OpenAI has seen a string of departures in the past year, including Ilya Sutskever and Jan Leike, leaders of the now-dissolved Superalignment team. Other notable exits include CTO Mira Murati, chief research officer Bob McGrew, research VP Barret Zoph, researcher Andrej Karpathy, and co-founder John Schulman. Some of these individuals have joined OpenAI competitor, Anthropic, while others have started their own ventures.
Key takeaways:
- Lilian Weng, a lead safety researcher at OpenAI, has announced her departure from the startup, marking the latest in a string of exits from the company.
- Weng, who served as VP of research and safety, did not specify her next move but expressed confidence in the continued success of the Safety Systems team at OpenAI.
- Several former employees, including Weng, have criticized OpenAI for prioritizing commercial products over AI safety, and some have left to work on AI safety at other organizations.
- OpenAI has seen a number of high-profile departures in recent months, including CTO Mira Murati, chief research officer Bob McGrew, and research VP Barret Zoph, with some joining competitor Anthropic.