{"id":923547,"date":"2026-07-30T05:12:30","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T10:12:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/30\/she-left-the-ai-race-over-her-health-two-days-later-openai-had-her-back\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T05:12:30","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T10:12:30","slug":"she-left-the-ai-race-over-her-health-two-days-later-openai-had-her-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/30\/she-left-the-ai-race-over-her-health-two-days-later-openai-had-her-back\/","title":{"rendered":"She left the AI race over her health. Two days later, OpenAI had her back."},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

On Tuesday, Lilian Weng said she was stepping down from Thinking Machines Lab because the job was making her ill. On Wednesday, she was back at OpenAI.<\/p>\n

Weng co-founded Thinking Machines Lab with Mira Murati, OpenAI\u2019s former chief technology officer. She is rejoining OpenAI to work on recursive self-improvement, or using AI models to build better AI models, The Information reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2018Beyond what my health can sustain\u2019<\/h2>\n

Her exit note was stark. Weng said she had been ill more often in the past seven months than at any point in her life, and did not name a diagnosis. The \u201cconsistent stress and workload,\u201d she wrote, had pushed her \u201cbeyond what my health can sustain physically,\u201d Business Insider reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

She said she tried to rest while the lab sprinted to ship Inkling<\/a>, its first open-weight model, but felt guilt. She had weighed a narrower role and decided it was not a fit. She wanted something \u201cmore predictable\u201d and \u201cscoped,\u201d while staying in AI. \u201cThe future worth building is human,\u201d she wrote on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The role she took is not the calmer one<\/h2>\n

What she returned to is not obviously that calmer job. Recursive self-improvement, using AI to build better AI, is one of the most consequential and contested problems in the field. It is the frontier the whole race is sprinting toward.<\/p>\n

There is an irony in it. A researcher who just hit her own human limits is going to work on machines that are meant to have none. Her recursive self-improvement<\/a> brief puts her at the very edge of the technology.<\/p>\n

She is not the only one<\/h2>\n

Weng\u2019s health exit fits a pattern. Fidji Simo<\/a> stepped back from a top OpenAI role this month after a flare-up of a chronic illness. In January, xAI co-founder Greg Yang moved to an advisory role after a Lyme disease diagnosis. He said he needed to \u201cgo founder mode\u201d on his health.<\/p>\n

The people stepping away tend to sit one level below the chief executive. Some Silicon Valley AI teams run \u201c996\u201d schedules, 9am to 9pm, six days a week. The bosses at the top mostly stay put, and the race does not slow down.<\/p>\n

A lab losing its founders<\/h2>\n

The move thins Thinking Machines further. By May, 13 of the lab\u2019s 42 founding members had left, including three of its six co-founders, as Meta and OpenAI dangled huge pay packages<\/a>. \u201cWe\u2019ll miss you,\u201d Murati<\/a> wrote in reply. \u201cI\u2019m glad that you\u2019re putting your health first.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read one way, this is a person choosing her health, and a former employer welcoming her back. Read another, it is the AI race proving it can pull even its burned-out talent straight back in. Weng wanted a slower lane. She got the fastest problem in the field.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Read More<\/a>
\n Ana Maria Constantin<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Tuesday, Lilian Weng said she was stepping down from Thinking Machines Lab because the job was making her ill. On Wednesday, she was back at OpenAI. Weng co-founded Thinking Machines Lab with Mira Murati, OpenAI\u2019s former chief technology officer. She is rejoining OpenAI to work on recursive self-improvement, or using AI models to build<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":923548,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[267,23040,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-923547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","category-later","category-technology"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=923547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/923548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=923547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=923547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=923547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}