After quarrels at OpenAI
Laid-off Sam Altman returns to ChatGPT developer as boss
November 22, 2023, 7:22 a.m
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The developer of the chatbot ChatGPT, OpenAI, announces the return of Sam Altman as company boss – just days after he was fired. The majority of employees had threatened to follow him. Now comes the lightning comeback.
A few days after his surprising dismissal, Sam Altman becomes head of ChatGPT developer OpenAI again. In addition, the board of directors will be renewed, as OpenAI announced last night. Altman was only forced out by the old board of directors on Friday and decided on Sunday to go to OpenAI investor Microsoft. Afterwards, around 700 of OpenAI’s 770 employees threatened to follow him – which would have practically meant the end of the company.
According to media reports, a dispute over direction at OpenAI led to Altman’s departure. Some executives, such as technology chief Ilya Sutskever, were of the opinion that Altman wanted to bring the artificial intelligence software to market too quickly and with too commercial an approach. They got the majority of the board of directors on their side. In the meantime, Sutskever also switched to Altman’s camp and publicly regretted his involvement in his dismissal.
OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a non-profit organization – with the mission to develop artificial intelligence in the interests of everyone. However, when it became clear that donations would not raise the necessary billions in investments, a for-profit company was formed with Altman at the helm. Among other things, he brought Microsoft on board as an investor, thereby securing OpenAI’s access to the necessary computing power. However, the conflict between the two approaches became ever deeper.
The chatbot ChatGPT can formulate sentences at the linguistic level of a human. Its publication around a year ago sparked AI hype. OpenAI has thus become a pioneer in the technology. Microsoft entered into a multi-billion dollar pact with the company to bring its technology into the company’s products. Other tech heavyweights such as Google, Amazon and the Facebook group Meta presented competing software.