Ilya Sutskever, the co-founder and former chief scientist of OpenAI, is leaving the company he helped establish. His departure comes months after he played a central role in an attempted coup to oust CEO Sam Altman, which ultimately failed due to overwhelming opposition from OpenAI’s staff.
Sutskever confirmed his exit in a post on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), stating, “After almost a decade, I have made the decision to leave OpenAI.” He expressed confidence in the company’s trajectory, adding, “OpenAI will build AGI that is both safe and beneficial,” referring to artificial general intelligence.
Understanding the CEO Power Struggle at OpenAI
In November 2022, Sutskever and three other board members voted to remove Altman from his position as CEO.
It was Sutskever who personally informed Altman of his firing. However, the attempted coup fell apart within days as the majority of OpenAI’s employees threatened to resign en masse, demanding Altman’s reinstatement. Ultimately, the power struggle was resolved with Altman retaining his role as chief executive.
Altman acknowledged Sutskever’s departure in a company blog post, describing him as “easily one of the greatest minds of our generation” and crediting him as a driving force behind OpenAI’s success. “OpenAI would not be what it is without him,” Altman wrote, expressing sadness at his departure.
In addition to Sutskever’s exit, another senior researcher, Jan Leike, who co-led the company’s “Superalignment” team focused on controlling superintelligent AI systems, also announced his resignation with a brief post on X reading “I resigned”.
Transition and New Leadership at OpenAI
Sutskever hinted that he would be working on a “project that is very personally meaningful to me,” though he did not provide further details. Altman alluded to Sutskever pursuing a personal endeavor but thanked him for his contributions to OpenAI.
To fill the vacancy left by Sutskever, OpenAI has appointed Jakub Pachocki, the company’s director of research and the lead developer of GPT-4, as the new chief scientist.
The departures of Sutskever and Leike come at a pivotal time for OpenAI, as the company continues to lead the charge in the rapidly evolving field of generative AI, with its ChatGPT model garnering widespread attention and sparking a race among tech giants for AI dominance.