Recently, artificial intelligence startupsThinking MachinesCo-founder Lilian Weng announced his resignation from his position within the company and publicly attributed his departure to his health. However, just a few days later, it was confirmed that she would rejoinOpenAI.

       

Lilian Weng revealed his decision to leave Thinking Machines through an internal Slack message and social platform X this week. She said in the statement that she could no longer withstand the high-intensity pace required by a start-up. Months of careful consideration made her realize that the continuous pressure and workload had exceeded the limits of her physical health.

Shortly after the news of the resignation was announced, OpenAI officials confirmed to the media on Wednesday that Weng would return to the company. Previously, she served as Vice President of AI Security Research at OpenAI. According to a spokesperson for the company, Weng will lead a senior team upon his return and will be primarily responsible for accelerating OpenAI’s internal research work. The team will focus on supporting cross-research projects involving recursive self-improvement, which aims to enable artificial intelligence systems to improve their performance through continuous iteration.

This turn has aroused attention and discussion from the outside world, and some public opinion believes that this is a subtle contrast with her previous statement that the pace of startups is harmful to health. However, analysis points out that compared to the huge pressure she faces as a co-founder, holding a research leadership position in a non-startup company may relieve her of a lot of direct burden. In the context of the current fierce competition among major AI laboratories for top talents, this frequent change of top management talents still attracts attention.

Previously, Mira Murati, co-founder of Thinking Machines and former chief technology officer of OpenAI, left a message on Weng’s social media feed, expressing support and understanding for her decision to put health first. It's unclear whether Murati was aware of Weng's decision to return to his old club at the time.