Three Senior OpenAI Researchers Resign as Crisis Deepens
Three senior researchers at OpenAI resigned Friday night as the artificial intelligence developer suffered fallout from the firing of CEO Sam Altman and sudden resignation of President Greg Brockman, according to several people with knowledge of the situation.
Jakub Pachocki, the company’s director of research; Aleksander Madry, head of a team evaluating potential risks from AI, and Szymon Sidor, a seven-year researcher at the startup, told associates they had resigned, these people said. The departures are a sign of immense disappointment among some employees after the Altman ouster and underscore long-simmering divisions at the ChatGPT creator about AI 'safety' practices.
THE TAKEAWAY
• OpenAI leaders are trying to contain the fallout from the board’s decision to fire CEO Sam Altman
The departure of the senior researchers will add to the challenges facing Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI's chief scientist, and Interim CEO Mira Murati as they try to reassure staff, investors and customers bewildered by Friday's events. Altman and Brockman, who had both been directors on the board of the OpenAI nonprofit that oversees the for-profit arm, on Friday night said they were blindsided earlier that day by the four other directors.
Those directors, including Sutskever, removed Altman entirely and kicked Brockman off the board but not from his operating role at the company. Brockman resigned hours later.
In OpenAI’s early days, Pachocki and Sidor worked closely with Brockman on an AI system that could play the videogame Dota 2. That became one of the company’s first successes. More recently, they played key roles in developing GPT-4, which OpenAI essentially leveraged into a billion-dollar business. In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, shortly after GPT-4’s release, Altman singled out Pachocki for his contributions.
Madry joined OpenAI in May 2023 as its head of preparedness, leading a team focused on evaluating risks from powerful AI systems, including cybersecurity and biological threats. He is also a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. OpenAI announced its plans for the team in a blog post less than a month ago, on Oct. 26.