Sam Altman’s Disruption at OpenAI: What Will He Do After the Steve Jobs Re-Higgs Returns?
Much like Microsoft reiterating that the partnership with OpenAI is still alive, Shear had a similar message to share. “Our partnership with Microsoft remains strong, and my priority in the coming weeks will be to make sure we continue to serve all our customers well,” says Shear. “OpenAI employees are extremely impressive, as you might have guessed, and mission-driven in the extreme. It is clear that the process of Sam’s removal has been handled badly, which has seriously damaged our trust.
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 had not experience with nonprofits when he and other investors formed the startup that is currently called CHATGPT. He was unsure how it was going to go.
Altman, former president Brockman, and the company’s investors are still trying to find a graceful exit for the board, say multiple sources with direct knowledge of the situation. The hiring announcement by Microsoft, which needed to have a resolution to the crisis before the stock market opened on Monday, is a holding pattern according to the sources.
Even though he was part of the cause that got Altman removed, Sutskever flipped on the board. Several companies signed an open letter on Monday calling on the board to resign and for them to re-hired Altman.
What’s going on at Openai? Share what you’ve learned and where you want to go, and what you can do about it
Nadella said that the company is committed to their partnership with Openai, they have faith in their product plans, and they will continue to support customers and partners. We want to learn more about the new leadership team and work with them.
New CEO Emmett Shear has so far been unable to get written documentation of the board’s detailed reasoning for firing Altman, which also hasn’t been shared with the company’s investors, according to people familiar with the situation. He said in a note to employees Sunday night that his first order of business would be to “hire an independent investigator to dig into the entire process leading up to this point and generate a full report.”
Is it possible you know more about what’s going on in OpenAI? I would be happy to chat. You can contact me by email at alex.heath@ theverge.com or using the contact form on my Linktree. Then we can use the secure channel.
The remaining board holdouts who oppose Altman are Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo, former GeoSim Systems CEO Tasha McCauley, and Helen Toner, the director of strategy at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology. They have so far not responded to The Verge’s requests for comment.
“[We’re] committed to OpenAI and Sam, irrespective of what configuration,” said Nadella in an interview with CNBC’s Jon Fortt, adding that Microsoft “chose to explicitly partner with OpenAI [and] obviously that depends on the people at OpenAI staying there or coming to Microsoft, so I’m open to both options.” If Sam and Greg are not going to be at Openai, I want them to have a great home with all the colleagues at Microsoft, but I am exactly where I was Friday morning.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella made the announcement that Altman, 38, would be joining in a post on X sent just before 3 a.m. eastern time Monday.
OpenAI and Microsoft: Where are we going? What will we tell you next? How will OpenAI shape global norms and how AI shapes global Norms?
I believe we will want governance changes. We just want to make sure things are done in a way that will allow us to continue to partner well. Some of the changes that are needed happen and we will be able to go along with the partnership with OpenAI despite the idea that they suddenly change without being in the loop.
I reported earlier today that Sam Altman isn’t showing up in Microsoft’s corporate directory yet, according to multiple sources. Microsoft doesn’t have policies in place for 24 hour emergency deals, so it’s not surprising that the company hasn’t given any information about the appointment to employees in internal memos. If Altman gets fully onboarded to Microsoft, he will have a CEO title in Microsoft which is typically reserved for the leaders of big divisions such as Microsoft gaming or acquired companies.
OpenAI employees signing the letter accuse the company’s board of jeopardizing their work and having “undermined our mission and company.” The idea that Openai was pushing ahead too quickly without safety considerations was rejected by them. They write that their work on governance and safety Shapes Global Norms.
Microsoft has formed a new research team to investigate artificial intelligence. It comes just a week after Microsoft announced it has built its own custom AI chip that can be used to train large language models and potentially avoid a costly reliance on Nvidia. Microsoft’s own Arm-based CPUs was used for cloud work. Both custom silicon chips are designed to power its Azure data centers.
When OpenAI Meets ChatGPT: OpenAI CEO Satya Reem (Revisited Report on Air Street Capital)
Shear resigned as CEO of the platform after co-founding it. He is taking over the position of OpenAI interim CEO at a very difficult time. On Friday, the interim CEO of OpenAI was Mira Murati, the chief technology officer. Many OpenAI employees showed their support for Altman while negotiations were being held with the OpenAI board to bring him back.
OpenAI, founded by Altman, Elon Musk and others about eight years ago as a nonprofit AI research lab, released ChatGPT last year, setting the pace for the entire tech industry’s focus on a sophisticated type of artificial intelligence known as generative AI.
A report by Air Street Capital says that Satya is now one of the most epic kingmakers.