The board of directors has terminated Sam Altman, the Silicon Valley CEO responsible for the development of AI-driven chatbots ChatGPT and GPT-4, citing a loss of confidence in his leadership. The announcement of Altman's dismissal has sent significant ripples through the emerging AI industry. The board revealed that an internal investigation uncovered instances where Altman was not consistently truthful.
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OpenAI has declared that Mira Murati, the current Chief Technology Officer, will step in as the interim CEO until a permanent successor is selected.
Introduced last year, ChatGPT quickly propelled Sam Altman to quasi-celebrity status, becoming the face of a new wave of AI tools capable of generating images and texts based on simple user prompts, known as generative AI. This technology has found application in Microsoft's search engine and other tools, while Google introduced its own competitor, "Bard," and various generative AI tools have emerged in recent months. Shortly after its launch, ChatGPT became a widely recognized name, almost synonymous with AI itself. CEOs utilized it for drafting emails, individuals constructed websites without coding experience, and it even excelled in exams from law and business schools.
Despite being a longstanding advocate for AI, Altman has also emerged as one of its significant critics. During congressional testimony earlier this year, he characterized the current surge in AI development as a pivotal moment.