The most significant excitement in the U.S. technology sector currently centers on Anthropic, a private artificial intelligence company. Following the demonstration of its AI agent ‘Claude Workflow’ being able to take over specialized areas such as law, finance, and marketing, a perception took hold in the U.S. that costly software and human resources were no longer essential. As a result, the market values of major software companies like Oracle, Salesforce, and Adobe dropped by hundreds of billions of dollars almost instantly.
▶ The head of AI safety at this company, Mrinank Sharma, stepped down the day before yesterday. He is a prominent expert in AI, having obtained bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mathematics and statistics from the University of Cambridge and a Ph.D. in machine learning from the University of Oxford. In his resignation message to colleagues, Sharma stated, “We have achieved truly impressive accomplishments, but the world is now at risk.” He then revealed his intention to return to the U.K. to pursue studies in poetry. “Science explains how the world functions, but poetry reveals what the world signifies,” he added.
▶Anthropic was established in 2021 by former OpenAI employees who were critical of their previous company for becoming “too commercialized and overlooking AI safety.” This led the company to be called “the conscience-driven AI firm.” Interestingly, the tool created by this safety-oriented organization caused a crash in software companies. In contrast, after announcing ‘Claude Workflow,’ Anthropic received $30 billion (about 40 trillion South Korean won) in significant investments, and its company value climbed to $380 billion (around 500 trillion South Korean won).
▶Sharma is not the only one. Geoffrey Hinton, the Nobel Prize-winning “father of AI,” left Google, expressing concerns that his own technology could pose a danger to humanity. Ilya Sutskever, a key person at OpenAI, also stepped down in protest against the company’s focus on profits rather than safety. The recent exits of these academics, who once stood at the forefront of technological progress, appear as a disturbing warning concealed within AI’s optimistic future.
▶Sharma specifically turned to literature. In his resignation letter, he referenced American poet William Stafford’s ‘The Way It Is,’ which contains the lines: “There is a thread you follow. It goes among things that change. But it doesn’t change.” Amid the turmoil and transformation brought by algorithms redefining the world, did he decide to stick with the thread of human values? Between the paradise offered by AI and the danger of human disorder, Sharma questions: Do you have your own thread that you will never abandon, even in a storm?
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