What happened to OpenAI’s long-term AI risk team?

Enlarge (credit: Benj Edwards)

In July last year, OpenAI announced the formation of a new research team that would prepare for the advent of supersmart artificial intelligence capable of outwitting and overpowering its creators. Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s chief scientist and one of the company’s co-founders, was named as the co-lead of this new team. OpenAI said the team would receive 20 percent of its computing power.

Now OpenAI’s “superalignment team” is no more, the company confirms. That comes after the departures of several researchers involved, Tuesday’s news that Sutskever was leaving the company, and the resignation of the team’s other co-lead. The group’s work will be absorbed into OpenAI’s other research efforts.