OpenAI is losing key employees, left and right, including co-founder Ilya Sutskever, superalignment co-leader Jan Leike, safety team member Evan Morikaw, and others. Many of the outgoing employees were responsible for safety concerns to develop responsible AI.
Sutskever, who had approved the notorious removal of Sam Altman as CEO (before he was later reinstated), said very little about his reason for leaving OpenAI other than he was “confident that OpenAI will build AGI that is both safe and beneficial under the leadership of” Altman, Greg Brockman, and Mira Murati.
Jan Leike has been the most outspoken in his disagreement with OpenAI’s commitment to safety.
The media have started to report the controversy brewing at OpenAI.
Vox just suggested that departing employees might have to sign non-disparagement agreements or lose their equity stakes in OpenAI (potentially worth millions for some): “That’s partly because OpenAI is known for getting its workers to sign offboarding agreements with non-disparagement provisions upon leaving. If you refuse to sign one, you give up your equity in the company, which means you potentially lose out on millions of dollars.”
Wired reported that OpenAI, in fact, disbanded the AI risk team known as the superalignment team.
Things may be not as rosy at OpenAI as they appear from this old photograph.
