John Schulman, a co-founder of OpenAI, the artificial intelligence research and development company behind ChatGPT, has resigned from his position to join rival firm Anthropic. The announcement was made by Schulman in a social media post on Monday.
Schulman cited a desire to deepen his focus on AI alignment as the primary reason for his departure. He expressed confidence in Anthropic’s ability to provide him with the necessary platform for hands-on technical work in this area.
“I’ve made the difficult decision to leave OpenAI. I’ve decided to pursue this goal at Anthropic, where I believe I can gain new perspectives and do research alongside people deeply engaged with the topics I’m most interested in,” Schulman said in his X post.
“To be clear, I’m not leaving due to lack of support for alignment research at OpenAI. On the contrary, company leaders have been very committed to investing in this area. My decision is a personal one, based on how I want to focus my efforts in the next phase of my career,” said Schulman.
OpenAI has been undergoing significant leadership changes in recent months. In addition to Schulman’s departure, President and co-founder Greg Brockman is taking a sabbatical, and several other key figures have left the company or been reassigned.
According to a report by The Information, Peter Deng, who joined OpenAI last year after leading products at Meta Platforms, Uber, and Airtable, has also departed the company.
The ChatGPT maker had earlier disbanded a team dedicated to the safety of future ultra-capable AI systems after the departure of its two leaders, including co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever. The company integrated the superalignment team into its broader research efforts to better achieve the company’s safety goals.
These departures come amid growing scrutiny of OpenAI’s business practices and its handling of AI safety concerns. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, a co-founder of OpenAI, revived a lawsuit against the company on Monday, alleging that it has prioritized profits over public good.