Surprisingly, Sam Altman, CEO and co-founder of OpenAI, was removed from his own company following allegations “Don’t be consistently open in your communication.”according to statements from the company’s board of directors.
Altman’s firing marks a major change in Silicon Valley. After launching ChatGPT, OpenAI’s popular chatbot, Altman became one of the world’s most visible technology executives and a sought-after artificial intelligence expert.
The board said this in a statement published on the OpenAI website “He no longer has confidence in his ability to lead” and explained that there is new leadership “necessary” how the company is progressing. Altman will also step down from his position on the board.
The statement from the board says: “Mr. Altman’s departure follows an advisory review process by the Board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the Board, which impaired his ability to carry out his responsibilities.”. However, It does not detail what information Altman allegedly withheld from his company’s board of directors.
Altman released an optimistic message following the combative announcement: «I really enjoyed the time I spent at OpenAI. It was personally transformative for me and hopefully a little bit transformative for the world. What I enjoyed most was working with such talented people. I’ll have more to say about what comes next.he wrote on Twitter.
Mira Murati, CTO of OpenAI, will take over the position of interim CEO in her place, according to the statement. Murati has been part of the San Francisco-based company’s leadership team for five years.
The announcement caught employees by surprise, many of whom learned of the sudden layoff through an internal announcement and the company’s public blog. OpenAI has scheduled an emergency meeting with all employees for Friday afternoon to discuss the newssaid a person familiar with the matter.
Altman has been considered a leading voice in AI since ChatGPT launched in November 2022. The generative AI chatbot has acquired more than 100 million users in less than a year.
The 38-year-old entrepreneur has led efforts to create “artificial general intelligence,” or AGI, an AI system capable of completing any task a human can.
Altman helped found the company in 2015, initially as a nonprofit with a $1 billion endowment from prominent backers including Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. In 2019, however OpenAI changed its model to “capped profit” with Altman as CEO.
After the release of ChatGPT last year, Altman particularly stood out; He has been called the father of ChatGPT and the “Oppenheimer of our time.” This year he traveled to 22 countries, meeting world leaders such as Pedro Sanchez, Emmanuel Macron and Narendra Modi, among others.
Just a day before his dismissal, he spoke at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit conference in San Francisco, where he argued that lAI will be “the greatest advance of any major technological revolution we have experienced to date.” However, he also recognized the need for regulations. “I firmly believe that the world will rise to this challenge and everyone wants to do the right thing,” Altman said.