OpenAI Chief Product Officer Kevin Weil is taking on a new role inside the company that goes beyond product development: He is learning to be an AI researcher while building an internal group, “OpenAI for Science.”
The move comes as former Instacart CEO Fidji Simo assumes responsibility for the startup’s public-facing products as OpenAI’s new CEO of applications. She started at OpenAI in mid-August.
“OpenAI’s products have been my life since I joined, and they’re in great hands,” Weil wrote in a post on X.
In a separate post, Weil announced the new group on X, saying its mission is to create “the next great scientific instrument: an AI-powered platform that accelerates scientific discovery.”
Weil is now vice president of artificial intelligence (AI) for science, according to The Verge. His former product team, including the head of ChatGPT Nick Turley, will now report to Simo.
Changes in Weil’s responsibilities are the latest in management shifts at OpenAI.
The startup has appointed Vijaye Raji as CTO of applications and head of product engineering for ChatGPT and Codex. Raji was the founder and CEO of experimentation platform Statsig, which OpenAI is acquiring for $1.1 billion. He reports to Simo.
Srinivas Narayanan, who led engineering at OpenAI and oversaw ChatGPT development and developer APIs, was promoted to CTO of B2B applications for enterprise and government products. He will report to COO Brad Lightcap.
Meanwhile, Chief People Officer Julia Villagra is leaving. Jason Kwon, chief strategy officer, will step in temporarily as Simo looks for a replacement, according to Reuters.
PYMNTS contacted OpenAI for comment but has yet to receive a reply.
As for Weil’s new science group, he said he is planning to hire a “small team” of academics who are not only “world-class” in their fields but also “completely AI-pilled” and “great science communicators.” These scholars will be paired with OpenAI researchers to accelerate discovery in areas such as physics, biology and chemistry.
“Scientific discovery improves everything, from the quality of our daily lives to national security to global GDP,” Weil said on X. “Few domains hold as much promise for improving lives as science.”
Weil’s interest in the project has roots in his own training; before working in tech, he studied high-energy physics in grad school at Stanford after graduating summa cum laude from Harvard with a degree in physics and math. At OpenAI, he said he will also work with the company’s synthetic data team to “learn the craft” of AI research firsthand.
Meanwhile, Simo’s responsibility is to oversee the company’s suite of products for consumers and businesses, including ChatGPT. That leaves Weil free to pursue a parallel mission: applying AI not only to user-facing products but also to the underlying process of scientific innovation.
Source: https://www.pymnts.com/
