Sam Altman
Microsoft hires ex-head of ChatGPT developer OpenAI
Probably won’t return to OpenAI after all: Sam Altman. photo
© Sven Hoppe/dpa
After the quarrels at OpenAI, the major investor took the opportunity and signed the former boss of the ChatGPT developer. This will instantly make Microsoft a stronger player in the AI race.
About the leadership chaos at the ChatGPT developer In the end, OpenAI benefited Microsoft. The ousted OpenAI boss Sam Altman and other employees will work for the software giant in the future. You will lead a new research team, as Microsoft boss Satya Nadella announced. Microsoft is a large investor in OpenAI and, according to media reports, tried unsuccessfully to arrange Altman’s return to the top position at OpenAI over the weekend.
Now Microsoft will suddenly become a stronger player in the race to develop artificial intelligence. The group not only has continued access to OpenAI’s technology as a major investor – but now also has some of its inventors in-house.
Altman was ousted from the CEO position of the company he co-founded on Friday. According to media reports, a dispute over direction at OpenAI led to Altman’s departure. Some leading figures, such as technology chief Ilya Sutskever, were of the opinion that Altman wanted to bring the software with artificial intelligence to market too quickly and with an approach that was too commercial. They got the majority of the board of directors on their side.
Hours of negotiations
OpenAI’s backers, including Microsoft, failed in their attempt to bring Altman back. Instead, the board of directors even removed the interim boss Mira Murati, who was only appointed on Friday, from office and who is said to have sided with Altman in the meantime.
After hours of negotiations over the weekend, the employees were presented with another interim boss, as reported by the industry service “The Information” and the Bloomberg news agency, among others. It is therefore the co-founder and long-time boss of the gaming-focused streaming service Twitch, Emmett Shear.
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.