The drama with OpenAI's executives was hard to miss considering that the whole tech world was waiting to see what happens. The company's CEO was ousted and then rehired, and one of the people who led the coup is leaving the AI startup.
Ilya Sutskever is Leaving OpenAI
The drastic change in leadership brought a different kind of attention to the company, and people started to create theories about the real reason why the board wanted Altman out of the seat of chief executive. The dust has cleared and everything is going well in the company.
That's why it's a bit of a shock but also a little expected that Ilya Sutskever, the chief scientist in OpenAI, is leaving the company. It's surprising because he is leaving now that the waters have calmed but also anticipated because of the move he pulled.
As mentioned in The Verge, Altman and Sutskever have something to say about the latter's departure on X. Altman was gracious about it, saying that Sutskever leaving was a sad thing. He was described as a "guiding light" in the field.
Furthermore, he called the former chief scientist a dear friend, despite everything that had transpired in the ouster. "I am happy that for so long I got to be close to such genuinely remarkable genius, and someone so focused on getting to the best future for humanity."
OpenAI will have Jakub Pachocki as the new chief scientist, who is already the director of research. Altman says that he is very confident that Pachocki will lead them to make "rapid and safe progress" toward the development of AGI.
Ilya Sutskever's post on X also sang praises about OpenAI calling its trajectory miraculous. "It was an honor and a privilege to have worked together, and I will miss everyone dearly," says the former OpenAI executive.
Sam Altman's Ouster
OpenAI was caught in a storm of power plays when its board decided to oust the CEO, who seemed to be well-liked within OpenAI. Everything happened so quickly in November last year that it was like Altman wasn't even fired in the first place.
Reports say that even before he was fired, Altman tried to manipulate the board into firing a board member. When Altman was briefly out of the picture, Twitch co-founder Emmett Shear took his place, but his role as CEO only lasted for three days.
The decision to oust Altman was reversed and he was immediately reinstated as OpenAI's CEO. Before that, other major events had transpired such as Altman's colleagues rallying beside him and co-founder Greg Brockman quitting, as per Coin Telegraph.
It probably helped that the AI startup's biggest investor, Microsoft, was also on Altman's side and pushed the board to bring the executive back. Along with Microsoft, over 500 employees also criticized the decision to oust the tech leader.
There were rumors that the decision was also due to the development of a superintelligent AI called Q*, and that researchers involved in the project were concerned that it could "threaten humanity," but that has already been dismissed.
