Miles Brundage, Head of OpenAI AGI Readiness Team Resigns

• OpenAI has lost another long-term executive, Miles Brundage. He was the head of the AGI Readiness team.
• Having dedicated 6 long years to the company, he now wants to part ways to focus on his independent research on AI safety, impact, and regulation.
• After his departure was announced, his team was also disbanded. The rest of the members will be reassigned to other departments.

OpenAI, on Friday, lost another senior executive. Miles Brundage, who was the head advisor of the AGI Readiness team for the company, resigned and left a Substack post explaining the reason for his departure.

Brundage has been working with the company for the past 6 years. In the post, he said that OpenAI was his dream job. The purpose of the company, which is to make AGI (Artificial general intelligence) available in a way that benefits humanity, has also been his lifelong dream, even before OpenAI came into existence.

So leaving this job is certainly difficult for him. But he has very good reasons for that.

• For starters, his mission is bigger than the company. So by leaving, he will have the freedom to talk about the issues with AI more freely.
• Secondly, he's also planning to either start a non-profit or join an existing one that focuses on regulating AI.

After all, as promising as the technology sounds, it also comes with a lot of risk and the only way to safely develop it is to invest time researching its social and economic impacts, dangers, and ways to regulate it.

What Does OpenAI Have to Say about This?

As a result of Brundage leaving the company, the AGI Readiness team, which used to guide the company on its ability to manage the growing scale of the technology, has also been disbanded. The team members will be reassigned to other departments.

We fully support Miles' decision to pursue his policy research outside the industry and are deeply grateful for his contributions.' - OpenAI spokesperson

They also appreciated his decision to go all-in into independent research, saying how his work will have a much wider impact and how the company can learn from his discoveries.

In the end, they also added best wishes for his future and said We're confident that in his new role, Miles will continue to raise the bar for the quality of policymaking in industry and government."

Concerns about AI Safety

While the new journey is certainly good news for Brundage, the disbandment of the AGI Readiness team is a matter of concern. Just a few months ago in May, the company's Super Alignment team, which was responsible for controlling AI systems from outsmarting us, was also disbanded.

At a time when the world has recognized how dangerous AI can be, OpenAI is disbanding all the teams that looked after AI safety, one by one - this is not good.

What's even worse is that Brundage isn't the first executive to leave. Many executives, including the ones that have been with the company since day one are leaving one by one.

CTO Mira Maruti, OpenAI's president and co-founder Greg Brockman, Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew, and Vice President of Research Barret Zoph - the list goes on.

Although they are all heading towards some new project, there's one common denominator for everyone - their concerns over AI safety. The company has been planning to go through some restructuring under which it'll change its non-profit model to a for-profit model.

Many old team members did not consent to this. Some even felt that the company is prioritising profit over sustainable growth which can be very dangerous in the long run.

And now, Brundage is leaving because he wants to independently research AI safety, subtly hinting that he can't do that while working with OpenAI.

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