Microsoft has hired former OpenAI chief Sam Altman to lead a "new advanced AI research team," while the ex-CEO of Twitch takes his former role.
ADVERTISEMENTThe majority 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.
It comes after Microsoft announced on Monday that it had hired Sam Altman and another co-founder of OpenAI to lead a new advanced AI research team after they unexpectedly departed the company on Friday in a corporate shakeup that shocked the artificial intelligence world.
By the end of Monday, 747 out of 770 OpenAI employees signed a letter threatening to quit and join Microsoft, according to the Financial Times citing people familiar with the matter.
Meanwhile, some AI companies are trying to poach talent from OpenAI, which is behind the large language model ChatGPT.
Marc Benioff, chief executive of software company Salesforce, asked OpenAI researchers to send him their CVs and offered to match their salaries in a post on social media.
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".
