“There’s a lot of consequences of AI,” he said. “But the one I think the most about is automated research. When we look at human history, a lot of it is about technological progress, about humans building new technologies. The point when computers can develop new technologies themselves seems like a very important, um, inflection point.
“We already see these models assist scientists. But when they are able to work on longer horizons—when they’re able to establish research programs for themselves—the world will feel meaningfully different.”
For Chen, that ability for models to work by themselves for longer is key. “I mean, I do think everyone has their own definitions of AGI,” he said. “But this concept of autonomous time—just the amount of time that the model can spend making productive progress on a difficult problem without hitting a dead end—that’s one of the big things that we’re after.”
It’s a bold vision—and far beyond the capabilities of today’s models. But I was nevertheless struck by how Chen and Pachocki made AGI sound almost mundane. Compare this with how Sutskever responded when I spoke to him 18 months ago. “It’s going to be monumental, earth-shattering,” he told me. “There will be a before and an after.” Faced with the immensity of what he was building, Sutskever switched the focus of his career from designing better and better models to figuring out how to control a technology that he believed would soon be smarter than himself.
Two years ago Sutskever set up what he called a superalignment team that he would co-lead with another OpenAI safety researcher, Jan Leike. The claim was that this team would funnel a full fifth of OpenAI’s resources into figuring out how to control a hypothetical superintelligence. Today, most of the people on the superalignment team, including Sutskever and Leike, have left the company and the team no longer exists.
When Leike quit, he said it was because the team had not been given the support he felt it deserved. He posted this on X: “Building smarter-than-human machines is an inherently dangerous endeavor. OpenAI is shouldering an enormous responsibility on behalf of all of humanity. But over the past years, safety culture and processes have taken a backseat to shiny products.” Other departing researchers shared similar statements.
I asked Chen and Pachocki what they make of such concerns. “A lot of these things are highly personal decisions,” Chen said. “You know, a researcher can kind of, you know—”
He started again. “They might have a belief that the field is going to evolve in a certain way and that their research is going to pan out and is going to bear fruit. And, you know, maybe the company doesn’t reshape in the way that you want it to. It’s a very dynamic field.”