Software group Microsoft is recruiting Sam Altman to lead a new artificial-intelligence research team, after an attempt to reinstate him at OpenAI, the company behind the ChatGPT bot, collapsed following his shock sacking by the board.
Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella revealed on X, formerly known as Twitter, that Altman and Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s president and cofounder who resigned in protest over Altman’s sudden dismissal, will lead an AI team.
Microsoft, which has invested $11bn (£8.8bn) in OpenAI, said it remained committed to the company but will also provide Altman and Brockman with “the resources needed for their success.”
It was the latest twist in a series of unexpected turns for OpenAI, the company at the heart of the artificial intelligence boom.
Microsoft’s announcement came at the end of a drama-packed weekend. It followed shortly after OpenAI, having been expected to reappoint Sam Altman as its boss after sacking him 48 hours earlier, suddenly named Emmett Shear, a former director of television streaming service Twitch, as interim chief executive.
OpenAI’s directors sacked Altman. The reasons for his dismissal are not clear. Speculation over the weekend suggested it was over disagreements on the safety of the company’s AI programmes with Altman said to be seeking a more rapid commercialisation of them in the face of resistance from the board.
In a statement, it said it had lost confidence in its 38-year-old co-founder after “a deliberative review process” concluded he had not been “consistently candid in his communications”, without specifying how.
Hours later, senior OpenAI executive Brad Lightcap told staff in an internal company memo his sacking was over a “breakdown in communication between Sam and the board”, and not “malfeasance or anything related to our financial, business, safety, or security/privacy practices”.
His sudden departure precipitated the resignation of several senior members of staff including president Greg Brockman who announced that he had resigned. “Sam and I are shocked and saddened by what the board did today … We too are still trying to figure out exactly what happened.”
Sam Altman, has been described as the face of the AI and is regularly compared to Bill Gates and Steve Jobs for his influence in artificially intelligence and for leading Open AI to a point it could potentially become one of the world’s most valuable technology companies. He was a key speaker at Rishi Sunak’s artificially intelligence safety summit at Bletchley Park early this month.
Less than 48 hours after he was dismissed from the company he returned wearing a visitor’s badge as worried investors as well as employees sought to broker a deal that would have seen him return to the company. Investors feared his sudden departure would lead to a mass exodus of talent and hit a forthcoming $86bn (£69bn) share sale.
Altman’s return deal would have seen major changes to the Board and to its governance rules. OpenAI is currently a non-profit group. Its current four-person board consists of three independent directors who have no financial stake in the firm and the company’s chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever.
After Sam Altman’s Microsoft appointment, Ilya Sutskever, tweeted: “I deeply regret my participation in the board’s actions. I never intended to harm OpenAI. I love everything we’ve built together and I will do everything I can to reunite the company.”
Altman was reportedly seeking a restructuring of the company with a more business orientated outlook and had been attempting to develop new products to bring to market sooner. The board have been more cautious, fearing the powerful AI tool could be misused and result in widespread harm. Sam Altman argues such concerns can be managed and the potential benefits from making AI broadly available outweighs the risks.
The conflict between OpenAI’s mission to build technology to benefit humanity, and that of its investors who have bankrolled the effort expecting a financial return has been long standing according to analyst Richard Windsor of Radio Free Mobile. “This weekend was simply the detonation of a bomb that has been waiting to go off,” he said.
When the return deal fell through OpenAI named Emmett Shear, a computer scientist, as its new boss.
Shortly after the announcement of the new executive’s appointment, distraught employees “streamed out” of OpenAI headquarters in San Francisco, the tech magazine, The Information reported. Hundreds of OpenAI’s 770 employees have signed an open letter calling on the board to resign.
Several reports said the OpenAI’s directors remained sceptical of Altman’s commitment to OpenAI’s mission of ensuring safe artificial intelligence. Emmett Shear said he checked on the reasoning for his predecessor’s dismissal before taking the job and Altman was not removed over any disagreement on the safety of powerful AI models.
“Their reasoning was completely different from that. I’m not crazy enough to take this job without board support for commercialising our awesome models,” he said. One of his first actions will be to carry out an inquiry into the dismissal of his predecessor he added.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Altman had been losing the support of a board – a board he had helped create and promote in a bid to allay growing fears about AI safety. Microsoft’s shares rose more than 1 per cent ahead of US markets opening.
