Sam Altman Says Running OpenAI Teams Is Extremely Difficult and Time-Consuming After CTO’s Unexpected Departure
A series of senior employees at ChatGPT’s creator, OpenAI, has left CEO Sam Altman scrambling for an explanation.
On Wednesday, the chief technology officer Mira Murati say she is step down from her role, along with vice president of research Barrett Zoph and director of research Bob McGrew—resulting in a leadership change that Altman described as amicable and uncoordinated.
“Obviously I wouldn’t say something like this is normal, but we are not a normal company,” he told employees in a letter posted on social media, calling their work “relentless” and “all-consuming.”
I just posted this note to openai:
Hello everyone-
Mira has played a pivotal role in the growth and development of OpenAI over the past 6.5 years; she has been instrumental in our evolution from an unknown research lab to a significant company.
When Mira informed me this morning that…
— Sam Altman (@sama) September 26, 2024
The departure comes at a historic moment in OpenAI’s nine-year history. Instead of celebrating a year anniversary of ChatGPT’s November 2022 launch that sparked AI fever, last November was instead the scene of a failed coup against Altman by non profit council company controller
This led the CEO to admit that the company’s combined structure was an awkward compromise to keep the team intact while shifting focus from pure research to commercializing its intellectual property.
Now it looks like it’s time to finish OpenAi metamorphosiswith plans underway to shed the non-profit shell that still controls it on paper as it seeks to raise new equity capital at a reported Valuation $150 billion. (OpenAI spokesperson said Luck Earlier this month, the nonprofit said it would continue to exist because it was “core” to the organization’s mission, but did not explain its role.)
Altman himself would enjoy a windfall in the process, likely to be awarded 7% Share in the new entity, according to Bloomberg.
‘Nothing without people’
Companies in fast-growing industries can only be as good as their human resources, and Altman initially struggled to retain employees, dividing them into researchers who remained committed to the original nonprofit mission and those who wanted to commercialize the technology quickly.
“OpenAI is nothing without its people,” became OpenAI’s unifying motto at the time, a sentiment Murati himself echoed. shared in November 2023.
Now it seems to be aging badly.
Chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, who regrets his role in pushing OpenAI into crisis last year, departed Maybe found his own AI startup (It recently raised $1 billion from investors, or $100 million per employee).
Co-founder John Schulman has worked at Anthropic since last monthOnly three of the original eleven members of the team remain. One of them, president Greg Brockman, has left. on leave until the end of this year.
Recently, former researcher Daniel Kokotajlo said Luck half of the company’s AI security staff left the company in the past few months, while his former colleague Jan Leike Altman skewers Leadership after quitting smoking
OpenAI is nothing without people https://t.co/XYKLQ61e6l
— OpenAI (@OpenAI) November 22, 2023
Competition is heating up in the form of Elon Musk’s xAI
Meanwhile, the competitive landscape is heating up. Elon Musk, still pain that he was lost control of OpenAI, is working hard to recruit the best talent for its new xAI startup—even if that means poaching they are from Tesla.
Earlier this month, he completed the acquisition 100,000 Nvidia H100 processors to train AI—accumulate 10 times the computing power he needs to train Grok 2—and more is on the way.
“Our fundamental competitiveness depends on being faster than any other AI company,” Musk argued in July. “This is the only way to catch up.”
Grok 3 is currently in training, and if Musk’s team at xAI hits its ambitious December release schedule, it could potentially surpass OpenAI. GPT-4 omni modelmost advanced ever.
AI industry critic Gary Marcus later warned OpenAI investors to reconsider whether the company in its current state is worth what it claims, with so many top experts leaving.
“People are valuing this company at $150 billion? That’s crazy,” he said. posted on Wednesday. “Investors should not pour [in] more money at higher valuations, they should ask what is going on.”
Data table: Get the latest in tech with in-depth analysis of the biggest names in the industry.
Register here.
