Founder and CEO of OpenAI, the company behind the viral chatbot ChatGPT, Sam Altman was fired, on Friday. His stunning departure sent shockwaves through the budding AI industry. The company, in a statement, said an internal investigation found that CEO of OpenAI, Altman was not always truthful with the board.
“Mr. 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 company said in its statement. “The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.”
Interim CEO of OpenAI
Mira Murati will be the new CEO of OpenAI as announced by the company. The company’s chief technology officer, will serve as interim CEO until a permanent successor is chosen.
Murati was born and raised in Albania and studied engineering at Dartmouth. She joined OpenAI in 2018. Previously, she managed the product and engineering teams at augmented reality company Ultraleap (then called Leap Motion) and earlier worked at Tesla, where she helped develop the Model X.
In a tweet following the news, OpenAI Sam Altman said he “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,” he said. “will have more to say about what’s next later.”
Rise of CEO of OpenAI
The news of Sam Altman being fired follows OpenAI’s first developer conference held in San Francisco last week. Here Altman served as the master of ceremonies, unveiling a series of new AI tool updates, including the ability for developers to create custom versions of ChatGPT. He also shared about 2M developers now use the platform, and about 90% of Fortune 500 companies are using the tools internally. It currently has 100 million active users.
ChatGPT launched late last year, making Altman an overnight quasi-celebrity. Not long after its release, ChatGPT became a household name almost synonymous with AI itself.
Altman’s skepticism about AI
Although Altman has long been an advocate of AI, he is also one of its biggest critics. In testimony before Congress earlier this year, Altman described the technology’s current boom as a pivotal moment.
He was also one of several tech CEOs to meet with White House leaders, including Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden, this year to emphasize the importance of ethical and responsible AI development.
Others wanted Altman and OpenAI to move more cautiously.
There has been no comments by OpenAI on Sam Altman being fired.
Sam Altman fired
Arun Chandrasekaran, an analyst at Gartner Research, called Sam Altman getting fired as “shocking,” as he’s been championing OpenAI’s cause with developers, consumers, regulators and others. “I am sure the OpenAI board took this decision after a lot of deliberation,” he said.
“OpenAI does have a deep bench of technical leaders and it will be interesting to see how its next generation of leaders steer by continuing its fast paced innovation culture, scaling the business and meeting the expectations of regulators and society at large.”
The news of Sam Altman being fired shocked AI insiders, analysts and tech executives alike. Microsoft said in a statement it “remains committed to Mira and their team as we bring this next era of AI to our customers”.
Stock update
Microsoft’s stock price slid 1.6% Friday and fell about another 1% in afterhours trading.
Sam Altman fired can be a blow to the company?
As per Reece Hayden, an analyst at ABI Research, Sam Altman getting fired could be a “big blow” for commentators calling for AI regulation.
“Sam Altman has been a passionate advocate for this, and this could signal that OpenAI are leaning towards a more self-regulatory approach,” Hayden said.
In a tweet, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt called Altman “a hero of mine.”
“He built a company from nothing to $90 Billion in value, and changed our collective world forever,” Schmidt said. “I can’t wait to see what he does next. I, and billions of people, will benefit from his future work- it’s going to be simply incredible. Thank you [Altman] for all you have done for all of us.”
