A Google Employee Resigned, Citing ‘Real but Uncertain’ AI Risk

A Google employee said he resigned from the company, citing the pursuit of powerful artificial intelligence as “inherently irresponsible.”

Robert O’Callahan, who worked at Google DeepMind, wrote in an X post that his team was developing chips to make AI faster and cheaper and that he believed AI was already “progressing too fast.”

He shared a resignation letter on his personal blog that he said he sent to colleagues on Friday, in which he wrote that he couldn’t “turn a blind eye” to the impact of his work because it “would not be a Jesus-following thing to do.” He describes himself as a Christian in his blog’s bio.

“This has not been an easy decision. I love my colleagues and my work environment, and being paid handsomely to solve fun puzzles has been amazing,” he wrote. “But my team’s goal is ultimately to make AI much cheaper and lower-latency, and I don’t think that’s good for people right now: I firmly believe AI progress is currently far too rapid (and I have doubts about the destination too).”

Business Insider could not establish how long O’Callahan, who says he is based in New Zealand, worked for Google. Approached for comment, O’Callahan referred Business Insider to the blog post.

O’Callahan joins a string of employees from AI companies who have either quit over safety concerns or sounded the alarm from within.

Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic earlier this month, citing fears that the industry was building technology it would not ultimately be able to control. His comments sparked broader concerns that advanced AI could one day wipe out humanity.

Last month, Google DeepMind researcher Bilal Chughtai said he resigned from the company in the summer over fears that humanity might be running out of time to avoid a scenario in which AI harms humanity.

O’Callahan did not go as far as some of his fellow tech workers.

In a separate, lengthier post on his blog, O’Callahan said he believes a lot of the warnings around AI’s dangers “deserve to be taken seriously,” but he is “not convinced the chance of ASI doom is 100%,” referring to artificial superintelligence.

“Rather, I think the risk is real but uncertain — but that itself is very alarming!” he wrote. “We are morally obliged to make a massive effort to minimise such risk, and most likely the risk is high enough that aiming for ASI in the near future is inherently irresponsible.”

O’Callahan said he believes employees inside the tech companies who are warning of AI’s dangers are sincere.

“I have seen no hard evidence that people are hyping AI risk as a means to boost company stock prices or regulate away their competitors,” he wrote.

‘It certainly is awkward’

O’Callahan appears to have been worried about the potential risks of AI for a while.

“Three things: I work for Google Deepmind; I believe AI will most likely be disastrous for humanity; and I believe Jesus rose from the dead,” he wrote in a November 2025 blog. “That combination possibly makes me unique. It certainly is awkward.”

In his resignation email, O’Callahan said he plans to continue working on AI in other ways, including studying how agents can be used to debug code.

O’Callahan said his departure was not intentionally timed to coincide with other employees who have recently left labs over safety concerns, some of whom have shot to fame.

“Why leave now and not earlier? It’s nothing to do with the recent spate of viral resignations or ‘AI slowdown’ warnings; that’s a coincidence,” he wrote.

“I’ve had this date in mind for a while, because I have a long-planned ten-day backpacking trip with my friends starting Monday (Abel Tasman and Wangapeka tracks) and I wanted to go before that.”

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