The boss of OpenAI, Sam Altman, a very media figure and face of artificial intelligence, has been fired, the company’s board of directors said Friday afternoon.
Mira Murati, chief technology officer, has been named interim CEO, the company said.
“Mr. Altman’s departure follows an extensive review by the Board of Directors, which concluded that he was not always candid in his communications with the Board, hindering his ability to carry out his responsibilities, the company said. The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue to lead OpenAI. »
The fall is brutal for Mr. Altman, 38, who over the past year has become one of the most eminent bosses in the technology sector and one of its most fascinating characters.
A tech veteran, Mr. Altman helped create OpenAI with financial support from Elon Musk in 2015.
He made the small San Francisco company a technology leader financed with billions by Microsoft and envied by Silicon Valley giants like Google and Meta, Facebook’s parent company.
He has also been the voice of the technology industry in its transition to AI, testifying before Congress and charming elected officials and regulators around the world.
The OpenAI board did not specify the reasons for its decision.
I loved my time at OpenAI, a period of transformation, for me and – I hope – for the world too, a little bit. Above all, I loved working with such talented people. I will say more soon about what happens next.
Sam Altman, in a message on
On Thursday evening, Mr. Altman participated in an event in Oakland, California, where he spoke about the future of art and artists in the face of artificial intelligence, which can now generate images, videos, sounds and other art forms. Making no mention of his departure, he repeated several times that he and OpenAI would continue to work with artists in order to ensure their future.
In late 2022, OpenAI sparked an AI rush across the tech sector by bringing ChatGPT online. This chatbot has amazed hundreds of millions of users with its ability to answer questions, write poems and discuss almost any topic.
PHOTO JIM WILSON, THE NEW YORK TIMES ARCHIVES
Mira Murati, named Interim CEO of OpenAI yesterday, with, from left, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever, who are among the company’s founders. Mr. Brockman steps down as Chairman of the Board of Directors, but remains Chairman of the Company, reporting to the CEO.
After the launch of ChatGPT, the entire tech sector adopted “generative artificial intelligence”, a technology that can generate text, images and other media itself. The result of a decade of research at OpenAI and Google, among others, this technology is revolutionizing the virtual world, from email to search engines to digital tutors.
OpenAI is currently negotiating a financing round that would value it at more than 80 billion, almost triple its valuation less than a year ago.
This article was first published in The New York Times.