The Financial Times reports:

Staff at world-leading AI companies and institutions are increasingly suffering from the mental strain of working on systems they fear could cause serious harm to society.

Multiple staff at the United Kingdom’s AI Security Institute, the global leader in the independent testing of frontier AI models, have been signed off work with stress and are undergoing counselling, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The tight schedules for testing unreleased AI models and alarm over the rapid rollout and growing capabilities of these nascent technologies have contributed to low morale and burnout at Aisi, according to four people with knowledge of the matter.

Staff at Anthropic, OpenAI and Google DeepMind have also publicly complained of similar issues, with many top researchers quitting due to the mental toll or coming to a belief that their work was unsafe for public release.

A DeepMind employee said that work on making AI safer came with burnout risks as it felt like “an impossible task”. [Continue reading…]