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Two high-level executives left OpenAI and its president temporarily stepped away in the latest leadership shakeup for a startup that has slowly shed its original team.<\/p>\n
Along with its president Greg Brockman, who said he was taking a sabbatical, OpenAI also lost cofounder John Schulman, leaving it with just three of its 11 original founders, according to TechCrunch<\/em>. OpenAI\u2019s vice president of consumer product, Peter Deng, has also departed, The Information<\/em> reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n The high-level departures are the latest example of OpenAI shedding its top brass, especially after CEO Sam Altman returned to the company following his ouster by the board<\/a> last November.\u00a0<\/p>\n The schism between OpenAI\u2019s nonprofit roots and its pivot to a focus on business caused dissonance at the company last year. That conflict reportedly split loyalties between Altman and Brockman\u2019s camp, and that of cofounder and then-chief scientist Ilya Sutskever and board member Helen Toner, according to journalist Kara Swisher<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n The board successfully ousted Altman in November and Brockman said he was resigning from the company shortly afterwards, but Altman returned to OpenAI days later following pressure from investors and employees. Upon Altman\u2019s return, the mostly technical and academic board members that ousted him were replaced by members with tech and business backgrounds. Sutskever was removed from the board<\/a>, although he remained at the company, and Brockman returned as president.<\/p>\n In May, one of the main orchestrators of Altman\u2019s ouster, Sutskever, left the company and later founded his own AI startup, Safe Superintelligence. Jan Leike, who with Sutskever co-led the \u201cSuperalignment\u201d team at OpenAI that focused on making sure artificial intelligence does no harm, also left in May and now works for rival AI company Anthropic.<\/p>\n The departure of Schulman is particularly notable as he also joins Anthropic, one of OpenAI\u2019s biggest competitors that\u2019s backed by Amazon<\/a>. In a post on X<\/a>, Schulman said<\/a> the move was \u201cto deepen my focus on AI alignment, and to start a new chapter of my career where I can return to hands-on technical work.\u201d AI alignment refers to making sure AI does no harm and works as expected.<\/p>\n \u201cI am confident that OpenAI and the teams I was part of will continue to thrive without me,\u201d Schulman wrote in the post.<\/p>\n Schulman worked at OpenAI for almost nine years and joined just after finishing a PhD in electrical engineering and computer sciences at UC Berkeley. He was instrumental in helping launch OpenAI\u2019s landmark chatbot ChatGPT, which kickstarted an AI arms race after it was released in 2022.\u00a0<\/p>\n In a post<\/a> on X, Altman wished Schulman well in his future plans.<\/p>\n \u201cYou are a brilliant researcher, a deep thinker about product and society, and mostly, you are a great friend to all of us,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n OpenAI\u2019s president, Brockman, also left the company for what he said in a post on X was a sabbatical through the end of the year.<\/p>\n \u201cFirst time to relax since co-founding OpenAI 9 years ago,\u201d Brockman wrote.<\/p>\n The departures put the spotlight once again on Altman, with some speculating on social media that he may be the reason employees are leaving. One of the biggest complaints from the previous board that led to Altman\u2019s ouster was that he was not transparent.\u00a0<\/p>\n Toner, the former board member who helped remove Altman, said in an interview with the TedAI <\/em>podcast in May that Altman had misled the board \u201con multiple occasions\u201d about its safety processes, the Financial Times <\/em>reported<\/a>. <\/em>Among other issues, Altman reportedly did not inform the board about ChatGPT\u2019s launch in 2022, according to Toner.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n CEO Daily provides key context for the news leaders need to know from across the world of business. Every weekday morning, more than 125,000 readers trust CEO Daily for insights about\u2013and from inside\u2013the C-suite. Subscribe Now<\/a>.<\/div>\nRecommended Newsletter:<\/strong><\/p>\n