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Sam Altman was fired from his position as chief executive of OpenAI and then four days later was reinstated.
A massive 600 OpenAI employees rallied behind Altman, the darling of Silicon Valley, signing an open letter threatening to leave unless he was given his position back.
Adding to the drama, Microsoft swooped in, announcing Altman would now be at the helm of their AI team.
OpenAI is now the hottest company in tech today, having released the ChatGPT chatbot and DALL-E image generator.
But why did Altman’s leadership spark such a reaction? What led to his departure from OpenAI, and how does Microsoft envision his role in shaping their AI endeavors?
In this episode of The Briefing Tom Tilley speaks with AI scientist Toby Walsh about who Altman is and what this latest saga tells us about what’s going on at the top of the tech world.
Walsh said there was little transparency into the reasons Altman was fired, and believed it even came as a surprise to the leader.
“It came out of the blue, there’s the shock announcement that surprised everyone,” Walsh said.
“It surprised the rest of the world and got us all talking and thinking as to why it would be because his profile has been soaring. He is the guy who took a world tour where he met presidents and prime ministers around the world, including our prime minister here in Australia.
“He has been very much become the face of this AI revolution that’s been happening over the last six months, but what was clear as, as the events unfolded is that he is not only very charismatic, but also people really have indeed a huge amount of loyalty.”
To find out more about OpenAI, its business, and Microsoft’s interest in Altman, listen to today’s episode of The Briefing.
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