Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI's co-founder and chief scientist, joined three other board members in November to force the company's high-profile chief executive, Sam Altman, to resign before regretting the move, San Francisco AI Leaving the company.
Dr. Sutskewer's departure, which the company announced in a blog post on Tuesday, closes another chapter in a saga that has stunned Silicon Valley and raised questions about whether Mr. Altman and his company were poised to take the tech industry into the artificial age. intelligence
Returning to OpenAI just five days after his ouster, Mr. Altman reasserted his control and continued his push toward increasingly powerful technologies that some of his critics worried about. Dr. Sutskever remained an employee of OpenAI, but never returned to work.
“This is an emotional day for all of us,” Mr. Altman said in an interview. “Open AI wouldn't exist without it and was certainly created by it.”
In a statement, Dr. Sutskever said: “I have decided to leave OpenAI. The company's momentum is nothing short of miraculous, and I am confident that OpenAI will create AGI that is both safe and beneficial.” AGI, or artificial general intelligence, is an as-yet-undeveloped technology that can do anything the brain can do.
Dr. Sutskewer, 38, added that he was starting a new project, but did not elaborate.
Jakub Pachocki, a leading OpenAI researcher, will succeed Dr. Sutskever as chief scientist of the company, which is worth more than $80 billion, according to a recent fundraising deal.
On Monday, OpenAI unveiled a new version of its ChatGPT chatbot that can receive and respond to voice commands, images and videos, a new type of talking digital assistant with tech giants like Google and Apple. Joins the race.
Founded in 2015 by several young researchers, including Mr. Altman, Elon Musk and Dr. Sutskever, OpenAI has long been at the forefront of AI research. Dr. Sutskewer's involvement gave the company instant credibility. As a graduate student at the University of Toronto, he has been part of an AI breakthrough involving neural networks — the technology that has driven the field's development over the past decade.
In late 2022, OpenAI surprised the world with the release of ChatGPT, an online chatbot that can answer questions, write poetry, generate computer code, and chat a lot like people. Is. The tech industry has quickly embraced so-called creative artificial intelligence — technologies that can generate text, images and other media on their own.
The result of more than a decade of research within companies like OpenAI and Google, generative AI is poised to reinvent everything from email programs to Internet search engines and digital assistants.
Mr. Altman has become a spokesperson for the shift toward creative AI, testifying before Congress and meeting with lawmakers, regulators and investors around the world. In November, OpenAI's board of directors unexpectedly ousted him, saying he could no longer be trusted with the company's plans to build artificial general intelligence.
The OpenAI board consisted of six people: three founders and three independent members. Dr. Sutskewer voted along with three outsiders to remove Mr. Altman as chief executive and chairman of the board, saying — without providing details — that Mr. Altman was “consistently clear in his communications. “Were not.
OpenAI's chief operating officer and another co-founder, Greg Brockman, resigned from the company in protest. Dr. Pachuki did the same.
A few days later, as hundreds of OpenAI employees threatened to resign, Dr. Sutskewer said he regretted his decision to remove Mr. Altman and effectively resigned from the board, leaving three independent members. Mr. Altman remained in opposition.
Mr. Altman returned as chief executive after he and the board replaced two members, Brett Taylor, a former Salesforce executive, and Lawrence Summers, the former US Treasury secretary. Mr. Altman regained his board seat several months later, as the board expanded to seven members.
Last year, Dr. Sutskever helped create a super-alignment team within OpenAI to find ways to ensure that future versions of the technology don't cause harm. Like others in the field, he became concerned that AI could be dangerous and might even destroy humanity.
John Lake, who runs the SuperAlignment team with Dr. Suitscure, has also resigned from OpenAI. His role will be played by John Shulman, co-founder of another company.
In the weeks following Mr. Altman's dismissal, Dr. Puchuki, who helped oversee the creation of GPT-4, the technology at the heart of ChatGPT, was promoted to director of research at the company. After occupying a position below Dr. Sutskewer, he was promoted to a position with him, two people familiar with the move said.
After Mr. Altman recovered, Dr. Sutskewer did not return to work. Mr. Altman indicated that he had hoped to negotiate his return, but ultimately that was not possible.
Dr. Pachuki has served as Chief Scientist effective from November. When Dr. Sutskever recruited him and others to join OpenAI, he was among the key researchers on several of the company's most important projects, most notably GPT-4.
“I am grateful to Ilya,” Dr. Pachuki said in an interview. “We have different and in many ways complementary styles of leadership.”
Mr. Altman said he spoke with Dr. Sutskewer on Tuesday. “He's pushed us — and he'll continue to push us, to, as he says, realize AGI,” Mr. Altman said.