On Wednesday, Mira Murati announced that she’s stepping down as OpenAI’s chief technology officer. The talented engineer, who was key to the development of ChatGPT, will no longer work at the artificial intelligence company led by Sam Altman.
“My six-and-a-half years with the OpenAI team have been an extraordinary privilege,” she said in an X post. She also thanked the team and added that she made the decision because she believes it’s time to focus on her own projects.
A New Journey Begins for Mira Murati
Murati joined OpenAI in 2018 after working at the virtual reality company Leap Motion and Tesla. At that time, OpenAI was a completely different company, just three years old, and GPT-2 hadn’t been released yet.
In 2019, OpenAI gained recognition when GPT-2 showed its ability to generate text similar to human-produced content. In the same year, the company transitioned from being a non-profit organization to operating a for-profit subsidiary.
During this period, Murati played a crucial role in positioning OpenAI as a leading company. She was responsible for shaping the company’s supercomputing strategy and overseeing research teams that developed ChatGPT, DALL·E, and Codex.
Mira Murati
In November 2023, OpenAI’s board of directors appointed Murati as interim CEO following Altman’s ouster. After several chaotic days, Altman returned to his original position, and so did Murati, who went back to working as CTO.
At the time of writing, Murati hasn’t revealed her future plans. OpenAI also hasn’t announced the name of the person who will assume the CTO role. On the other hand, Reuters reports that changes in the company’s organizational structure are on the horizon.
Departures Continue at OpenAI
OpenAI has recently experienced significant internal changes. Greg Brockman, who was the chairman of the board of directors, announced in August that he would be “taking a sabbatical.”
From left to right: Jakub Pachocki, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, Sam Altman, and Mira Murati.
John Schulman, one of the 11 co-founders responsible for the “alignment” of AI models, left to join rival Anthropic. Peter Deng, from the product team, also recently departed the company.
Additionally, OpenAI lost its chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever, who left the company in May. This departure occurred shortly after the unveiling of GPT-4o, one of the most advanced AI models known for its multimodal capabilities.
Image | OpenAI | Andrew Neel
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