Ilya Sutskever leaves OpenAI to work on ‘personally meaningful’ project

Ilya Sutskever leaves OpenAI: Ilya Sutskever, co-founder and chief scientist of OpenAI, is set to depart from the pioneering artificial intelligence company. “OpenAI would not be what it is without him," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stated in a message to the company, which was also posted on OpenAI's blog.

Microsoft-backed OpenAI, known for creating the popular ChatGPT chatbot, has spurred a competitive rush among major tech companies to dominate the emergent field of generative AI.

Jakub Pachocki will assume the role of chief scientist, OpenAI announced on its blog. Previously, Pachocki served as OpenAI's director of research, leading the development of GPT-4 and OpenAI Five.

"After almost a decade, I have made the decision to leave OpenAI," Sutskever announced on X, formerly known as Twitter. He mentioned working on a new project "that is very personally meaningful to me," promising to share details in due time.

Sutskever was a central figure in the dramatic events surrounding Altman's firing and rehiring in November of last year. As a board member, Sutskever helped orchestrate Altman's dismissal but later reversed his stance, signing an employee letter demanding Altman's return and expressing regret for his involvement in the board's actions. Following Altman's reinstatement, Sutskever was removed from the board, leading to uncertainty about his position at the company.

Sutskever's departure follows OpenAI's announcement of its upcoming AI model, GPT-4o, capable of realistic voice conversation and interaction across texts and images.

Launched in late 2022, ChatGPT quickly became the fastest application to reach 100 million monthly active users. However, global traffic to ChatGPT's website has fluctuated significantly over the past year, recently returning to its May 2023 peak, according to analytics firm Similarweb.

A prominent figure in AI research, Sutskever worked at Google Brain and was a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford before co-founding OpenAI. His early career included collaboration with Geoffrey Hinton, a renowned AI pioneer, according to Sutskever's website.

(With Reuters inputs)