He is embarking on a new endeavor that he describes as “very personally meaningful.”
After over a decade since he was one of the co-founders of OpenAI, Ilya Sutskever has made the announcement that he will be leaving the firm on X, which was formerly known as Twitter. He went on to say that he is certain that OpenAI “will build [artificial general intelligence]that is both safe and beneficial” under the direction of CEO Sam Altman, President Greg Brockman, and Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati. Altman used the phrase “one of the greatest minds of our generation” to describe Sutskever in his own post announcing his departure from the company. He also gave thanks to Sutskever for the job he has done for the company. While Sutskever was serving as Chief Scientist, Jakub Pachocki, who had previously served as OpenAI’s Director of Research and was responsible for the development of both GPT-4 and OpenAI Five, has assumed the post.
After almost a decade, I have made the decision to leave OpenAI. The company’s trajectory has been nothing short of miraculous, and I’m confident that OpenAI will build AGI that is both safe and beneficial under the leadership of @sama, @gdb, @miramurati and now, under the…
— Ilya Sutskever (@ilyasut) May 14, 2024
Despite the fact that Sutskever and Altman lauded one another in their farewell messages, the two were involved in the most significant crisis that the company experienced in the previous year. During the month of November, the board of directors of OpenAI abruptly terminated both Altman and Greg Brockman, the company’s President. “[T]he board no longer has confidence in [Altman’s] ability to continue leading OpenAI,” the maker of ChatGPT declared at the time at the time. Sutskever, who was a member of the board, was associated with their termination and was the one who requested that both Altman and Brockman attend separate meetings, during which they were notified that they were being terminated from their positions. According to stories that were published at the time, Altman and Sutskever had been at odds with one another on the rate at which OpenAI was developing and commercializing its generative artificial intelligence technology.
Just five days after they were sacked, both Altman and Brockman were reinstated, and the previous board was abolished and replaced with a new one. Brockman was also reinstated. Shortly before that took place, Sutskever stated on X that he “deeply regretted his participation in the board’s actions” and that he had every intention of doing everything in his power “to reunite the company.” Following that, he resigned from his position as a board member, and although he continued to serve as Chief Scientist, The New York Times reports that he never really went back to where he had been working.
Sutskever disclosed that he is transitioning to a new project that he describes as “very personally meaningful” to him; however, he has not yet disclosed any information regarding the initiative. With regard to OpenAI, the company has just recently introduced GPT-4o, which it asserts is capable of identifying emotions and can process and provide output in the form of text, audio, and graphics.
Ilya and OpenAI are going to part ways. This is very sad to me; Ilya is easily one of the greatest minds of our generation, a guiding light of our field, and a dear friend. His brilliance and vision are well known; his warmth and compassion are less well known but no less…
— Sam Altman (@sama) May 14, 2024