"It's a critical moment in the AI field!" OpenAI's Trust and Safety Director Resigns.

OpenAI is undergoing significant personnel changes, and this AI giant has almost single-handedly introduced the concept of generative AI into the global public discourse through the launch of OpenAI.

On Thursday, Dave Willner, the former Director of Trust and Safety at OpenAI, announced in a LinkedIn post that he has resigned from his position and transitioned to an advisory role. He stated that he plans to spend more time with his family.

According to his resume, Willner has served as the Director of Trust and Safety at OpenAI for a year and a half, but he has had a long career in this field, including leading trust and safety teams at Facebook and Airbnb.

In a statement, OpenAI stated that they are actively seeking a replacement, and Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati will temporarily manage the team. The company expressed their gratitude for Dave's valuable contributions to OpenAI. The full statement is as follows:

"His departure comes at a critical moment in the field of AI.

Generative AI platforms, based on large-scale language or other foundational models, have the ability to quickly generate freely generated text, images, music, and more based on simple prompts from users. All of these capabilities are exciting, but they also raise an increasing number of concerns.

In this brave new world, how can we best regulate the work we do and the companies we build? How can we best mitigate the harmful impacts of a range of issues? Trust and safety are fundamental aspects of these questions.

Today, OpenAI CEO Greg Brockman will join executives from Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon at the White House to support a voluntary commitment to pursue common safety and transparency goals before an AI executive order is issued. Prior to this, there have been numerous calls for AI regulation in Europe, and the sentiment in other countries has also shifted.

OpenAI has not overlooked the importance of all this and has always positioned itself as a conscious and responsible participant in this field.

We appreciate Dave's valuable contributions to OpenAI. His work has laid the foundation for our commitment to using our technology safely and responsibly, and has paved the way for progress in this field. Mira Murati will directly manage the team on a temporary basis, and Dave will continue to provide advice until the end of the year. We are looking for technically skilled leaders to advance our mission, focusing on the design, development, and implementation of systems to ensure the secure use and scalable growth of our technology.

Willner did not specifically mention in his LinkedIn post, but he noted that his role at OpenAI has transitioned into a "high-intensity phase" since the launch of OpenAI.

He wrote:

"I am proud of the accomplishments of our team during my time at OpenAI. While my work has been one of the coolest and most exciting jobs today, the scope and scale of the company have also grown significantly since I first joined."

While he and his wife Charlotte Willner (who is also a trust and safety expert) are committed to always putting family first, he said:

"In the months following the launch of OpenAI, I found it increasingly challenging to fulfill my commitments."