Coinspeaker
OpenAI Loses Co-Founder and Key Executive amid Leadership Transitions
The artificial intelligence company OpenAI is experiencing a shift in its leadership team. OpenAI co-founder John Schulman announced his departure, while Greg Brockman revealed he would be on a long sabbatical until the end of the year.
In a long post on X, John Schulman revealed that he is leaving OpenAI to join Anthropic. He stated that his decision to depart is rooted in his desire to deepen his focus on AI alignment and start a new chapter of his career. He emphasizes that his departure has nothing to do with the lack of support for alignment research at OpenAI, as the company’s top executives have been supportive of his journey. Hence, his decision is a personal one.
He further thanked the team for their support during his tenure on the OpenAI team. In response to Schulman’s resignation announcement, Sam Altman, the company’s CEO and co-founder, appreciated Schulman and praised him for being a brilliant researcher and deep thinker.
He eulogized the ex-executive for being a great friend and said the whole team would miss his presence. Sam went down memory lane to describe how he met Schulman in 2015 and how his idea became instrumental in OpenAI’s initial strategy.
https://twitter.com/sama/status/1820617107354083611?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Jan Leike, who was once a member of the OpenAI and now a researcher at rival firm Anthropic, commented on the post and expressed his excitement at working with John Schulman again.
Greg Brockman, who is also a co-founder and President of OpenAI, revealed he is taking a sabbatical till the end of the year. He noted there is still more to do as the mission is yet to be completed. He stated:
“I’m taking a sabbatical through end of year. First time to relax since co-founding OpenAI 9 years ago. The mission is far from complete; we still have a safe AGI to build.”
More so, Peter Deng, a product manager who joined the company last year, is one of the list of latest departures. OpenAI has also seen some exit lately as one of its co-founders and Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever resigned in May. Andrej Karpathy also left in February to start an AI-integrated education platform.
OpenAI Ongoing Lawsuit
In the heat of the exits and speculations, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has now revived his lawsuit against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman on Monday. Elon, who happened to be one of the co-founders of OpenAI before leaving after three years, is accusing the company of prioritizing personal profits and commercial interest ahead of the public good.
Elon initially sued OpenAI in February for the same reason. He later dropped the lawsuit in June after the AI company released some old emails from Musk surrounding the firm’s development.
The Tesla CEO’s new lawsuit was filed at the federal court in Northern California, and it includes some additional claims, such as the inclusion that OpenAI is practicing racketeering activity.
OpenAI Loses Co-Founder and Key Executive amid Leadership Transitions
