The boardroom politics that forced OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman out of the company may have seen to his return, reports say.
He was sacked by the board of OpenAI, the company behind the pivotal ChatGPT bot, on Friday.
The board cited a failure to be “candid in his communications” as its reason for firing Altman as CEO.
“The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI,” a statement confirming his ouster said.
The company’s Chief Technology Officer, Mira Murati, was announced as interim CEO until a substantive replacement could be engaged.
Altman’s departure was followed by the resignations of OpenAI’s president, Greg Brockman, and three senior researchers: Jakub Pachocki, Aleksander Mądry and Szymon Sidor.
On Saturday, reports emerged that Altman, 38, was seriously considering launching a new artificial intelligence (AI) venture.
However, OpenAI’s investors – including biggest backer Microsoft – began pushing for his reinstatement, Reuters reported.
A Saturday report by tech news website the Information quoted a memo from OpenAI’s Chief Strategy Officer, Jason Kwon, as saying that the company was optimistic it could bring back the sacked CEO.
“We are still working towards a resolution and we remain optimistic. By resolution, we mean bringing back Sam, Greg, Jakub, Szymon, Aleksander and other colleagues (sorry if I missed you!) and remaining the place where people who want to work on AGI [artificial general intelligence] research, safety, products and policy can do their best work,” Kwon was quoted as saying.
Unconfirmed reports on Sunday say Altman has returned to OpenAI, although The Herald could not immediately confirm this development.
Altman, a Missouri-born Stanford dropout, hit tech stardom when OpenAI launched ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot with mindblowing capabilities, in 2022.