OpenAI co-founder defects to Anthropic, president takes extended leave
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The news: OpenAI has lost two of its most important leaders. Co-founder John Schulman has left to join Anthropic, an Amazon-backed competitor, while president Greg Brockman is taking an extended time off.
Peter Deng, a product leader who came to OpenAI after working at Meta and Uber, has also left OpenAI, according to The Information.
What they said: Brockman wrote on X that he was taking a "sabbatical" until the start of 2025.
"First time to relax since co-founding OpenAI 9 years ago," he wrote. "The mission is far from complete; we still have a safe AGI to build."
Schulman, in his own X post, said he wanted to go somewhere he could focus more on "alignment", an area of AI safety that refers to teaching systems to pursue goals in a way that aligns with human ethics.
"To be clear, I'm not leaving due to lack of support for alignment research at OpenAI," he wrote. "On the contrary, company leaders have been very committed to investing in this area."
"I am confident that OpenAI and the teams I was part of will continue to thrive without me."
The context: Though neither Brockman or Schulman spoke negatively of OpenAI in their comments, the posts shine a spotlight on the startup's leadership team — which was infamously divided over Sam Altman's sudden firing and quick re-hiring as CEO last November.
The point of contention, as evidenced by statements from previous board members and former employees, is Altman's commitment to AI safety and his willingness to sacrifice it for more rapid product development.
It comes months after the resignation of OpenAI co-founder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, who went on to found a startup called Safe Superintelligence.
Anthropic, which has emerged as arguably OpenAI's strongest competitor, was itself founded by OpenAI employees who disapproved of the startup's entanglement with Microsoft and its seemingly diminished interest in AI safety.
The sources: Greg Brockman X post, John Schulman X post, The Information
