ChatGPT-maker OpenAI fires CEO for lack of candor
ChatGPT-maker Open AI said Friday it has pushed out its co-founder and CEO Sam Altman after a review found he was “not consistently candid in his communications” with the board of directors.
“The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI,” the artificial intelligence company said in a statement.
In the year since Altman catapulted ChatGPT to global fame, he has become Silicon Valley's most sought-after voice on the promise and potential dangers of artificial intelligence and his sudden and mostly unexplained exit brought uncertainty to the industry's future.
Mira Murati, OpenAI's chief technology officer, will take over as interim CEO effective immediately, the company said, while it searches for a permanent replacement.
The announcement also said another OpenAI cofounder and top executive, Greg Brockman, the board's chairman, would be stepping down from that role but remain at the company, where he serves as president. But later on X, Brockman wrote, “based on today's news, i quit.”
An OpenAI spokesperson declined to answer questions on what Altman's alleged lack of candor was about. The statement said his behavior was hindering
the board's ability to exercise its responsibilities.
Altman posted Friday on X, formerly Twitter: “i loved my time at openai. it was
transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. most of all i loved working with such talented people. will have more to say about what's next later.”
The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement that allows OpenAI access to part of AP's text archives.
Altman helped start OpenAI as a nonprofit research laboratory in 2015.
ChatGPT's explosion into public consciousness thrust Altman into the spotlight as a face of generative AI — technology that can produce novel imagery, passages of text and other media.
He's sat with multiple heads of state to discuss AI's potential and perils. Just Thursday, he took part in a CEO summit at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference in
San Francisco, where OpenAI is based.
He predicted AI will prove to be “the greatest leap forward of any of the big technological revolutions we've had so far.” But he also acknowledged the need for guardrails, calling attention to the existential dangers future AI could pose.
Some computer scientists have criticized that focus on far-off risks as distracting from the real-world limitations and harms of current AI products. Earlier this year, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission launched an investigation into whether OpenAI violated consumer protection laws by scraping public data and publishing false information through its chatbot.