Microsoft hires OpenAI's Sam Altman after being fired as CEO last week

[Windows Central]

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has announced that the company is hiring Sam Altman, previously CEO at OpenAI to lead a new AI research team alongside Greg Brookman, co-founder of OpenAI.

Microsoft hires OpenAI's Sam Altman after being fired as CEO last week : Read more

 

[fjtorres5591]

Not good...
...for OpenAI...
GPT is about to be forked.

They should have remembered the story of now-obscure SPYGLASS.

With Altman and Brockman and "colleagues" (read: OpenAI staff) moving to Microsoft, we're now looking at MS E3 2.0: embrace, extend, exterminate. The board ousted Altman for moving too fast and embracing the enterprise market with custom GPT models? Well, he was either driving or responding Microsoft's Enterprise CoPilot initiative.

MS still owns 49% of the revenue generating side of OpenAI and priority access to their IP. The board may want to move slower but MS doesn't so odds are GPT 5 will come from MS Advanced AI first just as Internet Explorer was the first HTML 5.0 browser. That will not be good for OpenAI subscriptions. It wasn't good for Netscape or Mosaic.

It will, however, be good for MS stock as they are now in full control of the IP of CoPilot's future. And GPT 6 may very well be "MSGPT".

 

[naddy69]

"Mr. Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that 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."

IOW, this guy is a liar and MS scooped him up.

So this is Good News? . What could possibly go wrong?

 

[fjtorres5591]

"Mr. Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that 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."

IOW, this guy is a liar and MS scooped him up.

So this is Good News? . What could possibly go wrong?

That is one interpretation.
There are others.
The Atlantic has a piece detailing the internal fight at OpenAI between the "doomsters" and the AI techies. Two "tribes" arguing about how fast to commercialize their software. The dysfunction started with the board that lost several outsider members earlier, leaving the "doomsters" in control.
Another interpretation is that the board doesn't understand the "rules" of silivalley, and want take in investor money but not deliver what the investors are paying for.
The truth is somewhere in between: OpenAI started as a blue sky, non-profit research operation but when they realize how expensive AI research is, they created a funky "capped profit" subsidiary to take in investor money. MS is the biggest but far from the only one.
The tension between the blue sky go slow "doomsters" and the startup on the way to an IPO broke the entire operation.

Note that the guy who orchestrated Altman's exit in the first place is among the 700+ employees threatening to quit.

So no, the situation is not good.
Not for Altman, not for MS, not for the staff, not for the investors.
The board? TBD. They seem to prefer to see their startup dissolve than give up control.

In the middle of it, Nadela moved (fast!) to secure the access to future (2025+) GPT tech, either from OpenAI or internally. He's since made it clear he doesn't care which.

Just bear in mind that GPT isn't the only source of generative software for MS products. MS also has access to META's LLAMA and their own inhouse efforts. The mess is limited to OpenAI and MS's exposure is minimal. But annoying, no doubt. Nadela would rather spend his time dealing with other things than a soap opera from what were supposed to be professionals.

Barring some new disclosure about Altman, the board is looking to be the heavies of the mess.