What’s next now that OpenAI fired its gay CEO Sam Altman?

(Update 11/22/23: Altman has been reinstated as OpenAI’s CEO and all but one member of the entire board that supported his ouster has been replaced. The article about his initial firing is below.)

Last Friday, the board of Open AI, the company behind the massively influential “artificial intelligence” ChatGPT chatbot, fired its out gay CEO Sam Altman and removed the company’s now-ex-president Greg Brockman as board chairman. The news surprised employees and shook the tech world, leaving the company’s future uncertain.

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The board said that a “deliberative review process by the board … concluded that [Altman] was not consistently candid in his communications with them, hindering [the board’s] ability to exercise its responsibilities” and convincing the board that it no longer had “confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.”

The board named former Twitch CEO and co-founder Emmett Shear as the new interim CEO, and Altman took a job at Microsoft as CEO of its new advanced AI research team.

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In response to Altman’s ouster, OpenAI president Greg Brockman and three senior OpenAI researchers resigned. By Monday, 650 of OpenAI’s 770 current employees had signed a letter threatening to quit and join Microsoft unless the board reinstate Altman and Brockman and the board members resign, themselves. Microsoft allegedly indicated that it would hire the OpenAI employees who quit.

Despite the board’s vague explanation, Altman’s ouster may have been the resulted from a company conflict. The board technically runs a nonprofit dedicated to AI safety, not a fast-growing for-profit business, Vox explains. As such, his public pushing of OpenAI’s technology (effectively increasing its user base and business deals) rubbed up against internal worries about responsibly handling product safety first, especially considering the potential for AI’s misuse, tech business journalist Kara Swisher reported.

Altman’s ouster and what happens next is such big news because of OpenAI’s massive cultural influence. It was co-founded in 2015 by Altman, gay conservative Peter Thiel, anti-trans billionaire Elon Musk, and tech entrepreneur Reid Hoffman.

When the company publicly released Chat GPT, DALL-E (a program that can generate artistic and photorealistic images), and its other programs in 2022, the products quickly gained worldwide buzz for their potential to revolutionize content creation of all sorts. It also worried many for its potential to replace humans in many creative fields while aiding in the proliferation of AI-generated misinformation worldwide.

Altman remains both wealthy, influential, and very well-connected. While Microsoft hasn’t revealed what its new AI research might create with Altman’s help, numerous companies are already using AI-driven technology. The tech has helped companies create digital personal assistants for automating writing and computer coding, handling customer service interactions, improving real-time search results, identifying and recruiting potential talent partners, and predicting what needs customers and employees might have to help streamline all sorts of business processes.

Whether OpenAI goes under from an employee exodus or remains an influential developer of AI-tech, Microsoft’s willingness to quickly snap up its former CEO shows just how competitive, lucrative, and consequential the fast-moving tech remains, especially as the government tries to figure out regulation and oversight to minimize its potential harms.