Altman’s departure follows a review by the company’s board of directors.
Sam Altman will step down as CEO of OpenAI, the company announced Friday.
The departure follows a review process carried out by the company’s board of directors, said OpenAI, the creator of the popular chatbot ChatGPT.
“Mr. Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, which hindered his ability to exercise his responsibilities,” OpenAI said in a statement. . “The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.”
The company’s chief technology officer, Mira Murati, will take over as CEO on an interim basis, OpenAI said.
“I loved my time at Openai. It was transformative for me personally and, hopefully, a little for the world. Most of all, I loved working with such talented people,” Altman said in a statement on X, adding that he “will have more say about what follows later.”
Following Altman’s departure, OpenAI President and Co-Founder Greg Brockman Announced who resigned “based on today’s news.”
“I truly wish you all the best,” Brockman said in a message to the OpenAI team shared on X. “I continue to believe in the mission of creating secure AGI that benefits all of humanity.”
Founded as a nonprofit in 2015, OpenAI has risen to prominence since ChatGPT became publicly available a year ago. The chatbot now has more than 100 million weekly users, Altman announced earlier this month.
Meanwhile, the company has grown dramatically. In October, OpenAI was set to generate more than $1 billion in revenue over a one-year period through the sale of its artificial intelligence products, The Information reported.
In January, Microsoft announced that it was investing $10 billion in OpenAI. The move deepened a long-standing relationship between Microsoft and OpenAI, which began with a $1 billion investment four years ago. Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, offers users access to ChatGPT.
Speaking to ABC News’ Rebecca Jarvis in March, Altman said AI has the ability to profoundly improve people’s lives, but it also poses serious risks.
“We have to be careful here,” Altman said. “I think people should be glad that we’re a little scared about this.”
In May, Altman testified before Congress with a similarly sober message about artificial intelligence products, including the latest version of ChatGPT called GPT-4. He called on lawmakers to impose regulations on AI.
“GPT-4 is more likely to respond helpfully and sincerely, and reject harmful requests, than any other widely deployed model of similar capability,” Altman said.
“However, we believe that regulatory intervention by governments will be essential to mitigate the risks of increasingly powerful models,” he added, suggesting the adoption of licenses or security requirements necessary for the operation of AI models.
