OpenAI is disbanding the team responsible for advising the startup on how ready the world is for higher levels of artificial intelligence.
Miles Brundage, head of OpenAI’s “AGI Readiness” team, is leaving the company this week, he said in a Substack post on Wednesday. Brundage said he plans to start a non-profit or join an existing one focused on researching AI policy. A sub-team for economic research will move under OpenAI’s new chief economist, Ronnie Chatterji, Brundage said, while other members will be reassigned to other teams.
The outgoing senior advisor said neither the ChatGPT maker nor other frontier AI labs are ready for AGI, or artificial general intelligence, which is considered to be human-level intelligence. Part of the reason for starting or joining a non-profit, Brundage said, is because “I think AI is unlikely to be as safe and beneficial as possible without a concerted effort to make it so.”
Brundage called his advising role “essentially my dream job” but said he wants “to spend more time working on issues that cut across the whole AI industry, to have more freedom to publish and to be more independent.”
One of his main reasons for leaving is high opportunity costs due to OpenAI’s massive profile, and his feeling that his work would “be more impactful” outside of the AI industry. Brundage also said he wants “to be less biased” and has “done much of what I set out to do at OpenAI.”
“We fully support Miles’ decision to pursue his policy research outside industry and are deeply grateful for his contributions,” an OpenAI spokesperson said in a statement shared with Quartz. “His plan to go all-in on independent research on AI policy gives him the opportunity to have an impact on a wider scale, and we are excited to learn from his work and follow its impact. We’re confident that in his new role, Miles will continue to raise the bar for the quality of policymaking in industry and government.”
In May, OpenAI disbanded its “superalignment” team, which was focused on AI’s existential dangers. OpenAI co-founder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever and Jan Leike, his superalignment team co-founder, both resigned from the AI startup that month.
Mira Murati, the company’s former chief technology officer, announced her departure from the company in September and was followed by OpenAI chief research officer Bob McGrew and vice president of research Barret Zoph.
A week after the resignations, OpenAI completed a $6.6 billion funding round, leading to a valuation of $157 billion. The startup is also reportedly working on a plan to restructure its nonprofit status, which could give chief executive Sam Altman major equity.