# Jan Leike AI alignment researcher who became the most prominent safety-focused departure from [[OpenAI]], resigning in May 2024 alongside co-lead [[Ilya Sutskever]] from the Superalignment team. Leike's resignation statement — that OpenAI's "safety culture and processes have taken a backseat to shiny products" — was the clearest public confirmation from inside the company that the November 2023 board crisis had been resolved decisively in favor of commercialization over safety. Leike joined [[Anthropic]] as Head of Alignment shortly after leaving OpenAI, making the move that his public statements had implied: if the lab that claims to prioritize safety won't actually do it, go to the one that demonstrably does. His departure was part of a broader exodus of safety-focused researchers from OpenAI in 2023–2024, including Sutskever (who founded Safe Superintelligence Inc.) and multiple members of the disbanded Superalignment team. ## KB relevance Leike's trajectory — recruited to lead OpenAI's most ambitious safety effort, watched it get defunded relative to product development, resigned publicly, and joined the competitor that got banned for taking safety too seriously — encapsulates the vault's thesis about voluntary AI safety as competitive disadvantage. The researcher who cares most about [[Alignment]] ends up at the company the government punishes for caring about alignment. ## See Also - [[Anthropic]] — current employer - [[OpenAI]] — former employer - [[Ilya Sutskever]] — co-lead of the disbanded Superalignment team - [[AI Safety]] — the field - [[Alignment]] — the specific technical challenge - [[AI Ethics and Safety Ecosystem]] — the broader landscape