In a surprising move late Friday night, OpenAI ousted its prominent CEO Sam Altman.
Within a year of its public release, OpenAI’s ChatGPT changed the face of generative AI and started a global movement of business and consumer usage of the emerging technology. It attracted headlines not only for its unprecedented potential, but also for its existential danger.
Mr. Altman was the public face of the company, appearing before Congress earlier this year to discuss potential regulations and other issues. Numerous lawsuits followed and panicked efforts to install regulatory guardrails around the world. Mr. Altman will be replaced on an interim basis by Mira Murati, chief technology officer (CTO). The company also announced that Greg Brockman will step down as chairman of the board, but will remain with the company and report directly to the CEO.
In a statement posted on OpenAI’s blog, the board said: “We appreciate Sam’s significant contributions to the founding and growth of OpenAI. At the same time, we believe that new leadership is needed as we move forward. As the leader of the company’s research, product and safety departments, Mila is extremely qualified to take on the role of Interim CEO, and we have the utmost confidence in her ability to lead OpenAI during this transition period.”
OpenAI’s board of directors consists of chief scientist Ilya Sutskever; Independent Director Adam DiAngelo, Quora CEO. technology entrepreneur Tasha McQueary; Helen Toner of the Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technologies;
Altman, 38, helped create OpenAI in 2015.
The company said in a statement: Mr. Altman’s resignation follows a deliberation process by the Board of Directors, which concluded that Mr. Altman has not been consistently candid in his communications with the Board, which is interfering with his ability to fulfill the Board’s responsibilities. . The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI. ”
In a tweet posted to X (formerly known as Twitter) on Friday, Altman wrote: It was a little game-changing for me personally and, hopefully, for the world. [M]More than anything [I] I loved working with such talented people. ” He added, “We will talk about the future in more detail later.”
The company was recently in talks to sell employee stock to investors at a valuation of $86 billion.
Forrester analyst Rowan Curran said in an email to InformationWeek that OpenAI’s massive ChatGPT bot will continue to thrive despite significant changes. “Altman’s departure from OpenAI, while sudden, does not suggest anything is wrong with the underlying technology, model, or approach given the information we have today.” Stated. “This appears to be a case of an executive change related to an issue with the individual rather than an underlying technology or business issue. We don’t know much about the situation beyond what OpenAI has released at this point, but the recent OpenAI Dev Day and the Microsoft Ignite conference emphasized that Microsoft is confident in its partnership with OpenAI, hinting that this is about Altman, not OpenAI.”
In a phone interview with InformationWeek, Curran further commented on the increasing competition in the AI space as more players enter the space. “The world of generative AI is very vibrant and active. Despite the fact that there are many opinions on AI, there are a lot of opportunities in this space, whether it’s with other companies or with open source models. OpenAI still has a very important role in this space.”
This story is developing and InformationWeek will update it.
(Senior Editor Joao-Pierre S. Ruth contributed to this report).