Microsoft immediately hires ousted OpenAI co-founder, as OpenAI staff begin publicly calling out the company's management
On Friday, OpenAI, the industry leading machine learning firm and creator of ChatGPT, ousted its co-founder and CEO Sam Altman. It was an unexpected move and the board expressed the reasons for its decision in extraordinary terms, saying it «no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading» after he had not been «consistently candid» with them. The news drove a frenzy of speculation in the tech world over the weekend, with Microsoft in particular (which has a multi-billion investment in OpenAI) said to have been blindsided by the move, amid speculation that Altman would be re-hired by the firm.
Well, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella decided to just cut out the middleman, and has announced that Microsoft has hired Altman to lead «a new advanced AI research team» though remains «committed to our partnership with OpenAI». Microsoft has also hired Greg Brockman, also an OpenAI co-founder and formerly the company's president, who was laid off alongside Altman.
For its part OpenAI has appointed ex-Twitch CEO Emmett Shear as its new CEO, who said he had «spent today drinking from the firehose as much as possible». Shear noted that «it’s clear that the process and communications around Sam [Altman]’s removal has been handled very badly, which has seriously damaged our trust.»
Shear says he's commissioning an independent investigation and looking into management reforms, adding «I have nothing but respect for what Sam and the entire OpenAI team have built.» On the specifics of Altman's firing, Shear says he looked into the reasoning: «The board did *not* remove Sam over any specific disagreement on safety, their reasoning was completely different from that. I'm not crazy enough to take this job without board support for
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