“What the Heck Is Going On At OpenAI? As Executives Flee With Warnings of Danger, the Company Says It Will Plow Ahead.”, 2024-10-04 (; similar):
The exit of OpenAI’s chief technology officer Mira Murati announced on Sept. 25 has set Silicon Valley tongues wagging that all is not well in Altman-land—especially since sources say she left because she’d given up on trying to reform or slow down the company from within. Murati was joined in her departure from the high-flying firm by two top science minds, chief research officer Bob McGrew [tweet] and researcher Barret Zoph [tweet] (who helped develop ChatGPT). All are leaving for no immediately known opportunity.
…A top executive wary of his motives, OpenAI co-founder and chief science officer Ilya Sutskever, would also eventually leave. Sutskever himself was concerned with Altman’s “accelerationism”—the idea of pushing ahead on AI development at any cost. Sutskever exited in May, though a person who knows him tells The Hollywood Reporter he had effectively stopped being involved with the firm after the failed November coup.
…Murati, McGrew and Zoph are the latest dominoes to fall. Murati, too, had been concerned about safety—industry shorthand for the idea that new AI models can pose short-term risks like hidden bias and long-term hazards like Skynet scenarios and should thus undergo more rigorous testing. (This is deemed particularly likely with the achievement of artificial general intelligence, or AGI, the ability of a machine to problem-solve as well as a human which could be reached in as little as 1–2 years.)
But unlike Sutskever, after the November drama Murati decided to stay at the company in part to try to slow down Altman and president Greg Brockman’s accelerationist efforts from within, according to a person familiar with the workings of OpenAI who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak about the situation.
It’s unclear what tipped Murati over the edge, but the release of GPT-4 o1 last month may have contributed to her decision…The flashy product release also comes at the same time as, and in a sense partly as a result of, OpenAI’s full transition to a for-profit company, with no nonprofit oversight and a CEO in Altman who will have equity like any other founder. That shift, which is conducive to accelerationism as well, also worried many of the departing executives, including Murati, the person said.