By his own admission, David Robinson is “something of a cliché”: an employee at a leading AI company who issues a dire warning while resigning from their job. In an essay published in The Atlantic, Robinson said he led the writing of safety reports that accompanied OpenAI’s major product launches. He also said that with three-and-a-half years at OpenAI, he is “among the longest-tenured employees at the company.” Now he’s quitting, because in his view, the company’s “culture is broken.” In some ways, Robinson’s comments echo those of Jacob Coxon, who worked as a researcher at both OpenAI and Anthropic before quitting and declaring that these companies are “gambling with our lives.” Coxon’s comments led to a broader debate about AI safety, with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei unveiling a plan for more cautious AI development; AI executives met with President Donald Trump this week and signed what appeared to be hastily written, non-binding pledge to implement more safety controls.
But in Robinson’s view, the debate needs to go beyond “specific rules or new laws,” addressing the overall culture at these companies. And while much of the reporting around OpenAI has focused on how the company’s CEO Sam Altman lost the trust of former colleagues, Robinson’s essay suggests that OpenAI’s culture issues are the same as those of Silicon Valley at large. Robinson’s departure was first reported by Business Insider.
In his essay, he also acknowledged that he’s following an apparently a common step in the AI whistleblower playbook: He’s hired a PR firm. But he insisted, “The decision to speak out is mine alone.” “Perhaps I should have stayed and fought for fundamental shifts in our staffing and culture, but in practice, my colleagues and I were so busy sprinting that we seldom had the chance to consider big changes, much less to actually make them,” Robinson said.
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