Joshua Achiam, OpenAI’s chief futurist and a nearly nine-year veteran of the company, is leaving the artificial intelligence firm, according to a report by Wired.
Achiam joined OpenAI in 2016 and has been a key figure in the company’s AI safety research, working on projects including reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), a technique central to training large language models like GPT-4.
The departure comes at a time of continued scrutiny over OpenAI’s governance and strategic direction, following a turbulent 2024 that included high-profile leadership exits and legal challenges.
Achiam gained public attention during his appearance in the Elon Musk v. Sam Altman trial, where he testified about OpenAI’s early operations and its transition from a nonprofit research lab to a capped-profit entity.
Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 before leaving the board in 2018, sued the company and chief executive Sam Altman in February 2024, alleging they had abandoned the firm’s original nonprofit mission in favour of commercial interests, particularly through a partnership with Microsoft.
During the trial, Achiam provided testimony about the company’s safety protocols and research priorities. His involvement underscored his position as one of the longest-serving technical leaders at OpenAI.
Technical Contributions
Achiam’s work at OpenAI focused on AI alignment and safety, areas considered critical as language models become more capable and widely deployed.
He co-authored research papers on deep reinforcement learning and contributed to OpenAI’s public documentation explaining how models like GPT-3 and GPT-4 were developed and fine-tuned for safer outputs.
In 2023, Achiam was named chief futurist, a role that involved strategic planning around OpenAI’s long-term research direction and anticipating how AI systems might evolve.
Leadership Turnover at OpenAI
Achiam’s exit adds to a growing list of senior departures from OpenAI over the past year.
In 2024, the company saw the resignation of chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, who co-founded the firm and briefly participated in the November 2023 board coup that temporarily ousted Altman as CEO. Sutskever later launched his own AI safety startup, Safe Superintelligence Inc.
Jan Leike, who co-led OpenAI’s superalignment team with Sutskever, also left, citing concerns over the company’s commitment to safety research relative to its product development pace.
Other notable exits included John Schulman, a co-founder who joined rival Anthropic, and Mira Murati, OpenAI’s chief technology officer, who resigned in September 2024.
No Stated Reason for Departure
Neither OpenAI nor Achiam has publicly commented on the reasons for his departure or what his next move will be.
The timing comes as OpenAI continues to scale its commercial operations, having launched ChatGPT Enterprise, expanded API offerings, and raised billions in funding at a reported valuation exceeding $150 billion.
The company has also faced regulatory scrutiny in the United States and Europe over data usage, copyright concerns, and the societal impact of increasingly powerful AI systems.
Achiam’s departure may signal continued tension within OpenAI over balancing rapid commercialisation with the safety-focused research culture that defined its early years.