A year after OpenAI announced its founding, the company has disbanded a team focused on the long-term risks of artificial intelligence, a person familiar with the matter confirmed to CNBC on Friday.
The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said some team members are being reassigned to multiple other teams within the company.
A few days ago, OpenAI co-founders Ilya Sutskever and Jan Leike, two team leaders, announced their departure from the Microsoft-backed startup. Leike wrote on Friday that OpenAI’s “safety culture and processes have given way to shiny products.”
OpenAI did not immediately provide comment to CNBC.
OpenAI’s Superalignment team, declare Last year, the company focused on “scientific and technological breakthroughs to guide and control artificial intelligence systems that are much smarter than us.” At the time, OpenAI said it would devote 20% of its computing power to the initiative within four years.
News of the team’s disbandment was first reported on wired.
Suzkweil and Lake announced their departures on Tuesday. on social media platformIt was a few hours apart, but on Friday, Lake shared more details about why he was leaving the startup.
“I joined because I thought OpenAI would be the best place in the world to do this research,” Leike write on X. “However, for quite some time I had been at odds with OpenAI leadership regarding the company’s core priorities, until we finally reached a breaking point.”
Lake wrote that he believes the company’s bandwidth should focus more on security, surveillance, preparedness, safety and social impact.
“These problems are difficult to solve, and I’m worried we won’t be able to achieve this goal,” he wrote. “My team has been sailing against the wind over the past few months. At times we have struggled with[computing resources]It is becoming increasingly difficult to complete this important research.”
Leike added that OpenAI must become a “safety-first AGI company.”
“Building machines that are smarter than humans is inherently dangerous work,” he wrote. “OpenAI has a huge responsibility on behalf of all of humanity. But over the past few years, safety culture and processes have taken a back seat to shiny products.”
Lake did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The high-profile departure comes just months after OpenAI endured a leadership crisis involving co-founder and CEO Sam Altman.
OpenAI’s board of directors ousted Altman in November, saying in a statement that Altman “has not been consistently candid in his communications with the board.”
This problem seems to be getting more complex every day, wall street journal and other media reports that Suzkweil is focused on ensuring that artificial intelligence does not harm humans, while others, including Ultraman, are more eager to push the development of new technologies.
Altman’s ouster prompted resignations or threats to resign, including an open letter signed by nearly all OpenAI employees, and an outcry from investors, including Microsoft. Within a week, Altman was back at the company and the board members who voted to oust him, Helen Toner, Tasha McCauley and Ilya Sutskever ) will exit the company. Sutskover remained on staff at the time but no longer serves on the board of directors. Adam D’Angelo also voted to oust Altman but remains on the board.
When Altman was asked about Sutskever’s status on a Zoom call in March, he said he had no updates to share. “I love Ilya…I want us to work together for the rest of my career, my career and so on,” Altman said. “Nothing to announce today.”
On Tuesday, Altman shared his thoughts on Suzkweil’s departure.
“This is very sad for me; Ilya was undoubtedly one of the greatest thinkers of our generation, a guiding light in our field, and a dear friend,” Altman wrote. on X. “His talent and vision are well known; his passion and compassion are less known, but equally important.” Altman said research director Jakub Pachocki, who has worked at OpenAI since 2017, will succeed Sutskever as chief scientist.
News of Sutskever and Leike’s departures and the dissolution of the Super Alignment team comes just days after OpenAI launched a new artificial intelligence model and desktop version of ChatGPT along with an updated user interface, the company’s latest effort to expand the use of its popular chatbot.
Technical lead Mira Murati said during a live broadcast on Monday that the update brings the GPT-4 model to everyone, including free users of OpenAI. She added that the new model, GPT-4o, is “much faster” and has improved text, video and audio capabilities.
OpenAI says it eventually plans to allow users to use ChatGPT for video chat. “This is the first time we’ve really taken a big step forward in terms of ease of use,” Mulati said.
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