Researcher quits Anthropic after 3 years of pretraining work: 'I haven't finished a thought in four years'

inductionheads · x · 2026-09-11

Researcher mpopv announced her resignation from Anthropic, saying she spent the last three years doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic and 'has not finished a thought in four years.'

In a blistering, stylistically raw thread, she accuses both labs of acting irresponsibly — 'just moving, feeding, driving, prompting' researchers until their brains are soup and their wrists are finished, leaving no energy for opinions about civilizational risks that keep growing out of the very work they're too tired to notice, amid yet another loss spike. She weaves in self-referential jokes about decline-of-the-West readers and promises more thoughts to come.

The resignation post spread widely as a pointed indictment of frontier-lab research pace and burnout culture.

Related event: Pretraining Researcher Departs OpenAI and Anthropic(2 posts)→

Original post →

More from AGI Musings

AGI Musings channel →