John Shulman, one of OpenAI's co-founders, has left the company to join rival AI startup Anthropic.
The news comes after The Information reported that OpenAI president Greg Brockman is taking an extended leave of absence, along with product manager Peter Deng, who joined OpenAI last year after leading products at Meta, Uber and Airtable.
We asked OpenAI about Schulman's departure and the status of Brockman and Deng. A spokesperson said of Schulman: “We appreciate John's contributions as a founding team member of OpenAI and his dedicated efforts in advancing alignment research. His passion and hard work have established a strong foundation that will inspire and support future innovation at OpenAI and the broader field.”
Schulman posted about the decision on X today, saying it was born out of a desire to deepen his focus on AI alignment (the science of ensuring AI works as intended) and engage in more hands-on technical work.
“I decided to pursue this goal at Anthropic because I believe it will allow me to gain new perspectives and work with people who are deeply engaged in the topics I care about most,” Shulman said. “I am confident that OpenAI and the team I was part of will continue to grow without me.”
Shulman first became involved with OpenAI shortly after earning his PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley, where he led OpenAI's Enhanced Training organization, which fine-tunes generative AI models to follow human instructions, and played a key role in creating the AI-powered chatbot platform ChatGPT.
Schulman became head of OpenAI's alignment science effort (also known as the “post-training” team) following the departure of AI safety researcher Jan Reicke (who also now works at Anthropik). He was also a member of OpenAI's recently formed safety committee, although it's unclear who will replace Schulman in that role.
OpenAI has been surrounded by controversy, particularly over the company's approach and handling of AI safety research, but Schulman said he wasn't leaving due to a lack of support.
“The company leaders [alignment research]”My decision is personal and based on how I want to focus my efforts in the next phase of my career,” Shulman said.
Schulman's departure leaves just three of OpenAI's 11 founders remaining: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Brockman and language and code generation lead Wojciech Zaremba.
“Thank you for all you have done for OpenAI!” Altman wrote in X's post. “You're a brilliant researcher, a deep product and societal thinker, and most importantly, a great friend to all of us. We will miss you terribly, and know you'll be proud of this place.”