15-5-2024 (SAN FRANCISCO) OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever announced on Tuesday his decision to depart from the company, marking the end of nearly a decade-long tenure at the forefront of AI innovation.
“After almost a decade, I have made the decision to leave OpenAI,” Sutskever stated in a post on X.
Sam Altman, CEO of the Microsoft-backed firm, confirmed that Jakub Pachocki will succeed Sutskever as chief scientist. Pachocki, who previously served as OpenAI’s director of research, has been instrumental in the development of significant projects, including GPT-4 and OpenAI Five.
“OpenAI would not be what it is without him,” Altman said, acknowledging Sutskever’s pivotal contributions to the company.
Sutskever’s departure follows his removal from OpenAI’s board in November of the previous year. This move came after Sutskever participated in efforts to oust Altman, only to later sign a letter alongside other employees advocating for Altman’s reinstatement. Altman’s brief dismissal in November, for reasons that were not fully disclosed, had cast uncertainty over the company’s future, but he was quickly reinstated as CEO.
Sutskever’s exit coincides with OpenAI’s recent announcement of a new AI model, GPT-4o, unveiled during an event on Monday. This advanced model is designed to facilitate realistic voice conversations and interact seamlessly across text and image inputs.
Launched in late 2022, ChatGPT rapidly became the fastest application to reach 100 million monthly active users. Despite experiencing fluctuating web traffic over the past year, recent data from analytics firm Similarweb indicates that global traffic to ChatGPT’s website is now rebounding to its peak levels from May 2023.
