The instability that has plagued the upper ranks of ChatGPT owner OpenAi continues with CTO Mira Murati announcing her resignation this morning.

In a letter to staff she wrote, "There's never an ideal time to step away from a place one cherishes, yet this moment feels right." Our recent releases of speech-to-speech and OpenAI o1 mark the beginning of a new era in interaction and intelligence - achievements made possible by your ingenuity and craftsmanship." Our work has made cutting-edge AI research intuitive and accessible, developing technology that adapts and evolves based on everyone's input."

She also said, "We brought safety research from the theoretical realm into practical applications, creating models that are more robust, aligned, and steerable than ever before," a point somewhat compromised by the exit of key safety leaders at the company mid-year.

These include chief scientist Ilya Sutskever and Jan Leike who pulled the plug in May over concerns that the company prioritized rapid development over safety. Andrej Karpathy, another AI leader focused on responsible AI at OpenAI, left in February, though his public statements at the time disputed any conflict with Altman over responsible AI.

Then of course, in November last year, there was the small matter of the OpenAI board firing the CEO Sam Altman for lying to them, and then the investors firing the board and putting Altman back in charge. Nothing says "AI safety" like a CEO who can't be trusted to tell his own hand-picked board the truth.

During Altman's short stint in the wilderness, Murati was very briefly the acting CEO in the interregnum.

- Additional reporting by Andrew Birmingham