According to TechCrunch, Lilian Weng, OpenAI's vice president of safety research, announced that she will leave on November 15. Weng has worked at OpenAI for 7 years and was in charge of the safety system team.
Weng said that leaving was a difficult decision, but she was confident in the future of the team. Her departure is part of a wave of recent departures of several executives and researchers at OpenAI.
Several executives, including Ilya Sutskever and Jan Leike, have left OpenAI, with some accusing the company of prioritizing commercial products over AI safety.
OpenAI said it was making a transition to replace Weng and thanked her for her contributions to safety research. Other recent executives who left include CTO Mira Murati and vice president of research Barret Zoph.