More than 500 OpenAI staff threaten to follow ex-CEO Sam Altman in Microsoft's new AI research team
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Hundreds of OpenAI employees, including top executives, have reportedly signed a letter demanding the board resign or they will quit and follow the company's former CEO Sam Altman in his new AI post at Microsoft, according to Reuters.
It comes after Microsoft announced Monday that it had hired Sam Altman and another co-founder of ChatGPT maker OpenAI after they unexpectedly departed the company days earlier in a corporate shakeup that shocked the artificial intelligence world.
Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella also tweeted that the major investor in OpenAI - behind the chatbot that kicked off the generative AI craze - looked "forward to getting to know" OpenAI's new chief executive, former Twitch leader Emmett Shear, and the rest of the management team.
Nadella wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, that Microsoft was "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".
Altman said "the mission continues," in reply to Nadella on X.
OpenAI said Friday that Altman was pushed out after a review found he was “not consistently candid in his communications” with the board of directors, which had lost confidence in his ability to lead OpenAI.
Altman catapulted ChatGPT to global fame while serving as company CEO and in the past year has become Silicon Valley’s sought-after voice on the promise and potential dangers of artificial intelligence.
OpenAI last week had announced co-founder Brockman would step down as board chairman but remain on as president. Brockman followed with a post on X reprinting a message he sent to OpenAI employees in which he wrote, "based on today’s news, I quit".
Meanwhile, the co-founder and CEO of Twitch Emmett Shear confirmed he will take Altman's old job at OpenAI.
Shear said on X he got a call from the company asking him to become interim CEO of the company and that he had accepted after "consulting with my family and reflecting on it for just a few hours".
