OpenAI and Microsoft Had A Chaotic Weekend That Might Impact The Future Of AI Industry
By This weekend was quite chaotic for AI industry and technology experts are weighing on the effects of this major changes in the AI sector and its major players. OpenAI creator of ChatGPT that launched its artificial intelligence in the market last year announced it fired its co-founder and CEO, Sam Altman.
OpenAI announced it would make Mira Murati, the interim CEO of OpenAI who was previously the technology chief in the company. But after the announcement within the weekend Emmett Shear was made the interim CEO of OpenAI temporarily. Emmett Shear was the former CEO of Twitch.
One of the members of OpenAI board, Ilya Sutskever, who played a role in firing Sam Altman said he “deeply” regretted being part of the board’s decision. He said, “never intended to harm OpenAI” and he would work towards reuniting the company on his social media post on 20th November.
Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella then announced Sam Altman being hired to oversee their “new advanced AI research team” along with co-founder Greg Brockman and more former employees of Open AI.
“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,” said Microsoft’s CEO and Chairman.
On X, formerly known as Twitter, Nadella wrote he would also continue working with OpenAI and towards their vision of AI.
According to Richard Windsor, the founder of Radio Free Mobile which is a digital research company, the move of Sam Altman was “damage control” for Microsoft as it invested close to 13 billion dollars into OpenAI.
Windsor made this comment on “Street Signs Europe” show, he further added, “A large amount of that value is tied up in the founders and in the engineers that are inside the company,” explaining the move of Sam Altman to Microsoft.
Rishi Jaluria, who is the RBC Capital Market’s managing director said, “The vision that Sam Altman has is kind of the vision Microsoft wants…having responsible AI but not handcuffing AI.” This includes commercializing AI.
Other tech experts support CEO Satya Nadella’s move to hire Sam Altman in Microsoft advanced AI research team. Dan Ives, tech analyst at Wedbush Securities wrote that board members at OpenAI “was at the kids poker table and thought they won until Nadella and Microsoft took this all over in a World Series of Poker move for the ages with the Valley and Wall Street watching with white knuckles Sunday night/Monday early am.”
He further added, “We view Microsoft now even in a STRONGER position from an AI perspective with Altman and Brockman at MSFT running AI.”
