One other one among OpenAI’s lead security researchers, Lilian Weng, introduced on Friday she is departing the startup. Weng served as VP of analysis and security since August, and earlier than that, was the pinnacle of the OpenAI’s security techniques crew.
In a put up on X, Weng stated that “after 7 years at OpenAI, I really feel able to reset and discover one thing new.” Weng stated her final day shall be November fifteenth, however didn’t specify the place she’s going to go subsequent.
“I made the extraordinarily troublesome determination to go away OpenAI,” stated Weng within the put up. “Taking a look at what now we have achieved, I’m so happy with everybody on the Security Programs crew and I’ve extraordinarily excessive confidence that the crew will proceed thriving.”
Weng’s departure marks the newest in a protracted string of AI security researchers, coverage researchers, and different executives who’ve exited the corporate within the final 12 months, and a number of other have accused OpenAI of prioritizing industrial merchandise over AI security. Weng joins Ilya Sutskever and Jan Leike – the leaders of OpenAI’s now dissolved Superalignment crew, which tried to develop strategies to steer superintelligent AI techniques – who additionally left the startup this 12 months to work on AI security elsewhere.
Weng first joined OpenAI in 2018, in response to her LinkedIn, engaged on the startup’s robotics crew that ended up constructing a robotic hand that would remedy a Rubik’s dice – a job that took two years to attain, in response to her put up.
As OpenAI began focusing extra on the GPT paradigm, so did Weng. The researcher transitioned to assist construct the startup’s utilized AI analysis crew in 2021. Following the launch of GPT-4, Weng was tasked with making a devoted crew to construct security techniques for the startup in 2023. At the moment, OpenAI’s security techniques unit has greater than 80 scientists, researchers, and coverage consultants, in response to Weng’s put up.
That’s lots of AI security of us, however many have raised considerations round OpenAI’s concentrate on security because it tries to construct more and more highly effective AI techniques. Miles Brundage, a longtime coverage researcher, left the startup in October and introduced that OpenAI was dissolving its AGI readiness crew, which he had suggested. On the identical day, the New York Occasions profiled a former OpenAI researcher, Suchir Balaji, who stated he left OpenAI as a result of he thought the startup’s expertise would convey extra hurt than profit to society.
OpenAI tells TechCrunch that executives and security researchers are engaged on a transition to interchange Weng.
“We deeply admire Lilian’s contributions to breakthrough security analysis and constructing rigorous technical safeguards,” stated an OpenAI spokesperson in an emailed assertion. “We’re assured the Security Programs crew will proceed enjoying a key function in making certain our techniques are protected and dependable, serving a whole lot of thousands and thousands of individuals globally.”
Different executives who’ve left OpenAI in current months embody CTO Mira Murati, chief analysis officer Bob McGrew, and analysis VP Barret Zoph. In August, the outstanding researcher Andrej Karpathy and co-founder John Schulman additionally introduced they’d be leaving the startup. A few of these of us, together with Leike and Schulman, left to affix an OpenAI competitor, Anthropic, whereas others have gone on to begin their very own ventures.
