OpenAI's lead safety researcher Lilian Weng announces departure
What's the story
Lilian Weng, a prominent safety researcher at OpenAI, has announced her decision to leave the company.
Weng has been with the artificial intelligence (AI) start-up for seven years, holding key positions like VP of Research and Safety, and head of the Safety Systems team.
Her departure is set for November 15.
"After seven years at OpenAI, I feel ready to reset and explore something new," she stated in a post on X.
Career highlights
Weng's journey and achievements at OpenAI
Weng joined OpenAI in 2018, first working on the start-up's robotics team that built a robot hand capable of solving a Rubik's cube. The project took two years to complete.
As the company shifted focus toward the GPT paradigm, Weng transitioned to help establish the company's applied AI research team in 2021.
After GPT-4's launch, she was tasked with forming a dedicated team for building safety systems for the start-up in 2023.
Team growth
OpenAI's safety systems team under Weng's leadership
Under Weng's leadership, OpenAI's safety systems unit has expanded to over 80 scientists, researchers, and policy experts.
Even though she is leaving, Weng said she is highly confident the team will continue to thrive.
"I made the extremely difficult decision to leave OpenAI," said Weng in her post. "Looking at what we have achieved, I'm so proud of everyone on the Safety Systems team and I have extremely high confidence that the team will continue thriving."
Company statement
OpenAI's response to Weng's departure
In light of Weng's exit, OpenAI has said its executives and safety researchers are working on a transition plan.
"We deeply appreciate Lilian's contributions to breakthrough safety research and building rigorous technical safeguards," an OpenAI spokesperson said in a statement.
"We are confident the Safety Systems team will continue playing a key role in ensuring our systems are safe and reliable, serving hundreds of millions of people globally."
Staff turnover
Weng's exit follows a series of departures from OpenAI
Weng's exit is the latest in a string of exits by AI safety researchers, policy researchers, and other executives from OpenAI in the last year.
Some have criticized OpenAI for prioritizing commercial products over AI safety.
Other notable exits include CTO Mira Murati, Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew, and Research VP Barret Zoph.
In August, renowned researcher Andrej Karpathy and co-founder John Schulman also announced their exits from the start-up.