Sacked boss of OpenAI Sam Altman looks set to return to his role after staff revolt as leaked memo says the company is ‘optimistic’ he could be brought back
- Sam Altman’s shocker last night seemed about to be reversed
It has been described as one of the biggest debacles in Silicon Valley history.
The shock from Sam Altman, the boss of artificial intelligence pioneer OpenAI, seemed about to be reversed last night.
In a leaked memo to staff, the company behind the AI chatbot ChatGPT said it was “optimistic” that Altman, 38, could be brought back, according to tech news site The Information.
One expert said there were fears that many company employees would have left to join him if he set up his own AI venture. And leading investors have also increased the pressure to make a U-turn.
San Francisco-based OpenAI, in which Microsoft has a major stake, has become one of the world’s most talked about companies since the launch of ChatGPT last November.
The shock fire from Sam Altman, boss of artificial intelligence pioneer OpenAI, seemed about to be reversed last night
In a leaked memo to staff, the company behind AI chatbot ChatGPT said it was “optimistic” that the 38-year-old Mr Altman could be brought back, according to tech news site The Information.
It became the world’s fastest growing software application, reaching 100 million users in two months.
ChatGPT is trained on mountains of data and can produce human-like text, from poems to software code.
Proponents say the technology underpinning it could be transformative for many industries, but others think it could pose enormous risks in the hands of unscrupulous operators.
In Mr. Altman, Open AI had a boss described as a “once in a generation CEO.” But the board fired him on Friday, claiming he was “not consistently candid in his communications.”
It was the biggest coup in the Silicon Valley boardroom since Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was ousted in 1985 – before returning in 1997. It appears Altman won’t have to wait that long – yesterday he was reportedly in talks about a return. could mean that the board has to stop.
Dan Ives, a top analyst at US broker Wedbush Securities, described it as a “train wreck situation”. Microsoft did not immediately comment.
- About 53 percent of young people in Britain have used an AI chatbot such as ChatGPT to help them with schoolwork, emails or a job in the past year, research shows. Yet 54 percent of the group surveyed, aged 8 to 25, said they were concerned about the impact of AI on jobs in the future, according to the Digital Youth Index report.