The founder of the company behind ChatGPT and Dall-E no longer has the confidence of the board of directors.
The short version
- Sam Altman, founder of OpenAI, known for ChatGPT and Dall-E, has been fired after losing the trust of the board.
- Altman founded OpenAI in 2015, along with Tesla founder Elon Musk. The company’s headquarters is located in San Francisco, USA.
- Chief Technology Officer Mira Moratti is taking over as interim CEO of OpenAI while the company searches for a permanent replacement.
- Although Altman has not publicly commented on his departure, he recently mentioned capacity issues following Twitter’s new AI services, and that they had to turn off new paying users for ChatGPT due to higher than expected usage.
The summary was prepared by the AI tool ChatGPT and quality assured by E24 journalists
The issue is updated.
Altman’s resignation comes after a comprehensive evaluation in which the Board concluded that he was not always honest in his communications with the Board, which hindered the Board’s work. He writes OpenAI in a press release Friday evening.
OpenAI is best known for its chatbot ChatGPT and image generator Dall-E. Earlier in November, the company said that ChatGPT has 100 million users every week.
– The Board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue to lead OpenAI, this is written further.
CTO Mira Moratti is taking over as interim president of the tech company while they search for a new president.
We believe new leadership is necessary as we move forward. As head of the company’s research, product development and security functions, Mira is exceptionally qualified to take on this position, the company wrote in the press release.
It started with Elon Musk
Sam Altman founded OpenAI in 2015, along with Tesla founder Elon Musk, among others. The company’s headquarters is located in San Francisco, USA.
Altman studied information technology at Stanford University for a year before dropping out. When he was 19, he founded location-sharing app Loopt, and later went on to lead accelerator Y Combinator. He also worked there during the development of OpenAI, which he began to fully focus on when he took over as president in 2020.
OpenAI was created in part because the founders feared the potentially disastrous consequences of negligent or poor use of AI technology. Elon Musk later became one of several technologists who signed a letter calling for a temporary halt in the development of all AI technologies stronger than GTP-4, OpenAI’s latest language model.
Elon Musk left the company in 2018, citing a potential conflict of interest with his job at Tesla.
Potential value in billions
According to Bloomberg, OpenAI’s potential value is $86 billion. In August, they estimated the company’s revenue at about $1 billion annually. But the company is not listed on the stock exchange.
OpenAI has worked closely with Microsoft and provides, among other things, AI services through the Microsoft Azure cloud and the IT development system Github. Microsoft shares immediately fell in value by just over 1 percent after the OpenAI announcement.
Altman has not yet commented on his departure from the company.
Last week, Altman reported capacity issues after launching new AI services. On
Altman also reported that the service may stop working periodically due to the number of users.
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