X.
Sharma holds a PhD in Machine Learning from Oxford and an MSc in Engineering from Cambridge, but shares a love of poetry, especially Rumi, Rilke, and William Stafford. His note on social media platform X explained his decision.
Sharma’s resignation comes amid growing questions about ethical integrity across the industry.
In his memo, he pointed to a perceived disconnect between the company’s public stance on AI safety and its internal practices, suggesting that pressure often forces employees to compromise their personal core values.
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He also pointed out that the world is in a “crisis”, a crisis that is not limited to AI risks.
He planned to pursue a degree in poetry and expressed the belief that tackling such existential questions requires more than technical work, such as wisdom, honesty, and deeper contemplation. Sharma is not the only AI expert to leave an AI company that is starting to make an impact in this space. Tony Wu, one of xAI’s co-founders, announced his resignation late on the day.
“This company and what we have become a family will remain with me forever,” Wu wrote in the post. “I’ll really miss the people, the war room, and all the battles we fought together.”
Although he said that in an “era of all-encompassing possibilities” for AI, where “small teams armed with AI technology” can “move mountains and redefine what’s possible,” he felt it was time to move on.
Several other founding members of xAI have also left the company: Igor Babushkin, Kyle Kosik, Christian Szegedy, and Greg Yang.
It was recently acquired by SpaceX, another of Elon Musk’s companies, and Musk has said space will be the lowest-cost way to generate computing power for AI.
In response to a post on
Thinking Machines Lab, a little-known company, lost three of its six original co-founders. After raising $1 billion in seed round funding.
Some have returned, like former OpenAI principal investigator Barrett Zoff, and another co-founder reportedly returned to OpenAI in January 2026.
