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There’s been a whirlwind of drama circling OpenAI over the weekend, and the winds kee blowing. After Sam Altman butted heads with the company’s board, the former is now out of a job… well he was. According to a new report, Microsoft just hired Sam Altman.
Let’s catch you up
So, in case you don’t know, Sam Altman was fired from OpenAI on Friday. This news came as a shock to everyone, Altman involved. The board stated the reason as being that he wasn’t “consistently candid in his communications” with the board. We’re still not sure what he wasn’t quite honest about, but it led them to jettison him. The company’s chief technology officer, Mira Murati was appointed the temporary CEO until the company could find a permanent CEO.
Then, OpenAI sings “Baby Come Back”
After just a day, OpenAI entered talks with Altman to return to the company. The quick decision to fire him did not sit well with investors and many of the workers at the company threatened to leave. So, losing investors and employees threw the company into a spin. If Altman agreed to come back by a 5PM EST deadline, the employees wouldn’t walk.
However, a truce wasn’t reached by that deadline or the second deadline set. This means that OpenAI is in a massive pickle at the moment.
Microsoft just hired Sam Altman
This situation, which happened over a single weekend, mind you, has just gotten a bit weirder. OpenAI didn’t only lose Sam Altman, but it also lost the company’s president and former board member Greg Brockman. Well, the two were already contacting investors and looking to start a new company before OpenAI asked for their return.
However, after no agreement was reached, Microsoft stepped in and snatched up Altman. In a statement on Sunday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said “we remain committed to our partnership with OpenAI and have confidence in our product roadmap.” So, it seems that the company is still investing in OpenAI, but we don’t know for how much longer.
In any case, it hired Altman, Brockman, and several colleagues to lead a new advanced AI research team at the company. Since this is still new, we’re all unsure how the company is going to handle everything. Its AI is built on OpenAI’s LLMs. If OpenAI’s fortunes don’t improve, then it, along with all of the AI tools it’s powering, could go down.
Will Microsoft ditch OpenAI for its own AI? Will the company pull its funding for OpenAI and let that ship sink? Who knows?
Civil war at OpenAI
Right now, OpenAI is going through a rough transition. With Altman gone, many of the staff are not happy. They’ve set their demands; either the board goes or they go. They want the board to be kicked out of the company or they walk out. Those are similar to Sam Altman’s conditions to return. He wanted “governance changes”.
Now, these changes could happen one way or another. And, speaking of changes, the company has appointed a new CEO. Twitch co-founder and ex-CEO Emmit Shear has taken the helm. With this new face, there’s a new hope that things will start looking up for the company. This story is still developing, so we’ll keep you up to date on what’s going on.