(San Francisco) OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever announced late Tuesday that he was leaving the start-up, a star of Silicon Valley since it launched ChatGPT and the artificial intelligence revolution ( AI) generative.
“After almost ten years, I have made the decision to leave OpenAI,” Sutskever said in a post on X.
“The company’s trajectory has been nothing short of miraculous, and I am confident that OpenAI will build artificial general intelligence that is both safe and beneficial,” he added, referring to AI with cognitive abilities similar to that of humans, the Grail of the tech giants.
Mr. Sutskever, OpenAI’s chief scientist, was on the board that voted to remove CEO and co-founder Sam Altman last November.
This surprise eviction plunged the San Francisco-based start-up into turmoil for a few days.
Microsoft, OpenAI’s main investor, quickly offered to hire the deposed boss, while the majority of the staff threatened to leave. Mr. Altman was quickly reinstated.
Ilya Sutskever had left the board of directors, but remained in his position at OpenAI.
“It has been an honor and a privilege to work together, and I will miss you all,” he added to his colleagues, specifying that he would concentrate on a personal project.
OpenAI presented on Monday a new version of ChatGPT which can now hold oral and fluid conversations with its users, a further step towards ever more personal and efficient AI assistants.
Google, for its part, unveiled its latest and numerous innovations in generative AI on Tuesday during its annual conference for developers.
Here again, technological progress is converging towards omniscient and increasingly “intelligent” virtual interlocutors, supposed to simplify the lives of users.
A day will come when “digital brains will become as good, or even better, than ours,” Sutskever said during a speech at the TED conference on AI in San Francisco late last year.