ChatGPT creator quits OpenAI to join arch rival AI startup Anthropic

John Schulman describes work as an ‘important part of history’

ChatGPT maker OpenAI confirmed in July it will begin rolling out the first version of its new voice-control tools to a select number of users (AP)

The person who led the creation of ChatGPT has announced that he is quitting OpenAI in order to work for rival AI startup Anthropic.

John Schulman, who was one of the founders of OpenAI alongside Sam Altman and Elon Musk in 2016, said his decision to leave the artificial intelligence company was based on his desire to focus on AI alignment – referring to the effort to ensure an AI system’s objectives are aligned with human ethics and interests.

“I’ve decided to pursue this goal at Anthropic, where I believe I can gain new perspectives and do research alongside people deeply engaged with the topics I’m most interested in,” Mr Schulman wrote in a lengthy post to X (formerly Twitter) on Monday night.

“To be clear, I’m not leaving due to lack of support for alignment research at OpenAI. On the contrary, company leaders have been very committed to investing in this area. My decision is a personal one, based on how I want to focus my efforts in the next phase of my career.”

Having led the development of the viral AI chatbot ChatGPT, whichquickly became the most downloaded app following its launch in 2022 and triggered massive interest in the space, Mr Schulman said he was “incredibly grateful for the opportunity to participate in such an important part of history”.

OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman thanked Mr Schulman for his work, referring to him in an X post as a “brilliant researcher [and] a deep thinker about product and society”.

The news of his departure came as OpenAI president and fellow co-founder Greg Brockman announced that he was taking a sabbatical until the end of the year in order to “relax” before continuing his goal at the company of creating a safe artificial general intelligence (AGI) that can compete with human intelligence.

Earlier this year, Ilya Sutskever, who served as the company’s chief scientist, also left the company after nearly a decade at OpenAI in order to focus on other projects, while product manager Peter Deng also left after joining the firm just last year.

The departures and sabbaticals mean that only two of the 11 founders of OpenAI remain at the company: Mr Altman and computer scientist Wojciech Zaremba.