OpenAI employee “Hieu Pham” said ‘I’m so tired, I’ll find a cure for my illnesses’, OpenAI employee’s resignation raises questions

OpenAI employee “Hieu Pham” said ‘I’m so tired, I’ll find a cure for my illnesses’, OpenAI employee’s resignation raises questions

When OpenAI technical staffer Hieu Pham shared his departure on X, people started discussing a facet of the AI ​​field that many often avoid talking about. One user wrote, “If using AI is so tedious, what must it be like to work at these companies?”

OpenAI Technical Staff Hieu Pham: Is the field of artificial intelligence so exhausting and painful inside? This question has arisen after OpenAI technical staff member Hieu Pham left the company. He described his condition in a social media post, writing, “I’m very tired, I’ll find a cure for my illnesses.” He wrote, “I’m going to take my family to my country, Vietnam. I hope I get well.” In his post, Hieu Pham discussed mental health, writing that he used to joke about it before.

Hieu Pham worked at XAI before OpenAI. XAI is Elon Musk’s AI company, whose GrokAI is used worldwide. Hieu Pham’s departure has raised many questions. One user, Mark, wrote, “You worked with the best people in the world, and yet you decided to leave the company? Something doesn’t seem right.”

Hieu Pham Said:

I have made the difficult decision to leave OpenAI Working here and at xai before was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

I have met the best people. Not the best people in AI. Not the best people in tech. Simply the best people.

At these companies, I have helped creating extremely intelligent entities that will meaningfully improve our lives. The work makes me proud.

But the intensive work came with a price. I cannot believe I would say this one day, but I am burnt out. All the mental health deteriorating that I used to scoff at is real, miserable, scary, and dangerous.

I am going to take a break from frontier AI labs, and will take my family to my home country Vietnam.

There, I will try something new, and also search for a cure for my conditions. I hope I will heal. Until then.

Using AI requires a brain, and even after using it, it still requires a brain!

So the question is, if the brain is to be used, what is the use of AI?