2024 is shaping up to be a busy year for OpenAI — and that movement comes from the board of directors. John Schulman, one of the company’s founders, announced on Tuesday (6) that he is leaving the company and joining competitor Anthropic. Schulman was director of the scientific alignment sector and a member of OpenAI’s security committee.
Anthropic is the creator of Claude, a conversational AI that works similarly to ChatGPT, Copilot and Gemini. The company’s generative AI uses the LLM of the same name and its latest version, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, was released in June.
In addition to Schulman’s departure, Greg Brockman, president of OpenAI, revealed on X/Twitter that he will be taking a leave of absence from his position at the end of the year to take a sabbatical.
Amicable departure — until rumors spread otherwise
In a statement posted on Twitter explaining his departure, Schulman said the decision was not due to a lack of support for his area. The OpenAI founder took over as head of the alignment department after the departure of fellow founder Ilya Sutskever and team number two Jan Leike.
Days after leaving OpenAI, Leike took to X/Twitter to criticize the company’s lack of support for the alignment department . This division is responsible for researching and identifying ways to keep AIs safe. By stating that he is not leaving the company due to a lack of support, stating that he has always been supported, Schulman is trying to avoid possible gossip about his change of position.
In the text, the now Anthropic employee mentions that he chose the change to return to working with the technical side of AI. Schulman says the decision was personal and based on what he wants to focus on in the next phase of his career.
There is no word yet on who will take over OpenAI’s alignment department. With Schulman’s departure, only three of the 11 founders remain at the company: CEO Sam Altman, Wojciech Zaremba and Greg Brockamn — who will take a sabbatical in 2025.
With information: The Information and TechCrunch
