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OpenAI Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever is leaving the AI company

The position of Chief Scientists will go to Jakub Pachocki.

Sam Chandler

May 14, 2024 6:00 PM

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As one of the companies leading the charge into this new frontier of artificial intelligence, any shakeup in leadership at OpenAI is bound to draw attention. Today, the company’s Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever announced he is departing OpenAI to pursue a new project that is “very personally meaningful” to him.

OpenAI’s Sam Altman took to social media to share the news about Ilya Sutskever’s decision to leave the company. In the post, made on May 14, 2024, Altman praises Sutskever’s contribution to OpenAI, stating that the company would not be where it is today without him. Here is the full post:

Ilya and OpenAI are going to part ways. This is very sad to me; Ilya is easily one of the greatest minds of our generation, a guiding light of our field, and a dear friend. His brilliance and vision are well known; his warmth and compassion are less well known but no less important.

OpenAI would not be what it is without him. Although he has something personally meaningful he is going to go work on, I am forever grateful for what he did here and committed to finishing the mission we started together. I am happy that for so long I got to be close to such genuinely remarkable genius, and someone so focused on getting to the best future for humanity.

Jakub is going to be our new Chief Scientist. Jakub is also easily one of the greatest minds of our generation; I am thrilled he is taking the baton here. He has run many of our most important projects, and I am very confident he will lead us to make rapid and safe progress towards our mission of ensuring that AGI benefits everyone.

While Sutskever is moving on from his role, the position of Chief Scientist is set to be filled by Jakub Pachocki. Ilya Sutskever mentioned the transfer of position in his own social media post:

After almost a decade, I have made the decision to leave OpenAI. The company’s trajectory has been nothing short of miraculous, and I’m confident that OpenAI will build AGI that is both safe and beneficial under the leadership of @sama, @gdb, @miramurati and now, under the excellent research leadership of @merettm. It was an honor and a privilege to have worked together, and I will miss everyone dearly. So long, and thanks for everything. I am excited for what comes next — a project that is very personally meaningful to me about which I will share details in due time.

OpenAI has had a lot of big announcements over the last few months. Just yesterday, the company unveiled its GPT-4 Omni, an AI model that can interpret audio, video, and text in real-time. The demonstrations were nothing short of miraculous, with the AI sounding far more emotive than what many had come to expect of artificial intelligence.

Back in February, OpenAI revealed Sora, a text-to-video AI model. While impressive, the results still contain the typical AI artifacts and errors, like extra limbs and elements bleeding into one another.

Stay tuned to Shacknews as we bring you the latest on OpenAI and what Ilya Sutskever is working on next. Read more on our Artificial Intelligence topic.

Sam Chandler

Guides Editor

Hailing from the land down under, Sam Chandler brings a bit of the southern hemisphere flair to his work. After bouncing round a few universities, securing a bachelor degree, and entering the video game industry, he's found his new family here at Shacknews as a Guides Editor. There's nothing he loves more than crafting a guide that will help someone. If you need help with a guide, or notice something not quite right, you can message him on X: @SamuelChandler