Ilya Sutskever, the head scientist and co-founder of OpenAI, is departing the company amid the current artificial intelligence explosion.
“OpenAI would not be what it is without him,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in a message to the company, which OpenAI posted on its blog.
The well-known ChatGPT chatbot, created by Microsoft-backed OpenAI, sparked a competition among the biggest tech firms worldwide. Now, they strive to dominate the rapidly developing field of generative AI.
According to the company’s blog, Jakub Pachocki will take over as chief scientist.
Pachocki oversaw the creation of GPT-4 and OpenAI Five while he was OpenAI’s director of research.
“After almost a decade, I have made the decision to leave OpenAI,” Sutskever said in a post on X.
Regarding a new project he is working on, Sutskever wrote on social media, “that is very personally meaningful to me about which I will share details in due time.”
Sutskever was a major factor in Altman’s abrupt dismissal and subsequent rehire in November of last year. Sutskever was involved in the planning of Altman’s termination while serving on the OpenAI board.
A few days later, he changed his mind and signed a letter to the staff asking Altman to come back and apologizing for his “participation in the board’s actions.”
Sutskever lost his job at the company and was kicked from the board after Altman came back.
Sutskever left the company a day after it announced at a Monday event that it would be releasing a new AI model called GPT-4o. The model can interact with texts and visuals and have realistic vocal conversations.
ChatGPT was dubbed the fastest app to ever surpass 100 million monthly active users shortly after its launch in late 2022. However, according to analytics company Similarweb, global traffic to ChatGPT’s website has been fluctuating over the past year and is only now reaching its May 2023 peak.
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