OpenAI’s chief safety researcher has left the corporate again. Nonetheless, it is thought that there are currently about 80 people left in OpenAI’s safety team.
Lillian Weng, OpenAI’s chief safety researcher, announced on the eighth (local time) through X (Twitter) that she could be leaving the corporate on the fifteenth.
He first joined OpenAI in 2018 and worked on a project developing a robotic hand within the robotics team. In 2021, he moved to the applied AI research team, and after the launch of ‘GPT-4’, he was assigned to a dedicated team to construct a security system.
Particularly, when chief scientist Ilya Sutskever and safety team leader Jan Reiche left the corporate, he took over as Vice President of Research and Safety since last August.
Chief Weng said, “After spending seven years at Open AI, I desired to tackle a brand new challenge,” but didn’t reveal his next destination.
“It was a really difficult decision to depart OpenAI,” he added. “Looking back at what we’ve achieved, I’m pleased with everyone on the Safety Systems team and have every confidence that the team will proceed to thrive in the longer term.”
He added, “Currently, greater than 80 scientists, researchers, and policy experts remain in OpenAI’s safety systems department.”
OpenAI announced that it’s on the lookout for a successor. “We’re deeply grateful to Lillian for her contributions to groundbreaking safety research and constructing rigorous technical safeguards,” said an OpenAI spokesperson. “The Secure Systems team will proceed to be critical to providing secure and reliable systems to tons of of tens of millions of users world wide. “I’m confident that he’ll proceed to play his role.”
Meanwhile, key executives at OpenAI have left OpenAI in recent months, including CTO Mira Murati, Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew, and Vice President of Research Barrett Joff. Renowned researcher Andrey Kapasi and co-founder John Schulman have already left the corporate.
Particularly, many safety team leader-level researchers, including Sutzkever, Leike, Miles Brundage, Daniel Cocotylo, and William Saunders, left.
Reporter Park Chan cpark@aitimes.com
