Satya Nadella and Emmett Shear are emerging as two key players in steering OpenAI out of chaos.Even so, both still seem to not know why Sam Altman was really fired.Nadella said he’s “not been told about anything,” while Shear is reportedly struggling to find answers.
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Sam Altman is out, Emmett Shear is in, all of OpenAI is in revolt, the tech world is up in arms, and the man who executed the board’s ousting of Altman has now turned against them.
The fate of OpenAI, arguably the most famous artificial intelligence company of late, is now exceedingly unclear.
At the heart of the storm, Shear, the firm’s new interim CEO, and Microsoft, OpenAI’s biggest investor led by Satya Nadella, are emerging as the key designers for the path out of this crisis.
And both are indicating they still don’t know what led to Altman’s firing on Friday — the shock move that triggered this chain of events.
Nadella said this on Monday in no uncertain terms.
“I’ve not been told about anything,” he told Bloomberg. “The board has not talked about anything that Sam did other than some breakdown in communications.”
That’s despite the Microsoft CEO being actively involved in negotiations with OpenAI over its next steps, including offering new roles to Altman and Greg Brockman, the firm’s president who quit on Saturday.
And it’s also despite the fact that Microsoft is OpenAI’s largest investor by far, holding 49% of the company.
Nadella made it clear to Bloomberg that his camp was caught off guard by Altman’s ousting.
“Surprises are bad, and we just want to make sure things are done in a way that will allow us to partner well,” he said.
Over at OpenAI, a newly appointed Shear appears left out of the loop as well, according to The Verge.
Shear tweeted on Sunday evening that he’d checked for the reason behind Altman’s firing, and seemed to indicate he’d gotten somewhat of an answer, which he didn’t reveal.
But since taking over, he’s been unable to obtain written documentation of the board’s full explanation for ousting Altman, the outlet reported, citing anonymous sources familiar with the situation.
One of Shear’s first moves as interim CEO was to announce he’s hiring an independent investigator to “dig into the entire process leading up to this point and generate a full report.”
He told OpenAI employees the same thing on Sunday evening, The Verge reported.
The AI company held an all-hands meeting that evening with Shear at its San Francisco headquarters, which most employees refused to attend, Business Insider’s Kali Hays reported.
The workers who did show up were told Altman was booted because he’d been accused of giving two staffers the same project. Another explanation given was that Altman allegedly gave two board members different opinions about one person at the company.
Employees didn’t buy it, Hays reported, citing one person familiar with the matter.
Meanwhile, Altman himself has been mum about why the board kicked him from the company he cofounded.
One of the leading theories on social media is that Altman clashed with the board over commercialization versus slowing down AI development due to safety concerns.
Major outlets such as The Atlantic and The Washington Post have cited people close to the controversy who said such a debate was recently tearing leadership apart.
And according to The Information, which first reported on Altman’s firing, the OpenAI board had approached competitor Anthropic about a potential merger, though it’s not clear how directly related this was to the firing debacle.
However the OpenAI drama ends, Altman has promised he’ll continue to work with the company “some way or other.”
His potential new posting at Microsoft, where he’s to lead an AI research team, would see him still being involved in some way with his old firm, he tweeted on Monday.
He and Nadella would make sure operations at OpenAI continue, he said, as customers say they’re getting skittish and looking to jump ship.
“The OpenAI/Microsoft partnership makes this very doable,” Altman said.
Press teams for Microsoft and OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment from BI sent outside regular business hours.
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