OpenAI safety leader David Robinson resigns as the team's upheaval mounts

David Robinson, a leader on OpenAI’s Safety Systems team, has resigned from the company.

An OpenAI spokesperson told Business Insider on Friday that Robinson left last week, marking yet another moment of upheaval in the company’s safety ranks.

Robinson had previously led the company’s policy planning.

Robinson worked on safety transparency at the company, including helping to develop and share system cards that provide information about its models.

He did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Robinson’s departure comes alongside a wave of attention on OpenAI’s safety practices and staffing.

The company shared on Thursday that it had “parted ways” with three researchers, saying they had violated its policies for sharing sensitive information.

In the aftermath of the high-profile Hugging Face security breach, OpenAI is grappling with a series of other safety incidents in which it said its AI models have misbehaved.

Progress in model capabilities has led researchers and company executives to call for a slowdown in AI development.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, at the company’s developer conference on Tuesday, said safety and alignment need to stay ahead of model capabilities.

Johannes Heidecke, the company’s safety head, also left earlier this year.

Robinson, in early September, wrote on X that he felt people at OpenAI were waking up to the implications of highly capable AI models and also expressed some doubt.

Things at OpenAI “are indeed changing significantly by the day, but I do not know whether we are changing fast enough,” he wrote on X.

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