OpenAI and LinkedIn: OpenAI, Facebook, and Twitter: Zurich, LinkedIn, Dall-E, Sora, and Other Outposts

Zhai, Beyer, and Kolesnikov all live in Zurich, according to LinkedIn, which has become a relatively prominent tech hub in Europe. The city is home to a public research university, with a well-known computer science department. Apple has also reportedly poached a number of AI experts from Google to work at “a secretive European laboratory in Zurich,” the Financial Times reported earlier this year.

In October, OpenAI said that it was working on expanding globally. In addition to the new Zurich offices, the company plans to open new outposts in New York City, Seattle, Brussels, Paris, and Singapore, and already has outposts in London, Tokyo, and other cities, in addition to its San Francisco headquarters.

“OpenAI builds AI to benefit as many people as possible, and supports US-led efforts to ensure the technology upholds democratic values,” Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, said in a statement Wednesday.

As they race to develop the most advanced AI models, OpenAI and its rivals are intensely competing to hire a limited pool of top researchers from around the world, often offering them annual compensation packages worth close to seven figures or more. The most sought-after talent jumping between companies is not uncommon.

All three of the newly hired researchers already work closely together, according to Beyer’s personal website. While he was working at DeepMind, Beyer had a close watch on the research OpenAI was publishing and public controversy it was involved in.

The first version of OpenAI’s text-to- imagery platform, Dall-E, was released in 2021. Its flagship chatbot ChatGPT, however, was initially only capable of interacting with text inputs. multimodal features, which included voice and image features, became an increasingly important part of the company’s product line. (The latest version of Dall-E is available directly within ChatGPT.) OpenAI has also developed a highly anticipated generative AI video product called Sora, though it has yet to make it widely available.

OpenAI’s AI models will be used to improve systems used for air defense, said Brian Schimpf, cofounder and CEO of Anduril, in the statement. “Together, we are committed to developing responsible solutions that enable military and intelligence operators to make faster, more accurate decisions in high-pressure situations,” he said.

OpenAI’s technology will be used to “assess drone threats more quickly and accurately, giving operators the information they need to make better decisions while staying out of harm’s way,” says a former OpenAI employee who left the company earlier this year and spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their professional relationships.

OpenAI changed its policy about the use of its software for military applications. The source that worked at the company at that time stated that there were no open protests because some staff were unhappy with the change. According to a report by The Intercept, the US military uses some OpenAI technology.

A swarm of small, autonomously flying aircraft that work together for a common goal is how Anduril is developing an advanced air defense system. These aircraft are controlled through an interface powered by a large language model, which interprets natural language commands and translates them into instructions that both human pilots and the drones can understand and execute. Anduril has been using open source language models.

Anduril doesn’t currently have advanced Artificial Intelligence to control systems or allow them to make their own decisions. It would be riskier than before because of the unpredictability of today’s models.