Why Sam Altman, star of artificial intelligence, was let go from OpenAI

This is one of the most unexpected announcements in the history of Silicon Valley. In an attempt to reflect the feeling of surprise felt, certain “tech” connoisseurs summoned, Friday on the most emblematic of the sector. On Friday, November 17, OpenAI’s board of directors dismissed Sam Altman, its CEO and co-founder. Almost a year to the day after the successful launch of the ChatGPT conversational robot, which revived interest in artificial intelligence, the boss of the most prominent start-up in the sector was pushed out. This sidelining is the result of an internal coup which finds its reasons in differences over OpenAI’s strategy, geared, in the eyes of some of its colleagues, towards too rapid and reckless commercial development. The change of leadership also reflects the ambiguity of the OpenAI project, with its atypical structure, and the speech of Sam Altman, who already appears ready to bounce back.

One thing is certain: no prior external sign announced the OpenAI press release proclaiming “a leadership transition” in the name of the fact that “the board of directors no longer has confidence in Sam Altman’s ability to lead the structure.” Friday morning, the CEO was still sending professional emails, Bloomberg reports. The day before, he was one of the VIPs invited to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in San Francisco, and had participated in a meeting with Microsoft, the partner and major investor in OpenAI. According to several American media, the Seattle giant was also unaware of the upcoming change. The week before, Sam Altman was on stage presenting new features for OpenAI’s first developer day. And at the beginning of November, he rubbed shoulders with all the elite of the sector and an audience of men and women of states from 28 countries for the first summit on the risks of artificial intelligence, in the United Kingdom.

According to Greg Brockman, who was chairman of the board but announced his departure due to the departure of Sam Altman, the release was the result of an internal stunt. “Sam and I are shocked and saddened by what the council has done,” he wrote on during which his eviction was notified to him.

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