Mira Murati, the chief technology officer at OpenAI, recently announced her decision to leave the AI company. In a social post, Murati talked about her six-and-a-half year experience with OpenAI team and how it has been an extraordinary privilege.
Besides Murati, Bob McGrew (chief research officer) and Barret Zoph (VP of research) have also announced their departure from OpenAI.
"I am stepping away because I want to create the time and space to do my exploration. For now, my primary focus is doing everything in my power to ensure a smooth transition, maintaining the momentum we have built," Murati said in her post.
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The departure of these key executives comes at a strange time when the buzz around AI continues to be present.
Just a few days back, the AI start-up had announced a massive funding round of nearly $6.5bn, which will take the valuation of OpenAI to $150bn, a sharp increase from its previous valuation of $86bn. As per Bloomberg report, the funding round was heavily oversubscribed as investors were eager to contribute more than the $6.5bn target.
It is also worth noting that Ilya Sutskever, the Russian-Israeli computer scientist and the co-founder of the AI start-up, had also resigned from the company earlier this year.
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The news caught netizens by surprise. Many even started to question why she chose to leave the AI start-up at such a pivotal moment.
The many Lawsuits
No doubt, OpenAI has made waves with its ChatGPT product and recent announcements. However, the company has also found itself in the spotlight owing to its not-so-great relationships with media companies.
The AI start-up has witnessed multiple lawsuits for using content from mainline publishers like the New York Times, the Denver Post and the Chicago Tribune. These legal suits have sparked debates around the implementation of intellectual property laws to generative AI.
However, courts are still working through the complexities of how AI can impact copyright regulations, eventually making the outcomes of these cases unclear. There seems to be a lot of uncertainty around how generative AI development can take place without copyright infringements.
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