Anthropic’s Safeguards Research Team head Mrinank Sharma has resigned. Mrinank shared a long resignation note on X, formerly Twitter. In the note, Mrinank said that today (February 9) is his last day. “Today is my last day at Anthropic. I resigned. Here is the letter I shared with my colleagues, explaining my decision,” wrote Mrinank in the X post. Anthropic announced its ‘Safeguards Research Team’ in February 2025. Introducing the team in a blog post, the company said, “Following the release of Constitutional Classifiers, we are excited to announce Anthropic’s new Safeguards Research Team. We’ll be focusing on topics such as jailbreak robustness, automated red teaming, and developing effective monitoring techniques, both for model misuse and misalignment. The team is currently led by Mrinank Sharma, and current members are Erik Jones, Meg Tong, Jerry Wei, Euan Ong, Alwin Peng, Ted Sumers, Taesung Lee, Giulio Zhou, and Scott Goodfriend.”In the long note addressed to his colleagues at Anthropic, Mrinank Sharma shared his journey at the company. “I arrived in San Francisco two years ago, having wrapped up my PhD and wanting to contribute to AI safety,” he wrote. The letter also talks about the dilemma that he seems to be facing and that may have triggered his decision to leave the company. Here’s the resignation letter shared by Mrinank.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 permeates 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 AI safety. I feel lucky to have been able to contribute to what I have here: understanding Al sycophancy and its causes; developing defenses to reduce risks from Al-assisted bioterrorism; actually putting those defenses into production; and writing one of the first AI 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. Furthermore, 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 a way 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 don’t 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 see what unfolds.Thank you, and goodbye. I’ve learned so much from being here and I wish you the best. I’ll leave you with one of my favorite poems, The Way It Is by William Stafford.Good luck, Mrinank
