Durk Kingma, one of the lesser known co-founders of artificial intelligence firm OpenAI, has announced that he will leave the company to join rival firm Anthropic in order to develop powerful AI systems ‘responsibly.’

Breaking the news with a post on X, Kingma said: “Anthropic’s approach to AI development resonates significantly with my own beliefs. Looking forward to contributing to Anthropic’s mission of developing powerful AI systems responsibly. Can’t wait to work with their talented team, including a number of great ex-colleagues from OpenAI and Google.”

Kingma previously worked at Google as a doctoral fellow before joining OpenAI’s founding team as a research scientist. At OpenAI, he headed up the algorithms team to help create AI models, including OpenAI’s globally popular large language model ChatGPT, as well as image generators like DALL-E 3.

After his initial departure from the company in 2018, Kingma rejoined Google as part of Google Brain, the firm’s first venture into AI that was eventually incorporated under the newer umbrella of Google AI.

With his move to Anthropic, he joins John Schulman, another co-founder of OpenAI, who left the Microsoft-backed firm in August this year to focus on AI alignment, and return to ‘hands-on technical work’. 

Prior to that, Jan Leike, a former OpenAI executive, signed up for a safety role at Anthropic, less than three months after OpenAI disbanded his ‘superalignment’ team that focused on trying to develop safety controls for super-intelligent systems.

Following his resignation from OpenAI, Leike criticised the company’s approach to AI safety with his own post on X, claiming that safety culture and processes had taken a backseat to ‘shiny products’.

Notably, Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, previously served as the VP of research at OpenAI but allegedly parted ways with the company following a disagreement about its direction, specifically its increasing emphasis on commercial ventures.

Recommended reading

• OpenAI Hits 1 Million Paid Business Users for ChatGPT
• OpenAI Enters Search Engine Arena with SearchGPT
• ChatGPT Watermarking Tool Stalled By OpenAI Board

Last week three more senior OpenAI executives departed the company, including chief technology officer Mira Murati, though the company denied reports that this was in any way linked to rumours that the ChatGPT developer is planning to restructure its core business into a for-profit corporation that will no longer be controlled by its non-profit board.

Reports from Reuters suggest that chief executive Sam Altman could receive equity worth $150 billion under the plans, with sources suggesting the company might remove the cap on returns for investors.