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If someone ever<\/span> makes an HBO Max series about the AI industry, the events of this week will make quite the episode.<\/p>\n On Wednesday, OpenAI\u2019s CEO of applications, Fidji Simo, announced the company had rehired Barret Zoph and Luke Metz, cofounders of Mira Murati\u2019s AI startup, Thinking Machines Lab. Zoph and Metz had left OpenAI in late 2024.<\/p>\n We reported last night on two narratives forming around what led to the departures, and have since learned new information.<\/p>\n A source with direct knowledge says that Thinking Machines leadership believed Zoph engaged in an incident of serious misconduct while at the company last year. That incident broke Murati\u2019s trust, the source says, and disrupted the pair\u2019s working relationship. The source also alleged Murati fired Zoph on Wednesday\u2014before knowing he was going to OpenAI\u2014due to what the company claimed were issues that arose after the alleged misconduct. Around the time the company learned that Zoph was returning to OpenAI, Thinking Machines raised concerns internally about whether he had shared confidential information with competitors. (Zoph has not responded to several requests for comment from WIRED.)<\/p>\n Meanwhile, in a Wednesday memo to employees, Simo claimed the hires had been in the works for weeks and that Zoph told Murati he was considering leaving Thinking Machines on Monday\u2014prior to the date he was fired. Simo also told employees that OpenAI doesn\u2019t share Thinking Machines’ concerns about Zoph\u2019s ethics.<\/p>\n Alongside Zoph and Metz, another former OpenAI researcher that was working at Thinking Machines, Sam Schoenholz, is rejoining the ChatGPT-maker, per Simo\u2019s announcement. At least two more Thinking Machines employees are expected to join OpenAI in the coming weeks, according to a source familiar with the matter. Technology reporter Alex Heath was first to report the additional hires.<\/p>\n A separate source familiar with the matter pushed back on the perception that the recent personnel changes were wholly related to Zoph. “This has been part of a long discussion at Thinking Machines. There were discussions and misalignment on what the company wanted to build\u2014it was about the product, the technology, and the future.\u201d<\/p>\n Thinking Machines Lab and OpenAI declined to comment.<\/p>\n In the aftermath of these events, we\u2019ve been hearing from several researchers at leading AI labs who say they are exhausted by the constant drama in their industry. This specific incident is reminiscent of OpenAI\u2019s brief ouster of Sam Altman in 2023, known inside of OpenAI as \u201cthe blip.\u201d Murati played a key role in that event as the company\u2019s then chief technology officer, according to reporting from The Wall Street Journal.<\/p>\n In the years since Altman\u2019s ouster, the drama in the AI industry has continued, with departures of cofounders at several major AI labs, including xAI\u2019s Igor Babuschkin, Safe Superintelligence\u2019s Daniel Gross, and Meta\u2019s Yann LeCun (he did cofound Facebook\u2019s longstanding AI lab, FAIR, after all).<\/p>\n Some might argue the drama is justified for a nascent industry whose expenditures are contributing to America\u2019s GDP growth. Also, if you buy into the idea that one of these researchers might crack a few breakthroughs on the path to AGI, it\u2019s probably worth tracking where they\u2019re going.<\/p>\n That said, many researchers started working before ChatGPT\u2019s breakout success and appear surprised that their industry is now the source of nearly constant scrutiny.<\/p>\n As long as researchers can keep raising billion-dollar seed rounds on a whim, we\u2019re guessing the AI industry\u2019s power shake-ups will continue apace. HBO Max writers, lock in.<\/p>\n People in Silicon Valley have been musing about AI displacing jobs for decades. In the past few months, however, the efforts to actually get AI to do economically valuable work have become far more sophisticated.<\/p>\n AI labs are smartening up about the data they\u2019re using to create AI agents. Last week, WIRED reported that OpenAI has been asking third-party contractors from the firm Handshake to upload examples of their real work from previous jobs to evaluate OpenAI\u2019s agents. The companies ask employees to scrub these documents of any confidential data and personally identifying information. While it\u2019s possible some corporate secrets or names slip by, that\u2019s likely not what OpenAI is after (though the company could get in serious trouble if that happens, experts say).<\/p>\n<\/div>\nHow AI Labs Are Training Agents to Do Your Job<\/h2>\n