OpenAI Co-Founder John Schulman Joins Rival AI Company Anthropic

Greg Brockman and others leave OpenAI

Several key figures at OpenAI, including co-founder and president Greg Brockman, have recently left the company or taken extended leaves of absence. This development is surprising and concerning given OpenAI's upcoming plans and the significant roles these individuals played in the organization. The artificial intelligence (AI) industry has been rocked by the recent news of several high-profile departures from OpenAI, one of the leading organizations in the field. These departures, which include co-founder and president Greg Brockman, co-founder John Schulman, and product leader Peter Deng, have raised concerns about the future of OpenAI and the broader implications for the AI industry as a whole. Greg Brockman, a co-founder and the president of OpenAI, has announced that he will be taking an extended leave of absence until the end of the year. This news has come as a surprise to many in the industry, given Brockman's pivotal role in shaping OpenAI's growth and strategic direction. His sabbatical has drawn comparisons to other tech leaders who have taken similar breaks and ultimately did not return to their positions, leading to speculation about whether Brockman will indeed resume his role at OpenAI. Another significant departure from OpenAI is that of John Schulman, a co-founder and key leader who has left the company to join Anthropic, a rival AI firm and the creators of the Claude AI models. Schulman has been deeply involved in the critical area of AI alignment, which focuses on ensuring that AI systems act in ways that are beneficial to humanity. His move to Anthropic suggests a shift in his focus towards more hands-on technical work, which he may have found more aligned with his interests and goals. Here are a selection of other articles from our extensive library of content you may find of interest on the subject of OpenAI : Peter Deng, who joined OpenAI last year as a product leader, has also decided to leave the company. Deng brought with him a wealth of experience from previous roles at Meta, Uber, and Airtable, making his departure a significant loss for OpenAI. His exit adds to the growing list of high-profile departures from the organization, further complicating the company's efforts to maintain its leadership and vision in the rapidly evolving AI landscape. The multiple high-profile departures from OpenAI raise concerns about potential internal issues within the organization. As a result, OpenAI now faces the challenge of filling the roles of these key individuals in a highly competitive AI talent market. The loss of such integral team members could hinder OpenAI's ability to execute its strategic initiatives and maintain its competitive edge in the industry. Moreover, these changes at OpenAI could have broader implications for the AI industry as a whole. The departures could significantly impact OpenAI's highly anticipated upcoming Frontier model releases, potentially delaying or altering their development. As key figures move to rival firms, the dynamics of the AI talent market are likely to shift, affecting the stability and progress of AI development across the board. The recent departures of key figures from OpenAI, including Greg Brockman, John Schulman, and Peter Deng, pose significant challenges for the company and have far-reaching implications for the AI industry. These changes not only affect OpenAI's internal dynamics but also have the potential to influence talent retention, competitive positioning, and the overall progress of AI development. As the industry continues to evolve at a rapid pace, it will be crucial for OpenAI and other AI organizations to adapt and address these challenges to maintain their leadership and drive innovation in the field.

Only 3 of the Original 11 OpenAI Cofounders Are Still at the Company After Another Leader Departs

The three remaining cofounders are President Greg Brockman (who's leaving for a sabbatical), CEO Sam Altman, and the Lead of Language and Code Generation Wojciech Zaremba. OpenAI's founding team started with 11 people, including Elon Musk. Now Musk is suing the company for allegedly going against its founding mission and several of OpenAI's cofounders are stepping away from their roles. Late Monday, OpenAI cofounder John Schulman announced on X that he would be leaving to join rival AI firm Anthropic. He specified that his decision was personal, and not based on lack of support for AI safety research. "My decision is a personal one," he wrote, adding later that he will "still be rooting" for the OpenAI team, "even while working elsewhere." Related: AI Is Standing Between You and Your Next Job -- Here's How to Get Your Application Into Human Hands. Schulman's departure overlaps with another OpenAI cofounder stepping back from the company. On Monday, OpenAI president Greg Brockman stated that he would be taking an extended sabbatical for the rest of the year. Brockman, CEO Sam Altman, and Wojciech Zaremba, a research and language team leader, are the only members of OpenAI's 2015 founding team who remain at the company. Peter Deng, OpenAI's vice president of consumer product, also left OpenAI on Monday per The Information, though he wasn't on the founding team. OpenAI has faced controversy recently, with Jan Leike, its former safety leader who departed for Anthropic in May, accusing the company of prioritizing "shiny products" over safety. In the same month, Scarlett Johansson hired legal counsel after finding that ChatGPT's voice sounded "eerily similar" to hers.

OpenAI co-founder John Schulman joins rival LLM developer Anthropic - SiliconANGLE

OpenAI co-founder John Schulman joins rival LLM developer Anthropic John Schulman, a member of OpenAI's founding team who played a key role in its product development efforts, is leaving for rival Anthropic PBC. Schulman announced his resignation today in a post on X. His departure reduces the number of OpenAI co-founders still at the company to three: chief executive Sam Altman, president Greg Brockman and researcher Wojciech Zaremba. A few hours after Schulman's announcement, Brockman shared in a separate X post that he is taking an extended leave. Schulman joined OpenAI in 2015 as a member of its founding team shortly after receiving his computer science doctorate from UC Berkeley. At the university, his research focused on reinforcement learning, a widely-used method of training artificial intelligence models. He went on to play a key role in building ChatGPT. Schulman co-led OpenAI's post-training team, which is tasked with refining new AI models before the company integrates them into ChatGPT and its other products. The post-training phase of AI projects often focuses on reducing the hardware requirements of a new neural network to reduce inference costs. Researchers sometimes also make other improvements, such as safety upgrades designed to lower the risk of inaccurate AI output. Schulman's other responsibilities at OpenAI included overseeing its AI safety efforts as head of alignment science. In machine learning, alignment is the process of equipping a neural network with safeguards that ensure it won't generate inaccurate or harmful content. "I've made the difficult decision to leave OpenAI," Schulman wrote in his X post. "This choice stems from my desire to deepen my focus on AI alignment, and to start a new chapter of my career where I can return to hands-on technical work." Anthropic, the competing AI developer that Schulman is joining, has raised more than $7 billion in funding from Amazon.com Inc. and other backers. The company develops a line of large language models known as the Claude series. Anthropic claims that its latest and most advanced model, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, can outperform OpenAI's flagship GPT-4o LLM across several benchmarks. Anthropic previously recruited another OpenAI researcher, Jan Leike, who likewise held a leadership role in the latter company's AI alignment group. At the time, Leike wrote that his team at OpenAI "has been sailing against the wind." Shortly after his departure, the ChatGPT developer launched an AI safety and security committee that included Schulman. A few hours after Schulman announced his departure on X, OpenAI president Greg Brockman revealed that he will step back from his role for four months. "I'm taking a sabbatical through end of year," Brockman wrote. "First time to relax since co-founding OpenAI 9 years ago. The mission is far from complete; we still have a safe AGI to build."