OpenAI engineer resigns after feeling existential threat from AI, leaving Silicon Valley to go heal in Vietnam
India Today
Earlier the Anthropic safety lead resigned saying the world was in peril and he couldn't take it anymore. Now, an OpenAI engineer is stepping away from his job because of existentialist dread and is moving to Vietnam to heal.
The relentless pace of AI is taking its toll on people working to develop it. And more so given how powerful is AI as a technology, putting pressure on people shaping it to get it ethically and morally right. Earlier we saw Anthropic safety lead Mrinank Sharma leave his company, opting to write poetry over a lucrative career in tech. Now, OpenAI engineer Hieu Pham has announced that he is leaving his company and going to Vietnam with his family so that he can “heal” and find “cure for my condition.”
Pham, worked as a Member of Technical Staff at OpenAI. He was earlier at xAI and Google Brain. In a post on X, he has announced his decision to step away from frontier AI labs to focus on his health. In his post, Pham spoke about the intensity of the work and the pride it brought, but admitted it had begun to take a toll on his health.
“I have made the difficult decision to leave OpenAI. Working here and at xAI before was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I have met the best people. The work makes me proud,” he wrote on X. “But the intensive work came with a price. I cannot believe I would say this one day, but I am burnt out. All the mental health deterioration that I used to scoff at is real, miserable, scary and dangerous.”
This comes weeks after Pham called AI an existential threat. On X earlier in February he wrote, “Today, I finally feel the existential threat that AI is posing. When AI becomes overly good and disrupts everything, what will be left for humans to do? And it’s when, not if.”
The OpenAI engineer notes that he plans to step away from frontier AI labs and return to his home country, Vietnam, with his family to focus on healing and recovery.
“I am going to take a break from frontier AI labs, and will take my family to my home country Vietnam,” he wrote. “There, I will try something new, and also search for a cure for my conditions. I hope I will heal.”
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