A day before Sam Altman was fired as chief of OpenAI recently, he had said at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit:
“Four times now in the history of OpenAI, the most recent time was just in the last couple weeks, I’ve gotten to be in the room, when we sort of push the veil of ignorance back and the frontier of discovery forward.”
Was this a hint of things to come on the tech front? Maybe. When he was asked to go a day later, the company’s board said that Altman had not been “consistently candid in his communications with the board.” It appointed Chief Tech Officer Mira Murati as the interim CEO.
And then came the next bombshell. Murati was part of the group – comprising a great majority of the company’s more than 750 employees that sought Altman’s return as also the resignation of the existing board members.
Though there was talk of Altman’s return to OpenAI, that didn’t immediately pan out immediately. Microsoft then announced his appointment as the head of its own AI team.
The OpenAI board then appointed Emmett Shears as CEO. Of course, not only did Altman return to OpenAI but its board was also rejigged.
Importantly, what does Shears’s appointment tell us about what might be in store? Why were top names such as Satya Nadella, Eric Schmidt and others backing him so stoutly? Why you should care about the drama at OpenAI and Sam Altman’s firing and return?
Script and presentation: K. Bharat Kumar
Production: Shibu Narayan
Videography: S. Shiva Raj
