'We don't understand the consequences' - Why I quit OpenAI - The Sunday Story
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 15 February 2026
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
AI researcher Zoe Hitzig quit her job at OpenAI this week over “deep reservations” about the company’s strategy, including their decision to pilot running ads on ChatGPT. In a rare interview, she gives her reasons for leaving the industry - a world with access to "an unprecedented archive of human candour". Meanwhile, another AI researcher, this time at Anthropic, also quit with a the stark warning that "the world is in peril". They just the latest in a series of high profile resignations. So what's going on - and what are the big fears for a world increasingly dominated by AI?
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Guests:
- Zoe Hitzig, former AI researcher at OpenAI.
- Mark Sellman,Technology Correspondent for the Times.
Host: Manveen Rana.
Producer: Dave Creasey.
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Read more: ‘The world is in peril’: AI researchers quit with public warnings
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From The Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story on Sunday. |
| 0:05.0 | I'm Manvim Rana. |
| 0:07.0 | Something seems to have changed. |
| 0:12.0 | People are suddenly waking up to the dangers that AI could be about to unleash on the world. |
| 0:24.5 | And in the tech world, there's new concerns over the safety of artificial intelligence |
| 0:29.1 | after the head of Anthropics' AI safety resigned this Monday. |
| 0:34.6 | Fears were heightened by two very prominent resignations from within the world of AI this week. |
| 0:42.2 | Marinac Sharma writing in a post on X that the world is in peril. |
| 0:50.5 | There's also a creeping sense of alarm about what the technology itself might be capable of doing. |
| 0:58.5 | If you tell the model it's going to be shut off, it has extreme reactions. |
| 1:03.2 | It can blackmail the engineer that's going to shut it off if given an opportunity to do so. |
| 1:08.3 | It's ready to kill someone, wasn't it? |
| 1:09.9 | I'm not sure if it was flawed or someone else. |
| 1:12.2 | Yeah. |
| 1:12.7 | Yes. |
| 1:16.5 | And then there are the dangers of whether the AI industry might be about to bring the global economy to its knees. |
| 1:28.1 | A lot of the things we worry about when we talk about AI's sort of societal dangers, |
| 1:35.2 | kind of pale in comparison to the economic crash that's going to make 2008 look like |
| 1:39.1 | the best day in your life. |
| 1:41.6 | So, what are the real risks of AI? |
| 1:46.1 | We spoke to one of the researchers who resigned this week over fears of where the industry is headed. |
| 1:53.0 | I just don't think we understand the potential consequences yet for AI. |
... |
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