OpenAI co-founder closes door

OpenAI chief scientist and co-founder Ilya Sutskever is leaving the artificial intelligence company, a departure that ends months of speculation in Silicon Valley about the future of a top AI researcher who played a key role in the brief ouster of Sam Altman last year.

Sutskever will be replaced by research director Jakub Pachocki, OpenAI said on its blog Tuesday.

In a post on X, Sutskever called the trajectory of OpenAI "miraculous" and said that he was confident the company will build AI that is "both safe and beneficial" under its current leadership.

Sutskever earlier clashed with Altman over how rapidly to develop AI and was one of several OpenAI board members who moved to fire chief executive Altman last year.

This exit came just after OpenAI launched a faster and cheaper version of the artificial intelligence model that underpins its chatbot, ChatGPT.