Sam Altman fired by ChatGPT creator OpenAI, says board "lost confidence" in him

Washington: The company that developed ChatGPT a year ago, OpenAI, announced on Friday that it had fired CEO Sam Altman because it no longer trusted him to lead the Microsoft-backed company.

With the launch of ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot with previously unheard-of powers that can produce human-level content like poetry or artwork in a matter of seconds, Altman, 38, shot to fame in the tech industry.

OpenAI's board said in a statement that Altman's departure "follows a deliberative review process," which concluded "he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities."

"The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI," it added, AFP reported.

Altman's choice to release the app last year paid off beyond his wildest expectations, propelling the Missouri native and Stanford dropout to widespread celebrity.

With the introduction of ChatGPT, the tech behemoths Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta were among the competitors in the AI race.

Microsoft has made billion-dollar investments in OpenAI and integrated the technology of the firm into several of its products, such as the search engine Bing.

Altman has discussed AI with heads of state and testified before the US Congress as demand to regulate the technology increases due to concerns about potential applications of AI in bioweapons, misinformation, and other threats.

The statement said the board was "grateful for Sam's many contributions to the founding and growth of OpenAI. At the same time, we believe new leadership is necessary as we move forward."

The company's chief technology officer, Mira Murati, will take Altman's job in the interim, according to the statement.

Ilya Sutskever, chief scientist at OpenAI, Adam D'Angelo, CEO of Quora, Tasha McCauley, a technology entrepreneur, and Helen Toner, of the Georgetown Centre for Security and Emerging Technology, make up the board of directors.

Earlier this month, Altman presided over a significant OpenAI developer conference and unveiled a new line of products that were well received in Silicon Valley.

The young CEO said on Thursday that he recognised that people's concerns about artificial intelligence (AI) and its disruptive potential were real.

"(I have) lots of empathy for why anyone would feel, however they feel, about this," he said about the platform that is credited with launching the revolution in generative artificial intelligence (AI).

Speaking outside the yearly Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in San Francisco, Altman was besieged by admirers who wanted to snap photographs with him after his appearance.