Sam Altman and Greg Brockman respond to Jan Leike, say they've raised awareness of the risks and opportunities of AGI, will keep doing safety research, and more
We're really grateful to Jan for everything he's done for OpenAI, and we know he'll continue to contribute to the mission from outside. In light of the questions his departure has raised, we wanted to explain a bit about how we think about our overall strategy. First, we have
@gdbGreg Brockman
Context & Ripple Effects
Leike’s departure arrived alongside the reported dissolution or absorption of OpenAI’s Superalignment team, making the founders’ safety statement a response to a concrete internal-capacity question rather than a standalone policy message.
It also follows a period in which OpenAI’s leadership structure was publicly tested by the boardroom conflict involving Altman and Brockman. The response therefore matters as an effort to reassert continuity around the AGI mission while a prominent safety researcher exits.
First-order effects
Altman and Brockman publicly defend OpenAI’s strategy after Leike’s exit, committing the company to continued safety research and framing AGI risk awareness as part of its work.
Leike’s departure leaves OpenAI needing to demonstrate that safety work remains durable beyond a named specialist and former team structure.
Second-order effects
The combination of a senior safety exit and a public reassurance raises the burden on OpenAI to make its safety commitments legible to staff, partners, and outside observers.
Other frontier AI labs can differentiate on whether their safety organizations have clear authority and continuity, rather than relying chiefly on leadership statements.
Third-order effects
If safety functions are repeatedly reorganized after leadership changes, AI-lab governance will be judged increasingly by operational accountability—who owns risk decisions and how that authority persists—not by mission language alone.
The episode points to a continuing tension in AGI development: labs must retain credibility on long-horizon risks while maintaining organizational cohesion amid rapid strategic and leadership shifts.
The trend: Frontier AI labs are moving from broad safety commitments toward scrutiny of whether governance and research capacity can withstand internal organizational change.
Read these threads by Jan Leike since the struggle and debate at OpenAI and throughout the sector over safety and consequences of the development of this tech is real and should receive maximum scrutiny.
Having been through a few similar situations in past jobs, I've found that efforts like safety, ethics, craft and quality, etc, only succeed when people at the top of the company care deeply about those things. …
Agree with Yann LeCun's take on OpenAI's super alignment team... “It seems to me that before “urgently figuring out how to control AI systems much smarter than us” we need to have the beginning of a hint of a design for a system smarter than a house cat. Such a sense of urgency …
It seems to me that before “urgently figuring out how to control AI systems much smarter than us” we need to have the beginning of a hint of a design for a system smarter than a house cat. Such a sense of urgency reveals an extremely distorted view of reality. No wonder the more
OpenAI - we care for safety a lot, are extremely prudent and will hold back release for an indefinite time until we are completely satisfied about safety! Also OpenAI - we stayed up all weekend trying io ship 4o just before I/O. We envision a future where everyone will get a
I don't have a strong opinion for or against OpenAI. But this response to the disbanding of their “let's make sure AI is safe” team is abysmal. It's “look, we're doing... stuff. Ok?” A 9 yo could ha... Wait. Did ChatGPT write this? It's so bland, ChatGPT could've written this.
Greg Brockman, in response to heavy criticism and safety concerns (without actually addressing any specifics): “There's no proven playbook for how to navigate the path to AGI.” No. But we damn well know with very high probability what is *not* part of that playbook.
Good to see a thoughtful statement from @gdb on this - I'd encourage the @openai leadership team to talk about this more and not just delegate it to safety researchers. Talk about risks you see and lessons you've learned, collaborate with other players, admit and correct
This is a lot of text, but doesn't answer fundamental questions: - Did OpenAI give the superalignment team the compute it promised to? - How is shuttering that team consistent with a need for an “enormous amount of foundational work”? - Why are there such restrictive NDAs?
Just like nuclear weapons, there are risks and we must continue to move forward. The fate that humanity should have is that if it really goes out of control, it will return to Muskett's willingness to gamble and accept defeat
Unclear whether this statement was intended to sound so dire: “we have raised awareness of the risks and opportunities of AGI so that the world can better prepare for it.”
“we care tremendously about looking like we do great safety work while we blindly charge ahead to find product/market fit that's superior to iphone level before we run out of money” fixed it for you
i like this “users will increasingly interact with systems — composed of many multimodal models plus tools — which can take actions on their behalf, rather than talking to a single model with just text inputs and outputs.”
“AGI was an effective marketing ploy, but now that we're a real company with an actual product, we have to shift focus to what safety means for everyone else in the world: quality control. We hope those of you who believed the hype won't turn on us as we make this change.”
This says nothing. Platitudes. What happened to the Superalignment team? Do you just not think that's a problem anymore? How much of your resources are you spending on safety, not bullshit “don't say slurs” safety, actual don't-end-the-fucking-world safety? This is gobbledygook
While recognizing AGI can cause human extinction, companies such as @OpenAI fail to offer any concrete mitigation of this risk. This is unsurprising, since it is not in their direct interest to do so. It is now up to governments to develop regulation which ensures existential
Anyone saying “this [huge group of clearly intelligent people] are all acting dumb, X is clearly the way forward” where X is a thing they are professionally invested in, should probably be written off as uninteresting.
I think one powerful way for Greg and Sam to demonstrate they are serious about safety, as they suggest here, is to publicly welcome criticism from former employees and release them from any non-disparagement clauses.