What exactly has happened at OpenAI since the beginning of the year? This morning the CTO, chief researcher and deputy president of the OpenAI research division resigned simultaneously. Mira Murati, CTO of OpenAI left the company because she wanted to take time and space for personal exploration. Murati's resignation letter was shared on social media early this morning.
Meanwhile Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew and Vice President of Research Barret Zoph resigned hours after Murati made the announcement on social media. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman thanked all three former employees. There is no announcement of who will take over the CTO duties after this.
Mira Murati held the position of CEO of the company for a few days after Altman was fired at the end of 2023. After this incident, the board of directors was replaced and more and more employees left the company for personal reasons.
The most high-profile resignation was Ilya Sutskever who was the chief scientist and co-founder of OpenAI. Like Murati, Sutskever was also involved in the incident that led to Altman's dismissal. He has now established a new AI company Safe Superintelligence Inc (SSI) based in Israel.
At this point only 3 of OpenAI's 11 founders still remain with the company. OpenAI's leadership is believed to have resigned over disagreement with Sam Altman's plan to turn the company into a for-profit entity. This is not in line with the original purpose OpenAI was established.