OpenAI engineer resigns after realizing existential threat from AI, leaves Silicon Valley for treatment in Vietnam
Earlier, Anthropic Safety Lead had resigned saying that the world is in danger and he cannot tolerate it anymore. Now, an OpenAI engineer is quitting his job out of existential dread and going to Vietnam for treatment.
The relentless pace of AI is taking a toll on the people working to develop it. And even more so given how powerful AI is as a technology, the people shaping it are under pressure to get it ethically and morally right. Earlier we had seen that Anthropic Safety Lead Mrinak Sharma had left his company, choosing to write poetry over a lucrative career in tech. Now, OpenAI engineer Hieu Pham has announced that he is leaving his company and moving to Vietnam with his family so he can “heal” and find a “cure for my condition.”
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Pham worked at OpenAI as a member of the technical staff. He was previously at xAI and Google Brain. In a post on X, he has announced his decision to step away from leading AI labs to focus on his health. In her post, Pham talked about the intensity of the work and the pride she got from it, but admitted that it was beginning to take a toll on her health.
“I have made the difficult decision to leave OpenAI. Working here and at XAI was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I have met the best people. The work makes me proud,” he wrote on XAI. “But the intense work came at a cost. I can’t believe I’ll say this one day, but I’m tired. All the mental health decline I used to scoff at is real, pathetic, scary, and dangerous.”
This comes just weeks after Pham described AI as an existential threat. In early February, he wrote on
going to vietnam to recover
The OpenAI engineer noted that he plans to step away from leading AI labs and return to his home country, Vietnam, with his family to focus on treatment and recovery.
“I’m going to take a leave of absence from frontier AI labs and move my family to my home country of Vietnam,” he wrote. “There, I will try something new, and also find a cure for my condition. I hope I will be cured.”
Pham’s decision to step away from the AI Lab comes at a time when AI companies like Google, OpenAI, XAI and Anthropic are accelerating work on AI to outdo each other. A few months ago, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced Code Red, asking employees to accelerate work on the next model of ChatGPIT, following the launch of Google’s Gemini 3 and Anthropic’s Cloud. Meanwhile, in an effort to stay ahead of the competition, Google and Anthropic are releasing new features for Gemini and the cloud on an almost daily basis.
After Pham posted his public resignation, his views have received support from some other tech insiders. Raj Dabre, a senior AI researcher at Google, agreed that the intensity of work in AI labs is extremely high. “Doing border operations is no joke. Sure, we get paid a lot, but it takes a toll when you’re under immense pressure to perform. At one point one wonders if it’s all worth it. Glad it’s being said out loud,” Dabre wrote on X.
The OpenAI engineer is not alone in feeling the existential threat of AI or the sadness caused by the rapid pace of AI. Earlier, Mrinank Sharma, who led the safeguards research team at Anthropic, had resigned, warning that “the world is at risk”. Sharma said he felt he had a “passion for writing” and planned to pursue poetry instead of continuing AI research.
Meanwhile, at XAI, co-founder Greg Yang also stepped down after revealing he had been diagnosed with Lyme disease. While his decision was primarily driven by the need to focus on treatment, he acknowledged that he may have overexposed himself while building the AI company, suggesting that the rapid pace could have worsened his condition.
