We remain committed to our partnership with OpenAI and have confidence in our product roadmap, our ability to continue to innovate with everything we announced at Microsoft Ignite, and in continuing to support our customers and partners. We look forward to getting to know Emmett Shear and OAI’s new leadership team and working with them. And we’re extremely excited to share the news that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, together with colleagues, will be joining Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team. We look forward to moving quickly to provide them with the resources needed for their success.
News article covering the situation: https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/20/23968829/microsoft-hires-sam-altman-greg-brockman-employees-openai
Altman’s Microsoft hiring comes just hours after negotiations with OpenAI’s board failed to bring him back as OpenAI CEO. Instead, former Twitch CEO and co-founder Emmett Shear has been named as interim CEO.
Altman had been negotiating to return as OpenAI CEO, but OpenAI’s four-person board refused to step down and let him return.
Smart move by Microsoft. But I will be curious to see how long Sam and Greg last?
It is going to be completely different for them. They are not going to have anywhere near the autonomy they enjoyed at OpenAI.
But this entire episode is a bit mind blowing.
One thing I find interesting is that Alphabet had two AI competitors. Cruise and OpenAI.
Both companies look to have self destructed. Cruise CEO resigned over the weekend.
In both cases it looks like it was about safety. AI is so different from other technologies.
There is such a huge safety aspect. It could be we will see a lot of stuff like this. Where people with AI thought they could move fast and break things and found out they really could not that someone is watching and not going to let them.