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Dario Amodei leaves OpenAI

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2020·LessWrong·lesswrong.com/posts/7r8KjgqeHaYDzJvzF/dario-amodei-leaves...

Author

Daniel Kokotajlo

Credibility Rating

3/5
Good(3)

Good quality. Reputable source with community review or editorial standards, but less rigorous than peer-reviewed venues.

Rating inherited from publication venue: LessWrong

This post documents a pivotal organizational moment in AI safety history — the departure of key safety researchers from OpenAI that led to Anthropic's founding, with community reactions captured in real time.

Forum Post Details

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69
Comments
13
Forum
lesswrong
Forum Tags
AI GovernanceOpenAIAI

Metadata

Importance: 42/100blog postnews

Summary

A short LessWrong post documenting Dario Amodei's departure from OpenAI in late 2020, along with several other key researchers including Chris Olah, Jack Clark, and Paul Christiano. The comment thread tracks the broader exodus of safety-focused researchers that ultimately led to the founding of Anthropic.

Key Points

  • •Dario Amodei left OpenAI in December 2020 along with a group of colleagues to start a new research-focused project.
  • •Other notable departures included Chris Olah, Jack Clark, Paul Christiano, and several GPT-3 authors like Tom Brown.
  • •Commenters expressed concern about what AI alignment research capacity would remain at OpenAI after these departures.
  • •The thread serves as a real-time historical record: a later comment confirms ~90% of those discussed ended up founding or joining Anthropic.
  • •Jan Leike joined OpenAI to lead their alignment team around the same time, partially offsetting safety research losses.

Cited by 1 page

PageTypeQuality
Deep Learning Revolution EraHistorical44.0

Cached Content Preview

HTTP 200Fetched Apr 9, 20261 KB
# Dario Amodei leaves OpenAI
By Daniel Kokotajlo
Published: 2020-12-29
This is a linkpost for [https://openai.com/blog/organizational-update/](https://openai.com/blog/organizational-update/)

> “We are incredibly thankful to Dario for his contributions over the past four and a half years. We wish him and his co-founders all the best in their new project, and we look forward to a collaborative relationship with them for years to come,” said OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman.

Anyone know what the new project is?
Resource ID: 6956af923896b2a7 | Stable ID: sid_DlYure9dPd