Greg Brockman announced his resignation as president and co-founder of OpenAI on Saturday, hours after the company behind ChatGPT said it had dismissed CEO Sam Altman in a shock firing of a central figure in the Artificial Intelligence revolution.
“I’m super proud of what we’ve all built together since starting in my apartment 8 years ago,” Brockman wrote in a post on the social media site X. “We’ve been through tough & great times together, accomplishing so much despite all the reasons it should have been impossible. But based on today’s news, I quit.”
“Genuinely wishing you all nothing but the best,” Brockman wrote in his post. “I continue to believe in the mission of creating safe (artificial general intelligence) that benefits all of humanity.”
In one of the moves announced earlier, Brockman was due to step down from his role as board chairman but stay on at the company, reporting to the new CEO.
OpenAI said it has pushed out Sam Altman after a review found he was “not consistently candid in his communications” with the board of directors.
“The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI,” the artificial intelligence company said in a statement.
In the year since Altman catapulted ChatGPT to global fame, he has become Silicon Valley’s sought-after voice on the promise and potential dangers of artificial intelligence and his sudden and mostly unexplained exit brought uncertainty to the industry’s future.
OpenAI declined to answer questions on what Altman’s alleged lack of candour was about. The statement said his behaviour was hindering the board’s ability to exercise its responsibilities.
Altman posted Friday on X: “i loved my time at openai. it was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. most of all i loved working with such talented people. will have more to say about what’s next later.”
Altman helped start OpenAI as a non-profit research laboratory in 2015. But it was ChatGPT’s explosion into the public consciousness that thrust Altman into the spotlight as a face of generative AI — technology that can produce novel imagery, passages of text and other media. On a world tour this year, he was mobbed by a crowd of adoring fans at an event in London.
He’s sat with multiple heads of state to discuss AI’s potential and perils. Just Thursday, he took part in a CEO summit at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference in San Francisco, where OpenAI is based.
He predicted AI will prove to be “the greatest leap forward of any of the big technological revolutions we’ve had so far.” He also acknowledged the need for guardrails, calling attention to the existential dangers future AI could pose.
OpenAI’s key business partner, Microsoft, which has invested billions of dollars into the startup and helped provide the computing power to run its AI systems, said that the transition won’t affect its relationship.
“We have a long-term partnership with OpenAI and Microsoft remains committed to Mira and their team as we bring this next era of AI to our customers,” said an emailed Microsoft statement.
While not trained as an AI engineer, Altman, now 38, has been seen as a Silicon Valley wunderkind since his early 20s. He was recruited in 2014 to take lead of the startup incubator YCombinator.
Mira Murati, the interim CEO OpenAI
Chief technology officer Mira Murati will serve as OpenAI’s interim chief executive officer.
“Mr. Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities,” the company said in a statement. “The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.”
(With inputs from Bloomberg, AP)
