OpenAI’s board has sacked its CEO and director Sam Altman on Friday.
In a famous statement, the company said: “Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities. The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.”
The sacking of Altman, who became the public face of artificial intelligence (AI) with the launch of ChatGPT and GPT-4, sent shockwaves across the tech industry. It prompted the resignations of OpenAI Co-Founder and President Greg Brockman; and according to The Information, three senior researchers also submitted their resignations following the news.
Altman took to X, formerly Twitter, to share his thoughts on his time at OpenAI as well as the transformative impact it had on him:
i loved my time at openai. it was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. most of all i loved working with such talented people.
will have more to say about what’s next later.
????
— Sam Altman (@sama) November 17, 2023
He also said that being fired was a “weird experience” and “sorta like reading your own eulogy while you’re still alive”.
However, it soon came to light that OpenAI’s executives were making a concentrated effort to bring him back. According to The Information, there was a weekend of negotiations with the board of directors, company leaders and investors. Interim CEO Mira Murati invited both Altman and Brockman at the company’s San Francisco headquarters on Sunday. However, his conditions these negotiations were rejected by Altman and Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI co-founder and board director, told the staff that Altman would not be returning.
first and last time i ever wear one of these pic.twitter.com/u3iKwyWj0a
— Sam Altman (@sama) November 19, 2023
OpenAI’s interim CEO Mira Murati also lost her job, perhaps because of her public alignment with Altman. Instead, OpenAI has chosen a new path by appointing Emmett Shear, former CEO of Twitch, as their interim CEO. This marks the third change in leadership over the past three days.
In a shocking twist, both Altman and Brockman have now been hired by Microsoft. CEO Satya Nadella took to X to say: “We’re extremely excited to share the news that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, together with colleagues, will be joining Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team,” says Nadella. “We look forward to moving quickly to provide them with the resources needed for their success.”
We remain committed to our partnership with OpenAI and have confidence in our product roadmap, our ability to continue to innovate with everything we announced at Microsoft Ignite, and in continuing to support our customers and partners. We look forward to getting to know Emmett…
— Satya Nadella (@satyanadella) November 20, 2023
Considering the flurry of decisions this weekend, it is likely that further announcements will be made in the future regarding the same.
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