Veteran engineer Robert O'Callahan quits Google DeepMind chip-tools team because 'AI is already progressing too fast'
On Sept 25, 2026 Robert O'Callahan, maintainer of the rr debugger and Pernosco, resigned from Google. His Google DeepMind team was building chip-design tools for a new generation of AI chips to make AI much faster and cheaper, and he said AI is already progressing far too fast. He said most GDM colleagues he talked to have sincere concerns about AI risk. Zvi Mowshowitz counted it in the wave of safety-motivated departures after the Hugging Face incident.
Key facts
- X post (Sept 25, 2026): 'I resigned from Google today... my GDM team was working on a new generation of chips to make AI much faster and cheaper, and I think AI is already progressing too fast, so I had to quit' (~4.2K likes when checked Oct 2)
- He worked on improved tools for hardware chip design, not directly on model capabilities; says the main effect would be to 'accelerate the design of a new breed of AI chips'
- Says ASI existential risk is 'real but uncertain' and that national and international regulation is 'desperately needed'; saw 'no hard evidence' that lab staff hype risk to boost stock prices or regulate away competitors
- Says the timing was planned and is 'a coincidence' with the recent viral resignations; will keep maintaining rr and Pernosco and study how AI agents debug code
- Blog post 'Goodbye Google' was the top story on Lobste.rs on Oct 1 (108 points) and was discussed on Hacker News
What happened
Robert O'Callahan, a New Zealand-based engineer known for the rr record-and-replay debugger and the Pernosco debugger, left Google. In his blog post he explains that his Google DeepMind team built chip-design tooling whose main effect would be faster, cheaper AI chips. He believes AI progress is "far too rapid" and could not move to another Google project in New Zealand that would not also speed up AI. He told his skip-level manager he was "at best reluctant to see their project succeed". He writes as a Christian and says he is neither a "tech bro" nor part of the rationalist community, but takes existential-risk arguments seriously.
Why it matters
It is a small, first-hand data point on how far the safety-motivated resignations of September 2026 reached: from model researchers to infrastructure engineers working on AI hardware. It also gives an insider's view that GDM staff concerns about risk are sincere.
Changelog
- 2026-10-02: created (found via Zvi's "The AI Preference Cascade Reaches Farther").
Related posts (1)
- Robert O'Callahan original ↗ Robert O'Callahan @rocallahan · x · 2026-09-25
Cited as a source by: 2026-09-25-robert-ocallahan-resigns-google
Related events
Sources (5)
- officialRobert O'Callahan: Goodbye Google (blog)
- officialRobert O'Callahan on X: resignation post
- discussionHacker News discussion
- discussionLobste.rs discussion
- discussionZvi Mowshowitz: The AI Preference Cascade Reaches Farther
id: 2026-09-25-robert-ocallahan-resigns-google · updated 2026-10-02 · open in the interactive timeline