OpenAI Co-Founder Ilya Sutskever Bids Farewell to AI Startup

OpenAI has announced that its chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever, a key figure in generative AI, will be leaving the company. This decision follows a period of internal conflict, where Sutskever voted with former board members Helen Toner, Tasha McCauley, and Quora co-founder Adam D'Angelo to remove Sam Altman as CEO and Greg Brockman from the board. This led to significant turmoil within the company, causing Brockman and many executives to resign. Microsoft, OpenAI’s main investor, stepped in to mediate.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced that Altman and Brockman would join Microsoft to lead a new AI organisation, taking many OpenAI employees with them. However, this plan was reversed after most OpenAI employees demanded the board members step down, including Sutskever. Sutskever, who played a key role in developing transformer AI models, was a co-founder and chief scientist of OpenAI. D'Angelo retained his board seat, and new members like Bret Taylor joined a revamped board, with Microsoft also getting a non-voting seat.

Altman returned as CEO and got back his board seat, but Sutskever’s future remained uncertain. “I am excited for what comes next — a project that is very personally meaningful to me about which I will share details in due time,” Sutskever wrote in an X post on Tuesday. For months, his involvement at the startup had been minimal. He was part of the superalignment team, focusing on ensuring OpenAI’s technology did not become harmful to humanity. He often disagreed with Altman and Brockman about slowing down development, fearing OpenAI was moving too fast.

In November, OpenAI’s board stated that Altman had not been “consistently candid in his communications with the board.” This issue was a key reason for Altman's ouster, supported by Sutskever. “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,” Altman wrote on X. “His brilliance and vision are well known; his warmth and compassion are less well known but no less important,” he added.

Altman announced that Jakub Pachocki will be OpenAI’s new chief scientist. Pachocki has been with the team since 2017. This news comes just a day after OpenAI introduced its latest model, GPT-4o, and revealed new board members: Dr Sue Desmond-Hellmann, former CEO of the Gates Foundation; Nicole Seligman, former EVP and global general counsel of Sony and president of Sony Entertainment; and Fidji Simo, CEO and chairman of Instacart. They join D'Angelo, Altman, Taylor, and Larry Summers on the board.

Sutskever was personally recruited by Elon Musk to join OpenAI. Musk, a co-founder of the AI startup, left in 2018. Along with Sutskever, OpenAI is also losing Jan Leike, the co-leader of the Superalignment team.