OpenAI’s Chief Technology Officer, Mira Murati is among several employees who are leaving the company. This has triggered a leadership shakeup in the AI startup as it considers a change to its corporate structure. Murati shared a message with his employees on Wednesday saying: “After much thought, I’ve made the difficult choice to leave OpenAI.” Bob McGrew and Barret Zoph, vice president of research, both announced their departures on Wednesday.
The Microsoft-backed artificial-intelligence startup has suffered a number of high-profile departures in the past year, including the founders John Schulman, and Ilya Suksever. Schulman joined Anthropic while Sutskever launched his own venture to build “safe” AI models. After Greg Brockman announced in August that he was taking a leave until the end the year, only two of OpenAI’s 11 founders remained.
Murati has led efforts at the company to develop ChatGPT, a standalone product that builds on the technological breakthroughs achieved with GPT and the large language model underpinning it. After joining OpenAI, she also managed the releases and improvements for Dall-E, OpenAI’s AI code generator and image generator. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman named Mark Chen as the new senior vice president of research and Josh Achiam as head of mission alignment. Josh Achiam was promoted from a research scientist in order to “get all pieces (and cultures) right” to ensure that they are in a position to succeed with their mission.
Altman said that leadership changes are part of every company, but especially those who grow quickly and have high demands. I won’t pretend that this change is natural, but our company is not normal.
He added that “Mira and Bob made these decisions independently and amicably. But the timing of Mira’s decision made it seem sensible to do all of this at once so that we could work together to ensure a smooth transition to the next leadership generation.” Murati became interim CEO in November after the OpenAI board removed Altman from his position for failing to be honest. Murati held the position of interim CEO for four days, until Altman returned after intense pressure from staff and investors. After an independent review of his conduct, he was cleared to rejoin board.
Murati’s resignation is a reminder that the incident has left lingering scars at the San Francisco start up, which was originally founded as a nonprofit dedicated to ensuring artificial general intelligence – which aims replicate human intelligence – would be beneficial to all humanity. It changed its structure in 2019 to include a capped profit enterprise. This allowed it to raise large sums of capital, including from Microsoft, who invested $13bn.
ChatGPT is one of Silicon Valley’s most valuable companies, and it is raising over $6bn with a valuation of $150bn. This is according to multiple sources familiar with the situation.
It is also in talks to change its corporate structures to be more investor-friendly. New products have been released, such as new AI models, like o1, that it claims are capable of reasoning and voice capabilities. “We are committed to building AI for everyone. As we have previously stated, we work with our board in order to be the best-positioned to achieve our mission. OpenAI said that the non-profit will remain a core part of our mission.
Murati said in a letter on Wednesday that her departure was due to “a desire to create the time and space for my own exploration”. She said that her main focus would be “ensuring a smooth transition”. She wrote: “While I might not be in the trenches anymore, I’ll still be rooting you all on.”
Three people with knowledge of the situation said that in October, one month before the leadership crisis last year, Sutskever, Murati, and other senior executives brought Altman’s concerns to the board. One person said that their concerns were Altman’s leadership, which they felt was undermined and pitted individuals against each other. Murati and other people believed that his actions created an unhealthy environment, which influenced the board to fire him and how they did it.
After Altman was fired, Sutskever, Murati, and others began negotiating his return. Both remained at OpenAI following Altman’s reinstatement as CEO. Former and current employees said that as the startup tried to recover from its instability, there was a rift over the commercialisation and pressure to create products it could monetise.
Former employee: “Overall, the company has become more like a typical tech company with time. It is more product-oriented, winning-oriented, and less altruistic.” The core researchers remain loyal to Sam and want to build [artificial intelligence general intelligence] not to make money.
In March, Murati stated that it was “disappointing to witness the previous Board’s attempts to scapegoat [me] with anonymous and false claims in a desperate attempt to save face in media”. She told staff she had “a strong and productive relationship” and was “not ashamed” of her feedback towards Altman.
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