This is happening exactly 6 months after the November fiasco (the vote to remove Altman was on Nov 17th) which is likely what his notice period was, especially if he hasn’t been in the office since then.
Are the reasons really that unclear? The specifics of why he wanted Altman out might be, but he is ultimately clearly leaving because he didn’t think Altman should be in charge, while Altman thinks otherwise.
But this is also right after GPT-4o, which, like Sora not that long ago, is a major triumph of the Sutskeverian vision of just scaling up sequence prediction for everything, and which OA has been researching for years (at least since CLIP/DALL-E 1, and possibly this effort for 2-3 years as ‘Gobi’). I don’t find it so hard to believe that he’s held off until Sora & GPT-4o were out. These are the achievements of not just his lifetime, but hundreds of other peoples’ lives (look at the contributor list). He’s not going to quit anywhere before it. (Especially since by all accounts he’s been gone the entire time, so what’s a few more days or weeks of silence?)
Is there a particular reason to think that he would have had an exactly 6-month notice from the vote to remove Altman? And why would he have submitted notice then, exactly? The logical day to submit your quitting notice would be when the investigation report was submitted and was a complete Altman victory, which was not 6 months ago.
Pure speculation: The timing of these departures being the day after the big, attention-grabbing GPT-4o release makes me think that there was a fixed date for Ilya and Jan to leave, and OpenAI lined up the release and PR to drown out coverage. Especially in light of Ilya not (apparently) being very involved with GPT-4o.
It also occurs to me that the causality could go the other way: Ilya and Jan may have timed their departure to coincide with the 4o release for a number of reasons. If they go on to launch a new safety org soon, for example, I’d be more inclined to think that the timing of the two events was a result of Ilya/Jan trying to use the moment to their advantage.
The 21st when Altman was reinstated, is a logical date for the resignation, and within a week of 6 months now which is why a notice period/agreement to wait ~half a year/something similar is the first thing I thought of, since obviously the ultimate reason why he is quitting is rooted in what happened around then.
Is there a particular reason to think that he would have had an exactly 6-month notice
You are right, there isn’t, but 1, 3, 6 months is where I would have put the highest probability a priori.
Sora & GPT-4o were out.
Sora isn’t out out, or at least not how 4o is out and Ilya isn’t listed as a contributor in any form on it (compared to being an ‘additional contributor’ for gpt-4 or ‘additional leadership’ for gpt-4o) and in general, I doubt it had that much to do with the timing.
GPT-4o of course, makes a lot of sense, timing-wise (it’s literally the next day!) and he is listed on it (though not as one of the many contributors or leads). But if he wasn’t in the office during that time (or is that just a rumor?) it’s just not clear to me if he was actually participating in getting it out as his final project (which yes, is very plausible) or if he was just asked not to announce his departure until after the release, given that the two happen to be so close in time in that case.
If a six month notice period was the key driver of the timing, I would have very much expected to see the departure announced slightly more than six months from the notable events, rather than (very) slightly less than six months before the notable events. Given Ilya was voting in the majority on November 17th, seems unlikely he would have already resigned six months before the public announcement.
When considering that my thinking was that I’d expect the last day to be slightly after, but the announcement can be slightly before since that doesn’t need to be quite on the last day but can and often would be a little before—e.g. be on the first day of his last week.
GPT-4o… like Sora not that long ago, is a major triumph of the Sutskeverian vision of just scaling up sequence prediction for everything, and which OA has been researching for years
Could you elaborate as to why you see GPT-4o as continuous with the scaling strategy? My understanding is this is a significantly smaller model than 4, designed to reduce latency and cost, which is then “compensated for” with multimodality and presumably many other improvements in architecture/data/etc.
Isn’t GPT-4o a clear break (temporary, I assume) with the singular focus on scaling of the past few years?
This is happening exactly 6 months after the November fiasco (the vote to remove Altman was on Nov 17th) which is likely what his notice period was, especially if he hasn’t been in the office since then.
Are the reasons really that unclear? The specifics of why he wanted Altman out might be, but he is ultimately clearly leaving because he didn’t think Altman should be in charge, while Altman thinks otherwise.
But this is also right after GPT-4o, which, like Sora not that long ago, is a major triumph of the Sutskeverian vision of just scaling up sequence prediction for everything, and which OA has been researching for years (at least since CLIP/DALL-E 1, and possibly this effort for 2-3 years as ‘Gobi’). I don’t find it so hard to believe that he’s held off until Sora & GPT-4o were out. These are the achievements of not just his lifetime, but hundreds of other peoples’ lives (look at the contributor list). He’s not going to quit anywhere before it. (Especially since by all accounts he’s been gone the entire time, so what’s a few more days or weeks of silence?)
Is there a particular reason to think that he would have had an exactly 6-month notice from the vote to remove Altman? And why would he have submitted notice then, exactly? The logical day to submit your quitting notice would be when the investigation report was submitted and was a complete Altman victory, which was not 6 months ago.
Pure speculation: The timing of these departures being the day after the big, attention-grabbing GPT-4o release makes me think that there was a fixed date for Ilya and Jan to leave, and OpenAI lined up the release and PR to drown out coverage. Especially in light of Ilya not (apparently) being very involved with GPT-4o.
It also occurs to me that the causality could go the other way: Ilya and Jan may have timed their departure to coincide with the 4o release for a number of reasons. If they go on to launch a new safety org soon, for example, I’d be more inclined to think that the timing of the two events was a result of Ilya/Jan trying to use the moment to their advantage.
The 21st when Altman was reinstated, is a logical date for the resignation, and within a week of 6 months now which is why a notice period/agreement to wait ~half a year/something similar is the first thing I thought of, since obviously the ultimate reason why he is quitting is rooted in what happened around then.
You are right, there isn’t, but 1, 3, 6 months is where I would have put the highest probability a priori.
Sora isn’t out out, or at least not how 4o is out and Ilya isn’t listed as a contributor in any form on it (compared to being an ‘additional contributor’ for gpt-4 or ‘additional leadership’ for gpt-4o) and in general, I doubt it had that much to do with the timing.
GPT-4o of course, makes a lot of sense, timing-wise (it’s literally the next day!) and he is listed on it (though not as one of the many contributors or leads). But if he wasn’t in the office during that time (or is that just a rumor?) it’s just not clear to me if he was actually participating in getting it out as his final project (which yes, is very plausible) or if he was just asked not to announce his departure until after the release, given that the two happen to be so close in time in that case.
If a six month notice period was the key driver of the timing, I would have very much expected to see the departure announced slightly more than six months from the notable events, rather than (very) slightly less than six months before the notable events. Given Ilya was voting in the majority on November 17th, seems unlikely he would have already resigned six months before the public announcement.
When considering that my thinking was that I’d expect the last day to be slightly after, but the announcement can be slightly before since that doesn’t need to be quite on the last day but can and often would be a little before—e.g. be on the first day of his last week.
November 17 to May 16 is 180 days.
Pay periods often end on the 15th and end of the month, though at that level, I doubt that’s relevant.
Could you elaborate as to why you see GPT-4o as continuous with the scaling strategy? My understanding is this is a significantly smaller model than 4, designed to reduce latency and cost, which is then “compensated for” with multimodality and presumably many other improvements in architecture/data/etc.
Isn’t GPT-4o a clear break (temporary, I assume) with the singular focus on scaling of the past few years?
You seem to be talking primarily about Ilya, but it seems especially unclear why Jan is also leaving now.
He is an ally of Ilya