If anyone could imagine something human behind artificial intelligence, it was in the form of Sam Altman. He is the co-founder of global market leader OpenAI and the inventor of the chatbot ChatGPT. Its software “creates” human-generated content such as text or images. The photo of Pope Francis in a state-of-the-art white rapier jacket created by ChatGPT went around the world. 100 million Internet users now use the software.
Altman has been the public face of OpenAI and was in the spotlight at the company’s first developer conference just a few days ago. The exact reasons behind his removal were not initially known.
Meanwhile, company officials have come forward: “Altmann was not always honest in his communications with the supervisory board and thus prevented him from fulfilling his duties,” it said in a statement Friday evening.
This hindered the supervisory board’s ability to assume responsibility. All this came to light after a review by the company management. Technology chief Meira Murati will take over the top post temporarily with immediate effect, while a permanent successor is to be arranged, the statement said.
Altman studied computer science at the elite Stanford University, but dropped out and founded the app Loopt, which allowed users to share their location with friends and relatives.
He later joined start-up incubator Y Combinator, which helped launch successful companies such as housing broker Airbnb and delivery service DoorDash. In 2014, Altman became head of Y Combinator. He stepped down after five years to focus more on OpenAI.
