SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A high-ranking executive at OpenAI who served a few days as its interim CEO during a period of turmoil last year said she's leaving the artificial intelligence company. Mira Murati, OpenAI's chief technology officer , said in a written statement Wednesday that, after much reflection, she has “made the difficult decision to leave OpenAI.” “I’m stepping away because I want to create the time and space to do my own exploration,” she said.
It's the latest high-profile departure from San Francisco-based OpenAI, which started as a nonprofit research laboratory and is best known for making ChatGPT. Its president and co-founder, Greg Brockman, said in August he was “taking a sabbatical” through the end of the year. Another co-founder, John Schulman, left in August for rival Anthropic, founded in 2021 by a group of ex-OpenAI leaders.
Yet another co-founder, Ilya Sutskever, who led a team focused on AI safety, left in May and has started his own AI company . Days after Sutskever's departure, his safety team co-leader Jan Leike also resigned and leveled criticism at OpenAI for letting safety “take a backseat to shiny products.” Murati spoke positively of the company and its CEO Sam Altman in a departing note to colleagues shared on social media, describing it as “at the pinnacle of AI innovation” and saying it's hard to leave a place one cherishes.
Altman later replied to Murati's post on X and expressed his gratitude for her service to the c.
