One other certainly one of OpenAI’s lead security researchers, Lilian Weng, introduced on Friday she is departing the startup. Weng served as VP of analysis and security since August, and earlier than that, was the top of the OpenAI’s security programs crew.
In a publish on X, Weng stated that “after 7 years at OpenAI, I really feel able to reset and discover one thing new.” Weng stated her final day shall be November fifteenth, however didn’t specify the place she is going to go subsequent.
“I made the extraordinarily tough determination to go away OpenAI,” stated Weng within the publish. “Taking a look at what we’ve achieved, I’m so pleased with everybody on the Security Methods crew and I’ve extraordinarily excessive confidence that the crew will proceed thriving.”
Weng’s departure marks the most recent in a protracted string of AI security researchers, coverage researchers, and different executives who’ve exited the corporate within the final yr, and a number of other have accused OpenAI of prioritizing industrial merchandise over AI security. Weng joins Ilya Sutskever and Jan Leike – the leaders of OpenAI’s now dissolved Superalignment crew, which tried to develop strategies to steer superintelligent AI programs – who additionally left the startup this yr to work on AI security elsewhere.
Weng first joined OpenAI in 2018, in keeping with her LinkedIn, engaged on the startup’s robotics crew that ended up constructing a robotic hand that would resolve a Rubik’s dice – a job that took two years to realize, in keeping with her publish.
As OpenAI began focusing extra on the GPT paradigm, so did Weng. The researcher transitioned to assist construct the startup’s utilized AI analysis crew in 2021. Following the launch of GPT-4, Weng was tasked with making a devoted crew to construct security programs for the startup in 2023. Immediately, OpenAI’s security programs unit has greater than 80 scientists, researchers, and coverage specialists, in keeping with Weng’s publish.
That’s a variety of AI security of us, however many have raised considerations round OpenAI’s concentrate on security because it tries to construct more and more highly effective AI programs. Miles Brundage, a longtime coverage researcher, left the startup in October and introduced that OpenAI was dissolving its AGI readiness crew, which he had suggested. On the identical day, the New York Occasions profiled a former OpenAI researcher, Suchir Balaji, who stated he left OpenAI as a result of he thought the startup’s expertise would deliver extra hurt than profit to society.
OpenAI tells TechCrunch that executives and security researchers are engaged on a transition to exchange Weng.
“We deeply recognize Lilian’s contributions to breakthrough security analysis and constructing rigorous technical safeguards,” stated an OpenAI spokesperson in an emailed assertion. “We’re assured the Security Methods crew will proceed enjoying a key function in guaranteeing our programs are secure and dependable, serving tons of of tens of millions of individuals globally.”
Different executives who’ve left OpenAI in latest months embrace CTO Mira Murati, chief analysis officer Bob McGrew, and analysis VP Barret Zoph. In August, the distinguished researcher Andrej Karpathy and co-founder John Schulman additionally introduced they’d be leaving the startup. A few of these of us, together with Leike and Schulman, left to affix an OpenAI competitor, Anthropic, whereas others have gone on to begin their very own ventures.
