According to media reports, the ChatGPT developer company OpenAI will not see the return of the ousted co-founder and boss Sam Altman. After hours of negotiations over the weekend, the employees were instead 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.
According to media reports, OpenAI’s backers such as Microsoft had previously pushed for Altman, who was sacked on Friday, to be reinstated as boss. But the board of directors that made this decision stood firm. He 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.
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.
Microsoft as a major investor
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 a major 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.
