OpenAI researcher Naomi Bashkansky quits to develop mind-reading AI
OpenAI is still the talk when it comes to artificial intelligence because of ChatGPT. Some of the people who work there are leaving to make new artificial intelligence somewhere else. In the two years some very important people have left OpenAI to work on their own artificial intelligence projects. These projects are about things like making artificial intelligence safe and robots. Now we have Naomi Bashkansky who used to work at OpenAI. She just quit her job. She is going to work at Conduit as one of the researchers. At Conduit Naomi Bashkansky will work on intelligence that can turn what people think into text. This artificial intelligence uses signals from the brain. It does not hurt the brain to get these signals. OpenAI is losing people, like Naomi Bashkansky who want to make artificial intelligence. Naomi Bashkansky and other people who left OpenAI want to make the generation of artificial intelligence.
Announcing her departure on X, Bashkansky stated that she left OpenAI at the end of July and joined Conduit as a founding researcher the following day. In a blog post titled “Why I’m leaving OpenAI to build telepathy,” she outlined the startup’s ambitious vision, writing: “We’re building telepathy—thought-to-text models trained on non-invasive neural data.” She added that the goal is to develop AI systems capable of translating a person’s thoughts into text without the need for surgical brain implants.
Bashkansky reveals that Conduit is creating AI models capable of interpreting brain signals captured technology. The long-term goal, she explained, is to enable people to communicate simply by thinking. It also shared a roadmap outlining how this technology might evolve through 2027, 2030, and 2035.
OpenAI Loses Numerous AI Researchers
Bashkansky’s departure from OpenAI comes as the company continues to see various researchers and high-level executives leave to pursue their own ambitious AI projects. In recent years, some of OpenAI’s most prominent figures have launched startups focused on diverse fields—ranging from safe superintelligence and robotics to scientific research and AI infrastructure. One notable departure was Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s co-founder and former chief scientist, who left the company in 2024 following months of internal leadership turmoil. Shortly thereafter, he founded Safe Superintelligence (SSI) alongside Daniel Gross and Daniel Levy.
Will Ilya Launch His First AI Model This Month?
Unlike OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic, SSI is not focused on releasing AI chatbots or other consumer products. Instead, the startup states that its sole objective is to build “safe superintelligence”—an AI smarter than humans that places safety at the core of its development.
Although SSI has raised billions of dollars from investors, it has revealed very little information about the technology it is developing. However, the notoriously secretive startup recently garnered attention after venture capitalist Gavin Baker claimed on Patrick O’Shaughnessy’s podcast, ‘Invest Like the Best’, that SSI might unveil its first AI model this month.
While the company has not disclosed the model’s capabilities, industry experts speculate that it will showcase the results of the research Sutskever and his team have been conducting behind closed doors. Speculation has also mounted following news of a $5 billion investment by Nvidia in SSI, granting the startup early access to its next-generation “Vera Rubin” AI chips to support its research. However, SSI has not officially confirmed a launch date or announced plans to release a model in August.