Chaos at the OpenAI board of chairman and CEO Sam Altman: Feedback on a founding strategy and decision making for the non-for-profit ChatGppt
Some OpenAI staff stayed up all night debating a course of action following news that Altman would not return to OpenAI. Many staff were frustrated about a lack of communication over Altman’s firing. Dozens of employees appeared to signal their willingness to jump ship and join Altman last night by posting “OpenAI is nothing without its people.” On X.
An attempt to restore Altman as CEO and replace the board ran into difficulty Sunday over the role of existing directors in choosing their replacements, Bloomberg reported.
Chaos at OpenAI has its root in an unusual corporate structure designed to protect humanity against rogue AI—some investors had expressed fears it could weaken the company.
Sam Altman was one of the investors who formed the not-for-profit ChatGppt in 2015, he had very little experience with nonprofits. He said he wasn’t sure how it would go.
Emmett Nadella: OpenAI’s new executive vice-president of AI at Microsoft Ignite, and how he sees him
“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,” Nadella said in his statement. “We look forward to getting to know Emmett Shear and OAI’s new leadership team and working with them.”
The new advanced artificial intelligence research team is headed by Altman and Brockman. Microsoft announced last week that it has built a custom version of its own artificial intelligence chip, which could allow it to use other companies for larger models, instead of relying on Nvidia. Microsoft has also built its own Arm-based CPU for cloud workloads. Both custom silicon chips are designed to power its Azure data centers.
“OpenAI’s stability and success are too important to allow turmoil to disrupt them like this,” says Shear. I will do everything I can to address the key concerns, although in some cases it may take longer than a month to achieve true progress.
Separately, OpenAI’s board announced it has hired former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear to lead the company, naming him the interim CEO despite calls from some OpenAI investors to bring back Altman.
He acknowledged on X he was joining Microsoft by reposting Nadella’s message “the mission continues.” Nadella responded by providing some hints at how he sees Altman’s role at Microsoft. “We’ve learned a lot over the years about how to give founders and innovators space to build independent identities and cultures within Microsoft, including GitHub, Mojang Studios, and LinkedIn, and I’m looking forward to having you do the same.”
Nadella also said Greg Brockman, the former president of OpenAI who quit in protest after Altman’s sudden departure, would be joining the new AI division at Microsoft alongside Altman.
In just one year, OpenAI, founded about eight years ago, released the first version of a generative artificial intelligence (gpi) platform, setting the tone for the entire tech industry’s focus on this type of artificial intelligence.
Microsoft is believed to have an investment in OpenAI worth over 10 billion dollars. Microsoft is the exclusive cloud partner for OpenAI, and Microsoft’s cloud services power all OpenAI workloads across products, API services, and research.
OpenAI CEO Natya Benaich and the Boardroom Coupling Between Air Street Capital and Microsoft: What do we need to know to jump ship?
“Satya now looks like one of the most epic kingmakers,” says Nathan Benaich, founder and general partner at Air Street Capital and author of the State of AI report.
Remarkably, the letter’s signees include Ilya Sutskever, the company’s chief scientist and a member of its board, who has been blamed for coordinating the boardroom coup against Altman in the first place.
Nadela appeared to leave the door open to any OpenAI employees eager to jump ship, adding of Altman’s new Microsoft subsidiary: “We look forward to moving quickly to provide them with the resources needed for their success.”