A star OpenAI engineer says he's starting a new team to chase artificial superintelligence (www.businessinsider.com)

Will DePue, a core engineer behind OpenAI’s text-to-video model Sora, announced on X that he’s returned to OpenAI to form a “new team” with fellow Sora engineers Troy Luhman and Eric Luhman to pursue artificial superintelligence (ASI). DePue described the effort as an “incredibly high‑risk bet that has a small, but significant, chance of leading to ASI,” and said the group will stay small but is open to “high‑slope” researchers and engineers. OpenAI has not released details and did not respond to requests for comment; DePue’s LinkedIn and personal site note his work training ChatGPT models, building Sora, and exploratory projects like a browser GPT and an embedding dataset called the “Alexandria Index.” The announcement is notable because it signals a focused, internal push by experienced contributors toward capabilities beyond AGI — aligning with OpenAI’s public goal of AGI and CEO Sam Altman’s stated interest in superintelligence. Technically, the trio’s Sora pedigree suggests the team will combine large multimodal model experience, generative model training and systems engineering. The move raises both strategic and safety implications for the AI community: a compact, mission‑driven group could accelerate breakthroughs, while concentrated efforts on ASI intensify the need for rigorous robustness, alignment and governance work alongside capability development.