The chaos at OpenAI has escalated even further as the majority of the company’s employees have expressed their intention to resign if the board does not step down and reinstate former CEO Sam Altman and former president Greg Brockman, NewsAblive reported. According to reports from Wired and Kara Swisher, about 500 employees, including several CEOs, at OpenAI have signed the letter.
According to Bloomberg’s latest data, more than 700 employees are prepared to leave if the fired Sam Altman and Greg Brockman are not returned to their positions at the company.
CTO Mira Murati, who briefly took over the leadership role over the weekend, stressed at X that “OpenAI is nothing without its people.”
Altman and Brockman are said to have been involved in key discussions with the OpenAI board over the weekend in a bid to win back their positions. However, those talks did not result in a favorable outcome for the former CEO and chairman. Late on Sunday evening, it was revealed that the board had chosen to appoint former Twitch CEO Emmett Shearer as interim CEO of OpenAI, developer of the viral artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT.
Shear, the co-founder of Twitch, served as the company’s CEO until March of this year. In a surprising move, he resigned just before a significant round of layoffs, and Twitch experienced another round of layoffs last month.
Concurrently, the unexpected leadership shift at OpenAI has raised eyebrows, given Altman’s prominent role as the face of generative AI and his pivotal contribution to transitioning the AI firm from a non-profit organization to a commercially viable entity.
It’s worth noting that Altman’s departure from the company was reportedly due to a perceived lack of transparency in his communications, as reported by the media. Allegedly, he clashed with board members who expressed concerns about the pace of his initiatives, particularly regarding the safety implications of a technology that, if unregulated, could produce content with potential harm to the public. Shear’s appointment at OpenAI follows Altman’s dismissal on Friday, with the board citing a lack of “consistent candor in his communications.”
Will Sam Altman be brought back or will OpenAI remain uncompromising in its decision? Keep an eye out for details.