John Schulman, a co-founder of OpenAI, has decided to leave the company he helped establish in 2015 to join rival AI firm Anthropic. With Schulman’s departure, only three of the original co-founders remain at OpenAI.

In addition to Schulman’s exit, OpenAI’s product manager, Peter Deng, has also quietly left the company, and president Greg Brockman is currently on an extended leave of absence, according to an August 5 report from The Information.

In a post on August 6, Schulman announced his departure from OpenAI after nearly nine years, stating that he made the “difficult decision” to move to Anthropic to focus on “AI alignment” and engage in more “hands-on technical” work.

Schulman expressed his desire to gain new perspectives and collaborate with others deeply involved in the topics he is most passionate about.

Despite ongoing debates surrounding OpenAI’s approach to AI safety, research, and regulation, Schulman clarified that his decision to leave was not due to any lack of personal or professional support within the company.

“I’m not leaving due to a lack of support for alignment research at OpenAI. On the contrary, company leaders have been very committed to investing in this area,” Schulman stated. “My decision is a personal one, based on how I want to focus my efforts in the next phase of my career.”

Anthropic, a prominent competitor to OpenAI, was founded in 2021 by Dario Amodei, a former vice president of research at OpenAI, and his sister Daniela Amodei, who was also an early employee at the firm.

With Schulman’s departure, OpenAI now has three of its 11 original founders remaining: CEO Sam Altman, president Greg Brockman, and language head Wojciech Zaremba. Schulman played a crucial role in developing OpenAI’s AI-powered chatbot ChatGPT and led the reinforcement learning team responsible for training generative AI models to follow human instructions.

Schulman’s decision to leave comes shortly after Tesla CEO Elon Musk filed a new lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman. Musk alleges that Altman “intentionally courted and deceived Musk, preying on Musk’s humanitarian concern about the existential dangers posed by artificial intelligence” and “manipulated Musk into co-founding their spurious non-profit venture, OpenAI.”

Musk, who co-founded OpenAI with Altman in 2015, initially sued the AI startup in February, claiming it had violated promises to operate as a nonprofit.

Source: Cointelegraph