OpenAI's chief scientist and co-founder Ilya Sutskever (Ilya Sutskever) is leaving the AI company, a departure that has put an end to months of speculation in Silicon Valley about the future of this top AI researcher.

OpenAI said on its blog on Tuesday that Ilya will be replaced by research director Jakub Pachocki (Jakub Pachocki).

In an article published on X, Ilya said, “After (waiting) for almost ten years, I decided to leave OpenAI.” He called OpenAI's trajectory a “miracle,” and said he believes the company, under the leadership of its current leadership, will create artificial intelligence that is “both safe and beneficial.”

Ilya's experience with OpenAI for nearly ten years has been quite dramatic. When OpenAI was founded in 2015, he was invited by Elon Musk (Elon Musk) to join the company as research director. At the time, Ilya's neural network research at the University of Toronto and his work at Google Brain Labs had already made him famous in the industry.

As the core figure of the company, Ilya even hosted the wedding of President Greg Brockman (Greg Brockman) at the OpenAI office.

Last year, Ilya was one of several members of OpenAI's board of directors who proposed firing CEO Sam Altman (Sam Altman). The decision set off a five-day whirlwind for the company: Brockman resigned in protest, and investors revolted. Within a few days, almost all of OpenAI's approximately 770 employees signed a letter threatening to resign unless Altman is reinstated. The trigger for this “palace fight” is said to have been a letter from several researchers warning that a powerful artificial intelligence discovery could threaten humans.

Ilya said he regrets his participation in ousting Altman from power, which made the situation even more chaotic. However, under the threat of resignation from more than 700 employees and pressure from various parties such as Microsoft, Altman soon returned to OpenAI as CEO and formed a new board of directors. Ilya also left the board of directors, and there were few appearances after the “palace fight” ended.

After returning to the company at the end of November last year, Altman said in a blog post that Ilya will not return to his previous board position, but the company is “discussing how he can continue to work at OpenAI.” Over the next few months, Ilya largely disappeared from public view, sparking speculation about whether he would continue to work for the company. Ilya's post on X on Tuesday was the first time he shared anything on social networks since retweeting a message from OpenAI in December last year.

At a press conference in March, when asked about Ilya, Altman said he loves him, and he believes Ilya loves OpenAI too: “I hope we can work together for the rest of our careers.”

At the time, a source revealed that OpenAI's chief technology officer Mira Murati (Mira Murati) had told employees that a letter about the Q* (pronounced Q-Star) AI breakthrough prompted the board of directors to dismiss Ilya. OpenAI's progress on Q* has convinced some company insiders that this may be their breakthrough in finding “superintelligence (or AGI).” OpenAI defines AGI as an “AI system that is smarter than humans.” Since then, whether Ilya actually saw Q* has also been the focus of attention.

On Tuesday, Altman wrote in an article on X: “Ilya is one of the greatest thinkers of our generation, a guiding light in our field, and our best friend. OpenAI wouldn't be where it is today without him. While he has a meaningful job to do, I am forever grateful for everything he does here and is committed to the mission we began together. I'm so happy that I've been able to stay close to such a truly extraordinary genius for so long, and that he's so focused on creating the best future for humanity.”

Ilya posted news on X that he is working on an unnamed project. This project is “very personal to him, and details will be shared in due course.” Earlier, Musk publicly “poked up” Ilya. When an X user wrote that Ilya should join Tesla, he replied, “Or xAI.”

As a successor, Pachocchi has been working at OpenAI since 2017. OpenAI said Pachocchi led the development of the company's GPT-4 artificial intelligence model.