OpenAI's co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever leaves the company

The co-founder of OpenAI, Ilya Sutskever, is leaving the company after around ten years. The Chief Scientist posted this on X (formerly Twitter). He will be succeeded by Jakub Pachocki.

"The evolution of the company has been nothing short of miraculous, and I am confident that under the leadership of Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Mira Murate, and now under the excellent scientific leadership of Jakub Pachocki, OpenAI will build an AGI that is both safe and useful," writes the Chief Scientist in his post.

CEO Sam Altman addresses employees

Sutskever was involved in the dismissal of CEO Sam Altman at the time. At the end of 2023, Altman was surprisingly dismissed by members of the previous Board of Directors. The initial reason given was that they had lost confidence in him. Later, the alleged breakthrough with an AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) was put forward as justification. Sutskever subsequently expressed his regret at having been involved in the actions of the Board of Directors.

Altman addressed OpenAI employees in a statement on Tuesday in which he emphasized his regret at the co-founder's departure. "Ilya is certainly one of the greatest thinkers of our generation, a beacon in our field and a good friend," Altman wrote. "Jakub is also certainly one of the greatest thinkers of our generation and I am thrilled that he is taking up the baton here."

Personally significant project planned

Jakub Pachocki has led many of the most important OpenAI projects. "I am confident that he will lead us to make rapid and secure progress in our mission to make AGI work for everyone." Previously, Pachocki was Director of Research for the development of GPT-4 and OpenAI Five. He was also responsible for basic research in reinforced learning and deep learning optimization. He was instrumental in refocusing the company's vision on scaling deep learning systems.

Altman hinted that Sutskever would be working on something personally important in the future. The departing Chief Scientist himself did not give any concrete details in his post about what the future holds for him, but he did hint at it. "I'm looking forward to what comes next - a project that means a lot to me personally and about which I will share details in due course."

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