OpenAI’s chief futurist Joshua Achiam told colleagues on Tuesday that he will depart later this month, ending nearly nine years at the company, according to WIRED. Achiam, who joined as an intern in 2017 and became a longtime defender of OpenAI’s safety mission, said no specific reason drove the move, only that he had weighed it for a while. His exit adds to a run of safety-focused departures as OpenAI prepares to go public, following Jan Leike and Andrea Vallone, who both left for Anthropic, and Miles Brundage and Steven Adler, who started AI-safety nonprofits. OpenAI has not named a successor, though former White House AI adviser Dean Ball started this week as head of strategic futures and will briefly overlap with Achiam.
