Ilya Sutskever, the chief scientist who wanted to "overthrow" Sam Altman and changed his mind, is leaving OpenAI

The co-founder and chief scientist of OpenAI, Ilya Sutskever, is officially leaving the company - he is best known for leading the infamous and unsuccessful coup to overthrow Sam Altman as CEO.

Both Altman and Sutskever have released statements announcing their departures.

" It is very sad for me: Ilya is undoubtedly one of the most outstanding minds of our generation, a beacon in our industry, and a good friend. Without him, OpenAI would not be what it is," - wrote Altman on X.

The position of chief scientist at OpenAI will be taken over by Jakub Pachocki, who previously worked as the company's research director. The OpenAI press release states that Pachocki "led the development of GPT-4 and OpenAI Five, as well as fundamental research in large-scale RL and deep learning optimization."

"I am excited about what's next - a project that is very important to me. I will share details in due course," - wrote Sutskever in his statement on X.

The Verge also reported that Jan Leike, who led Sutskever's Superalignment team, has left OpenAI. His responsibilities will be taken over by John Schulman, another co-founder of the company, who sided with Altman during last year's failed coup.

It is worth noting that in November 2023, the OpenAI board removed Sam Altman as CEO, stating that "he was not consistently transparent in communication, hindering the board's ability to fulfill its duties." Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella later announced that Altman and his team would join the corporation to lead a new AI research division, and then Altman somehow ended up as CEO of OpenAI again.

Ilya Sutskever, a native of Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, began his career at Google, from where he was eventually recruited by Elon Musk to join OpenAI. He became a co-founder and chief scientist of the company, while Musk left OpenAI in 2018 (officially due to conflicts of interest with Tesla, but rumors suggest he was denied a leadership position) and began actively criticizing Altman.

Media reports indicated that it was Sutskever who led the coup at OpenAI - though he later expressed regret for his actions and signed a letter calling for Altman's return.