Two of OpenAI’s key employees are leaving the company, and another is on leave for months. As reported InformationOpenAI President Greg Brockman is taking a leave of absence, while co-founder John Shulman is leaving the company to join a rival. anthropic. Consumer products VP Peter Deng, who joined last year, is also leaving OpenAI. Deng previously led product development at Meta and Uber.
In a post on X/Twitter, Brockman said his sabbatical will last until the end of the year and that he is “taking a break for the first time” since OpenAI was founded nine years ago. He also assured the employees that he will return after the leave. Brockman temporarily separated from OpenAI last year when the company’s board fired its CEO, Sam Altman. It was both was restored just a few days later, the board was dissolved and replaced.
I am taking leave until the end of the year. After co-founding OpenAI 9 years ago, I took my first time off. The mission is far from complete; We still have a safe AGI to build.
— Greg Brockman (@gdb) August 6, 2024
John Schulman also posted a note to OpenAI staff on X, saying his departure was motivated by a “want to dig deeper.” [his] Focus on AI alignment” and “return to hands-on technical work.” He explained that he is not leaving OpenAI because of lack of support for alignment research, and that the company’s executives are “very committed to investing in this area.” At OpenAI, Schulman helped lead a post-training team that improved large language models. After the company disbanded the “Superalignment” team responsible for managing powerful AI models that could pose a threat to humanity in the future, OpenAI Schulman said will be responsible for future security efforts.
Today I shared the following note with my OpenAI colleagues:
I have made the difficult decision to leave OpenAI. This choice stems from my desire to deepen my focus on AI adaptation and start a new chapter in my career where I can return to hands-on technical work. i decided…
— John Schulman (@johnschulman2) August 6, 2024
These departures follow several previous major changes in OpenAI’s leaderboard. Before the Superalignment team was disbanded, one of its leaders, Jan Leike, He wrote in X Over the years, “safety culture and processes have taken a backseat to brilliant products” within the company. Ilya Sutskever, co-founder and senior researcher of the company left in May. He was involved in Altman’s dismissal as a board member, although he later expressed regret for his involvement in the board’s actions. Although he remained a senior researcher after the incident, he never returned to his post. Information also notes that OpenAI recently hired Deng’s first CFO and chief product officer can influence his role in the company.
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