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Amidst leadership changes and industry scrutiny, OpenAI’s research direction is firmly in the hands of Chief Research Officer Mark Chen and Chief Scientist Jakub Pachocki. Stepping out from behind the shadow of CEO Sam Altman, Chen and Pachocki recently outlined their vision for the future, emphasizing a delicate balance between groundbreaking research and practical product deployment. They stressed the critical role of coding and mathematical prowess in developing increasingly sophisticated AI models, citing recent AI triumphs in competitive programming (AtCoder World Tour Finals) and mathematical problem-solving (International Math Olympiad) as evidence of AI’s potential to accelerate scientific discovery. While the departure of Ilya Sutskever and the disbanding of the superalignment team raised concerns, Chen and Pachocki are committed to long-term exploration, particularly focusing on enabling AI models to learn, explore, and generate truly novel insights over extended periods.