Ilya Sutskever and Mira Murati will leave OA or otherwise take on some sort of clearly diminished role by year-end (90%, 75%; cf. Murati’s desperate-sounding internal note)
Mira Murati announced today she is resigning from OA. (I have also, incidentally, won a $1k bet with an AI researcher on this prediction.)
See my earlier comments on 23 June 2024 about what ‘OA rot’ would look like; I do not see any revisions necessary given the past 3 months.
As for Murati finally leaving (perhaps she was delayed by the voice shipping delays), I don’t think it matters too much as far as I could tell (not like Sutskever or Brockman leaving), she was competent but not critical; probably the bigger deal is that her leaving is apparently a big surprise to a lot of OAers (maybe I should’ve taken more bets?), and so will come as a blow to morale and remind people of last year’s events.
...When Mira [Murati] informed me this morning that she was leaving, I was saddened but of course support her decision. For the past year, she has been building out a strong bench of leaders that will continue our progress.
I also want to share that Bob [McGrew] and Barret [Zoph] have decided to depart OpenAI. Mira, Bob, and Barret made these decisions independently of each other and amicably, but the timing of Mira’s decision was such that it made sense to now do this all at once, so that we can work together for a smooth handover to the next generation of leadership.
...Mark [Chen] is going to be our new SVP of Research and will now lead the research org in partnership with Jakub [Pachocki] as Chief Scientist. This has been our long-term succession plan for Bob someday; although it’s happening sooner than we thought, I couldn’t be more excited that Mark is stepping into the role. Mark obviously has deep technical expertise, but he has also learned how to be a leader and manager in a very impressive way over the past few years.
Josh[ua] Achiam is going to take on a new role as Head of Mission Alignment, working across the company to ensure that we get all pieces (and culture) right to be in a place to succeed at the mission.
...Mark, Jakub, Kevin, Srinivas, Matt, and Josh will report to me. I have over the past year or so spent most of my time on the non-technical parts of our organization; I am now looking forward to spending most of my time on the technical and product parts of the company.
...Leadership changes are a natural part of companies, especially companies that grow so quickly and are so demanding. I obviously won’t pretend it’s natural for this one to be so abrupt, but we are not a normal company, and I think the reasons Mira explained to me (there is never a good time, anything not abrupt would have leaked, and she wanted to do this while OpenAI was in an upswing) make sense.
(I wish Dr Achiam much luck in his new position at Hogwarts.)
It does not actually make any sense to me that Mira wanted to prevent leaks, and therefore didn’t even tell Sam that she was leaving ahead of time. What would she be afraid of, that Sam would leak the fact that she was planning to leave… for what benefit?
Possibilities:
She was being squeezed out, or otherwise knew her time was up, and didn’t feel inclined to make it a maximally comfortable parting for OpenAI. She was willing to eat the cost of her own equity potentially losing a bunch of value if this derailed the ongoing investment round, as well as the reputational cost of Sam calling out the fact that she, the CTO of the most valuable startup in the world, resigned with no notice for no apparent good reason.
Sam is lying or otherwise being substantially misleading about the circumstances of Mira’s resignation, i.e. it was not in fact a same-day surprise to him. (And thinks she won’t call him out on it?)
Of course it doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t have to. It just has to be a face-saving excuse for why she pragmatically told him at the last possible minute. (Also, it’s not obvious that the equity round hasn’t basically closed.)
Mira Murati announced today she is resigning from OA. (I have also, incidentally, won a $1k bet with an AI researcher on this prediction.)
Do you think this will have any impact on OpenAI’s future revenues / ability to deliver frontier-level models?
See my earlier comments on 23 June 2024 about what ‘OA rot’ would look like; I do not see any revisions necessary given the past 3 months.
As for Murati finally leaving (perhaps she was delayed by the voice shipping delays), I don’t think it matters too much as far as I could tell (not like Sutskever or Brockman leaving), she was competent but not critical; probably the bigger deal is that her leaving is apparently a big surprise to a lot of OAers (maybe I should’ve taken more bets?), and so will come as a blow to morale and remind people of last year’s events.
EDIT: Zoph Barret & Bob McGrew are now gone too. Altman has released a statement, confirming that Murati only quit today:
(I wish Dr Achiam much luck in his new position at Hogwarts.)
It does not actually make any sense to me that Mira wanted to prevent leaks, and therefore didn’t even tell Sam that she was leaving ahead of time. What would she be afraid of, that Sam would leak the fact that she was planning to leave… for what benefit?
Possibilities:
She was being squeezed out, or otherwise knew her time was up, and didn’t feel inclined to make it a maximally comfortable parting for OpenAI. She was willing to eat the cost of her own equity potentially losing a bunch of value if this derailed the ongoing investment round, as well as the reputational cost of Sam calling out the fact that she, the CTO of the most valuable startup in the world, resigned with no notice for no apparent good reason.
Sam is lying or otherwise being substantially misleading about the circumstances of Mira’s resignation, i.e. it was not in fact a same-day surprise to him. (And thinks she won’t call him out on it?)
???
Of course it doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t have to. It just has to be a face-saving excuse for why she pragmatically told him at the last possible minute. (Also, it’s not obvious that the equity round hasn’t basically closed.)