🧙🏼 Mira Murati leaves OpenAI

Bring out the popcorn, wizards.

There’s big things brewing in AI today…

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1. Mira Murati, along with two other key people, leaves OpenAI

OpenAI’s CTO, Mira Murati, just left the company. She’s been one of the key people involved in getting ChatGPT, GPT-4, DALL-E and more out to the world.

According to Mira’s note to the OpenAI team, she’s stepping away to “create time and space to do my own exploration”. Sam Altman said Mira explained the timing of her departure with that there is never a good time and that she wanted to do it while the company was on an upswing.

Along with Murati, two other key people are leaving the company.

These are the changes happening in OpenAI’s leadership:

• Chief research officer Bob McGrew is also leaving, stating that “it is time for me to take a break”. He’s being succeeded by Mark Chen who will be the new SVP of research and working alongside Jakub Pachocki as the Chief Scientist.

• Barret Zoph, VP Research (Post-Training) whom was reporting to McGrew, is also leaving. He explains his motivation as “a natural point for me to explore new opportunities outside of OpenAI”.

• Josh Achiam is taking on a new role as Head of Mission Alignment.

PS despite the meme above, Greg Brockman is still on the team, but he’s taking a sabbatical until the end of the year.

‎ Why it matters‎ ‎ I know y’all want to know what’s going on behind the scenes. But OpenAI remains a place of ongoing controversy and I don’t want to get into too much speculation while this is so fresh. Might it be related to the rumours of OpenAI restructuring into a for-profit organization and Sam Altman receiving equity? Let’s wait and see.

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2. Advanced Voice mode is finally here

Advanced Voice Mode, the best version of ChatGPT’s voice mode that was demoed back in May, is finally rolling out to ChatGPT Plus and Team users. In fact, the roll-out should already be complete, according to Sam Altman.

However, it’s not yet available in Europe, with EU’s strict regulations requiring OpenAI to go through additional external review. Hot tip: apparently, using a VPN works.

The new voice mode also comes with 5 new voices, custom instructions and some other improvements to speed, smoothness and accents.

‎ Why it matters‎ ‎ Had my first experience with the new voice mode yesterday and wow: Mind. Blown. Again. There’s going to be a myriad of use cases for ChatGPT voice now, stuff that didn’t work well in the past might very well work now. The feel of the interaction changes so much with the low latency, it feels much closer to having a regular conversation with a person.

One example, it’s particularly amazing how seamlessly it can switch between languages. I tried it with the ones I speak (Norwegian, English, Spanish) and it had zero problems switching from one to the other, doing accents, even mixing all three in the same sentence when requested. Out of curiosity, I also asked it to teach me a bit of Lithuanian, and to talk really slow and basic like a language teacher. Try this, and you’ll understand why AI is indeed going to be massive for personalised learning at scale.

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