500 staff threaten to quit as AI firm implodes

Now one of the board members who kicked out Open AI co-founder Sam Altman has said he regrets the decision while hundreds of staff are threatening to follow the former boss out the door.

There are fears the drama engulfing the ChatGPT artificial intelligence firm could disrupt a planned $122 billion float.

On Friday, the OpenAI board shocked the industry by removing co-founder Mr Altman and appointing chief technology officer Mira Murati as the interim CEO.

Over the weekend, OpenAI rejected pressure from Microsoft and other major investors to reverse its stunning decision.

In a memo sent to employees on Sunday night, it said the sacking was “the only path to advance and defend the mission of OpenAI,” The New York Times reported.

“Put simply, Sam’s behaviour and lack of transparency in his interactions with the board undermined the board’s ability to effectively supervise the company in the manner it was mandated to do”.

There have also been suggestions the board was concerned Mr Altman was underestimating the dangers of its tech.

But Microsoft doesn’t share those concerns and has announced Mr Altman has now been appointed to run a new AI subsidiary.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that Mr Altman “will be joining Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team,” along with OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman and other colleagues.

“We are going to build something new and it will be incredible. The mission continues,” Mr Brockman said, tagging former director of research Jakub Pachocki, AI risk evaluation head Aleksander Madry, and longtime researcher Szymon Sidor.

OpenAI staff threaten to quit

On Monday, hundreds of staff at OpenAI threatened to quit the leading artificial intelligence company and join Mr Altman at Microsoft.

Reports said as many as 500 of OpenAI’s 770 employees signed the letter.

In a letter, some of OpenAI’s most senior staff members threatened to leave the company if the board did not get replaced.

“Your actions have made it obvious that you are incapable of overseeing OpenAI,” said the letter, which was first released to magazine Wired.

“Microsoft has assured us that there are positions for all OpenAI employees at this new subsidiary should we choose to join,” the letter added.

Included in the list of names of signers was Ilya Sutskever, the company’s chief scientist and one of the members of the four-person board that voted to oust Mr Altman.

“Now I deeply regret my participation in the board’s actions. I never intended to harm OpenAI.

“I love everything we’ve built together and I will do everything I can to reunite the company”, he posted on X.

Second interim CEO appointed

The signatures included top executive Mira Murati, who was appointed to replace Mr Altman as CEO when he was removed on Friday, but was herself demoted over the weekend.

OpenAI has now appointed Emmett Shear, a former chief executive of Amazon’s streaming platform Twitch, as its new CEO despite pressure from Microsoft and other major investors to reinstate Mr Altman.

Mr Shear confirmed his appointment as OpenAI’s interim CEO in a post on X on Monday, while also denying reports that Mr Altman had been fired over safety concerns regarding the use of AI technology.

“Today I got a call inviting me to consider a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: to become the interim CEO of OpenAI. After consulting with my family and reflecting on it for just a few hours, I accepted,” he wrote.

“Before I took the job, I checked on the reasoning behind the change. The board did not remove Sam over any specific disagreement on safety, their reasoning was completely different from that.

“It’s clear that the process and communications around Sam’s removal has been handled very badly, which has seriously damaged our trust,” Mr Shear added.

Mr Altman shot to fame with the launch of ChatGPT last year, which ignited a race to advance AI research and development, as well as billions being invested in the sector.

His sacking triggered several other high-profile departures from the company, as well as a reported push by investors to bring him back.

Global tech titan Microsoft has invested more than $15 billion in OpenAI and has rolled out the AI pioneer’s tech in its own products.

Microsoft’s Mr Nadella added in his post that “we look forward to getting to know Emmett Shear and OAI’s new leadership team and working with them.”

“We remain committed to our partnership with OpenAI and have confidence in our product road map,” he said.

OpenAI is in fierce competition with others including Google and Meta, as well as start-ups like Anthropic and Stability AI, to develop its own AI models.

Generative AI platforms such as ChatGPT are trained on vast amounts of data to enable them to answer questions, even complex ones, in human-like language.

They are also used to generate and manipulate imagery.

But the tech has triggered warnings about the dangers of its misuse — from blackmailing people with “deepfake” images to the manipulation of images and harmful disinformation.”