An AI safety researcher has quit US firm Anthropic with a cryptic warning that the "world is in peril".

In his resignation letter shared on X, Mrinank Sharma told the firm he was leaving amid concerns about AI, bioweapons and the state of the wider world.

He said he would instead look to pursue writing and studying poetry, and move back to the UK to "become invisible".

It comes in the same week that an OpenAI researcher said she had resigned, sharing concerns about the ChatGPT maker's decision to deploy adverts in its chatbot.

Anthropic, best known for its Claude chatbot, had released a series of commercials aimed at OpenAI, criticising the company's move to include adverts for some users.

The company, which was formed in 2021 by a breakaway team of early OpenAI employees, has positioned itself as having a more safety-orientated approach to AI research compared with its rivals.

Sharma led a team there which researched AI safeguards.

He said in his resignation letter his contributions included investigating why generative AI systems suck up to users, combatting AI-assisted bioterrorism risks and researching "how AI assistants could make us less human".

But he said despite enjoying his time at the company, it was clear "the time has come to move on".

****"The world is in peril. And not just from AI, or bioweapons, but from a whole series of interconnected crises unfolding in this very moment," Sharma wrote.

He said he had "repeatedly seen how hard it is to truly let our values govern our actions" - including at Anthropic which he said "constantly face pressures to set aside what matters most".

Sharma said he would instead look to pursue a poetry degree and writing.

He added in a reply: "I'll be moving back to the UK and letting myself become invisible for a period of time."****

Those departing AI firms which have loomed large in the latest generative AI boom - and sought to retain talent with huge salaries or compensation offers - often do so with plenty of shares and benefits intact. Eroding principles

Anthropic calls itself a "public benefit corporation dedicated to securing [AI's] benefits and mitigating its risks".

In particular, it has focused on preventing those it believes are posed by more advanced frontier systems, such as them becoming misaligned with human values, misused in areas such as conflict or too powerful.

It has released reports on the safety of its own products, including when it said its technology had been "weaponised" by hackers to carry out sophisticated cyber attacks.

But it has also come under scrutiny over its practices. In 2025, it agreed to pay $1.5bn (£1.1bn) to settle a class action lawsuit filed by authors who said the company stole their work to train its AI models.

Like OpenAI, the firm also seeks to seize on the technology's benefits, including through its own AI products such as its ChatGPT rival Claude.

It recently released a commercial that criticised OpenAI's move to start running ads in ChatGPT.

OpenAI boss Sam Altman had previously said he hated ads and would use them as a "last resort".

Last week, he hit back at the advert's description of this as a "betrayal" - but was mocked for his lengthy post criticising Anthropic.

Writing in the New York Times on Wednesday, former OpenAI researcher Zoe Hitzig said she had "deep reservations about OpenAI's strategy".

"People tell chatbots about their medical fears, their relationship problems, their beliefs about God and the afterlife," she wrote.

"Advertising built on that archive creates a potential for manipulating users in ways we don't have the tools to understand, let alone prevent."

Hitzig said a potential "erosion of OpenAI's own principles to maximise engagement" might already be underway at the firm.

She said she feared this may accelerate if the company's approach to advertising does not reflect its values to benefit humanity.

BBC News has approached OpenAI for a response.

A Super Bowl ad for Ring security cameras boasting how the company can scan neighborhoods for missing dogs has prompted some customers to remove or even destroy their cameras.

Online, videos of people removing or destroying their Ring cameras have gone viral. One video posted by Seattle-based artist Maggie Butler shows her pulling off her porch-facing camera and flipping it the middle finger.

Butler explained that she originally bought the camera to protect against package thefts, but decided the pet-tracking system raised too many concerns about government access to data.

"They aren't just tracking lost dogs, they're tracking you and your neighbors," Butler said in the video that has more than 3.2 million views.

Removed/flagged from Hacker News/ Y Combinator news.

Tan, the CEO of the vaunted startup incubator Y Combinator, announced Wednesday he had spun up a dark-money group called “Garry’s List” that he described as a “voter education group” that is “dedicated to civic engagement, voter education and support for common-sense policies and candidates” in a press release. Such groups give donors a way to anonymously support causes without giving directly to a candidate or a measure.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has appointed the Zionist leader of a liberal Jewish community group to lead his Office to Combat Antisemitism.

Phylisa Wisdom, who will be leading City Hall’s fight against Jew-hatred, has led the New York Jewish Agenda since 2023.

The group opposed the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, an anti-Israel initiative Mamdani has previously expressed his support for.

The group been instrumental in calling out antisemitism over the years. Last month, after a protest outside a synagogue saw activists chant “we support Hamas”, NYJA condemned it as “unambiguous and unacceptable antisemitism”.

ANTWERP, Belgium, Feb 11 (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday advocated for a single European energy market and for the construction of an integrated electricity grid.

A district court in New York set the Trump administration off on Wednesday by naming the replacement for one of the DOJ's several "not lawfully serving" acting U.S. attorneys, leading to a swift "you are fired" announcement on social media and a near replay of a standoff from the summer.

John Sarcone had clung to his claimed title of acting top prosecutor, through the office of first assistant U.S. attorney, and special attorney, as supervisor for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District even after a judge quashed his grand jury subpoenas of New York Attorney General Letitia James' office, as Sarcone "used authority he did not lawfully possess to direct the issuance of the subpoenas[.]"

In a brief announcement, the court cited 28 U.S. Code § 546(d) to name [Donald] Kinsella the U.S. attorney, pointing to his "more than 50 years of experience in complex criminal and civil litigation" and his time as the criminal chief of the office.

Under the statute, when a U.S. attorney's stint has expired, the "district court for such district may appoint a United States attorney to serve until the vacancy is filled." And under Article II, Congress "may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments."

We must dismantle all production. Production has caused all of societies ills. The return to the true nature, to the roots of humanity, is the only way to cure humanity of it's problems. The first human to pick up a stone to start producing things has put humanity on deadly path, that can only end in the complete eradication of humanity. It is for this reason that the phrase "death to production" is spoken of, to save humanity.

ⓘ This user is suspected of being a cat. Please report any suspicious behavior.

After 26 years of negotiations, the EU’s Partnership Agreement with the South American bloc Mercosur (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay) was expected to be a geopolitical win for the European Commission. Instead, it turned out to be a test to overcome the EU’s institutional complexity, while exposing deep political divisions and hindering the EU’s trade agenda.

Can someone recommend some self-hosted or not, tool that I could schedule for periodical scans of all I host and is exposed to public internet?

I think I did all by the book now, including crowdsec and/or fail2ban, but recently for example I got an email from German CERT that my n8n is out of date and has some CVEs. All of them were not exploitable in my case but that got me thinking that if CERT can do it, maybe there are some services or tools that I could use and get alerts sooner if something is vulnerable in my infrastructure.

Any recommendations welcomed! Ideally self hosted and FOSS of course.

Hacker News.

Using the title that the ABC has used but the important part I think is the announcement of $87 million in helping support survivors in redress, family tracing, and trauma-informed care.

The families of jailed Iranian protesters say the country's rulers have proposed a cruel bargain: publicly celebrate the Islamic Revolution that brought them to power, or risk the lives of their loved ones.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Ministry of Intelligence contacted the families of some current prisoners offering what called "an inhumane dilemma" — either attend marches on Wednesday celebrating the 47th anniversary of the revolution, or put the lives of their children at risk.

The Belgian federal police raided several European Commission buildings on Thursday as they probe suspected irregularities in property transactions carried out in 2024.

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Instagram has suspended the account of Track AIPAC, a widely followed watchdog project that tracks political spending by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and related pro-Israel lobbying groups. The social media giant cited alleged violations of the platform’s intellectual property and trademark rules. The suspension places the account at risk of permanent deletion unless successfully appealed within 180 days.

Track AIPAC — also known as AIPAC Tracker — was launched in 2024 by Cory Archibald and Casey Kennedy as a transparency and advocacy platform documenting AIPAC’s political donations, endorsements and influence on US elections. The project publishes Federal Election Commission data on pro-Israel political spending, highlights which lawmakers receive the most support, and endorses opponents of candidates reliant on AIPAC funding.

The watchdog has become a prominent source for voters and activists seeking to make AIPAC funding “politically toxic” and to hold elected officials accountable for their ties to the pro-Israel lobby.

GHSA-h265-g7rm-h337 (Publication in process, waiting for CVE assignment) This vulnerability would allow an authenticated attacker that is part of an organization to access items from collections to which the attacker does not belong

Tesla’s domestic sales in China collapsed 45% year-over-year in January, falling to just 18,485 units — the automaker’s lowest monthly retail figure in the country since November 2022. The data, released today by the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA), paints a grim picture of Tesla’s demand in the world’s largest EV market.

The figure represents an 80% plunge from December’s record-high 93,843 domestic deliveries. While seasonal declines between December and January are normal in China, a 45% year-over-year drop is not.