Artificial intelligence can leave 10 to 15 million people out of work in the next ten years in the United States alone. But, for the moment, who has been left on the street is San Altman, co-founder and head of Open AI, the company that has the product that symbolizes this new technology: ChatGPT.
Altman’s departure has been very unfuturistic. His dismissal was decided by the board of directors of OpenAI, which has a complicated corporate structure, with one division that is a non-profit foundation and another that is a normal company. OpenAI’s decision has been totally unexpected, and its forms and substance are more typical of a summary professional execution than a dismissal in which the dismissed person is given at least an honorable escape route.
OpenAI has not offered Altman, who is 38 years old, the possibility of being an advisor to the company, a member of its board of directors, or maintaining any connection with it. The statement of the decision explains that the dismissed executive “has not been sincere on a continuous basis” – a thinly disguised way of saying “he has lied repeatedly” – to the board of directors, which “has lost confidence” in his ability to lead the company. company. The executives of the technology giant Microsoft, which controls 49% of OpenAI, learned of the dismissal only a few minutes before it occurred. Microsoft issued a statement on Friday declaring that it will maintain its strategic collaboration with OpenAI.
Altman is a special character, who had been facing the board of directors and one of those responsible for the technological area for months, the also co-founder of OpenAI Ilya Sutskever. Throughout his career, the dismissed manager has demonstrated, according to American media, an ability to eliminate his rivals that is exceptional even by Silicon Valley standards. As Paul Graham, the founder of business incubator Y Combinator, said, “You could drop St. Altman on an island full of cannibals and within five years he would become their king.” Graham knows what he’s talking about, since Altman kicked him out of Y Combinator. The former CEO of OpenAI has an epic phrase in this regard: “Most of the time they can bend everyone’s will.” This time, he hasn’t made it.
His departure opens a period of uncertainty in the company that made AI a technology that everyone talks about, to the point that the news caused a 1.7% drop in Microsoft shares, which is the second most valuable company in the world. For now there is no firm successor. The board has appointed Mira Murati, born in Albania and of American nationality, to her position, on an interim basis, who is the company’s chief technology officer. She at her first meeting with the firm’s workers. Muraria said she didn’t know why Altman had been fired.