(2024-05-20) ZviM OpenAI Exodus

Zvi Mowshowitz: OpenAI Exodus. Ilya Sutskever and Jan Leike have left OpenAI. This is almost exactly six months after Altman’s temporary firing and The Battle of the Board, the day after the release of GPT-4o, and soon after a number of other recent safety-related OpenAI departures. Many others working on safety have also left recently. This is part of a longstanding pattern at OpenAI.

Jan Leike later offered an explanation for his decision on Twitter. Leike asserts that OpenAI has lost the mission on safety and culturally been increasingly hostile to it. He says the superalignment team was starved for resources, with its public explicit compute commitments dishonored, and that safety has been neglected on a widespread basis, not only superalignment but also including addressing the safety needs of the GPT-5 generation of models.

Table of Contents

• The Two Departure Announcements
• Who Else Has Left Recently?
• Who Else Has Left Overall?
• Early Reactions to the Departures
• The Obvious Explanation: Altman
• Jan Leike Speaks
• Reactions After Lekie’s Statement
• Greg Brockman and Sam Altman Respond to Leike
• Reactions from Some Folks Unworried About Highly Capable AI
• Don’t Worry, Be Happy?
• The Non-Disparagement and NDA Clauses
• Legality in Practice
• Implications and Reference Classes
• Altman Responds on Non-Disparagement Clauses
• So, About That Response
• How Bad Is All This?
• Those Who Are Against These Efforts to Prevent AI From Killing Everyone
• What Will Happen Now?
• What Else Might Happen or Needs to Happen Now?*