Only one person remained from this iconic OpenAI photo

Of the four OpenAI executives in the March 2023 photo shown above, two have left the company and one is on leave. CEO Sam Altman is the only one actively working for the company.

The latest departure is Mira Murati, the company’s chief technology officer, who said in a Wednesday’s note posted at X that he is retiring after six and a half years. One of Altman’s most trusted advisers, Murati was responsible for much of the company’s day-to-day operations, Wall Street Journal reported.

However, she also played a role in ousting Altman as CEO last year, before he returned to the top job days later. Murati reportedly wrote Altman a private note questioning his leadership and shared her concerns with the board. The OpenAI board partly took advantage of Murati’s criticism to force Altman out New York Times reported.

Murati’s departure comes as OpenAI plans to transform into a for-profit company after being founded as a nonprofit. The change takes it away from its original credo: “to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by the need to generate financial profit.”

In response to a question about Murati’s departure, an OpenAI spokesperson said wealth to a post on X by Altman.

Wild.

Everyone has left OpenAI, Sam is brilliant but not technical, and Microsoft is furiously trying to make their own model to replace OpenAI. pic.twitter.com/naVBiVcVjG

— Gavin Baker (@GavinSBaker) September 25, 2024

Another instrumental player in Altman’s ouster was co-founder and board member Ilya Sutskever. The AI ​​researcher raised the alarm that Altman had not paid attention to the risks that come with AI and said the CEO was “not consistently honest” with the board. After Altman was reinstated as CEO, Sutskever remained with the company as chief scientist, but was removed from the board and largely stayed out of the spotlight. After nearly a decade, Sutskever left OpenAI in May to start his own AI company, Safe Superintelligence.

Rounding out the deceased executives in the picture is Chairman Greg Brockman, who publicly resigned from the company after Altman was ousted last November. Brockman said in a post on X last month that he is taking a sabbatical until the end of the year.

“This is the first time I’ve relaxed since I founded OpenAI nine years ago,” Brockman wrote in the post.

OpenAI also lost several employees who are not in the March 2023 flagship image. On Wednesday, along with Murati, the company lost director of research Bob McGrew and a vice president of research who worked at ChatGPT, Barret Zoph. diary reported. Last month, co-founder John Schulman also jumped ship to work at AI competitor Anthropic.

In an X Wednesday post, Altman wished Murati and the other two departing employees well, though he recognized Wednesday’s exodus of senior talent was unusual.

“Leadership changes are a natural part of companies, especially companies that grow so fast and are so demanding,” he wrote. “Obviously I won’t pretend it’s natural for this to be so sudden, but we’re not a normal company…”

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