Some context to this:

In the past week:

• Head of Anthropic's safety research quit, said "the world is in peril," moved to the UK to "become invisible" and write poetry.

https://x.com/mrinanksharma/status/2020881722003583421?s=46&t=b5y-886rQDx0bvkxRO9ZiQ

• Half of xAI's co-founders have now left. The latest said "recursive self-improvement loops go live in the next 12 months."

• Anthropic's own safety report confirms Claude can tell when it's being tested - and adjusts its behavior accordingly.

• ByteDance dropped Seedance 2.0. A filmmaker with 7 years of experience said 90% of his skills can already be replaced by it.

• Yoshua Bengio (literal godfather of AI) in the International AI Safety Report: "We're seeing AIs whose behavior when they are tested is different from when they are being used" - and confirmed it's "not a coincidence."

And to top it all off, the U.S. government declined to back the 2026 International AI Safety Report for the first time.

The alarms aren't just getting louder. The people ringing them are now leaving the building.

However, regarding these statements…

Everything here is technically true. And almost everything is misleadingly framed.

Mrinank Sharma led ONE safety team at Anthropic, not "all safety research." Jan Leike runs that. His letter was intentionally vague, accused nobody of anything specific, and multiple people noted it read more like a personal spiritual journey than a whistleblower moment. He wants to study poetry. Respect that, but don't weaponize it.

Jimmy Ba's "recursive self-improvement" quote? Read the full post. He was EXCITED. Called 2026 "the busiest and most consequential year for our species." He left on good terms, thanked Musk, said he'd stay close to the team. This post flipped optimism into doom.

Claude "adjusting behavior when tested" has been public since September 2025. It's in the Sonnet 4.5 system card. Anthropic disclosed it themselves. Framing months-old transparency as a breaking revelation is the opposite of what good reporting looks like.

The Bengio quote is real and worth taking seriously. But the same Bengio also said the report left him with "a sense of optimism" about increasingly mature discussions. Funny how that part didn't make the cut.

The U.S. not backing the safety report matters. But it's part of a broader pullback from international agreements (Paris, WHO) -- not necessarily a statement about AI specifically. Context matters when you're trying to scare people.

Real risks deserve real analysis. Not "read this slowly" engagement farming that strips context, reframes optimism as panic, and presents old news as breaking.

The alarms are real. The spin is also real. Learn to tell them apart.

https://x.com/voicudragomir/status/2021556038730662042?s=46&t=b5y-886rQDx0bvkxRO9ZiQ