Sam Altman won’t return to OpenAI despite company’s overtures, report says

Despite efforts by executives to bring him back, Sam Altman, the fired CEO of ChatGPT creator OpenAI, has reportedly refused to rejoin the business, according to tech news website The Information.

After a weekend of discussions with the board of directors, business executives, and investors, Ilya Sutskever, co-founder and board director of OpenAI, informed staff on Sunday night that Altman would not be returning.

The Information announced that Twitch’s co-founder Emmett Shear will assume interim CEO duties.

Al Jazeera asked for comment, but OpenAI didn’t respond right away.

With the introduction of ChatGPT and GPT-4, Altman rose to prominence as the public face of artificial intelligence. However, the company’s board found him to be “not consistently candid in his communications” and abruptly fired him on Friday.

Greg Brockman, the president and co-founder of OpenAI, resigned as a result of the announcement of Altman’s departure, which caused shockwaves in the tech industry.

Following the news, The Information reported that three senior researchers had also submitted their resignations.

In posts on X, Altman described his firing as a “weird experience,” “sort of like reading your own eulogy while you’re still alive,” and “if I start off, the OpenAI board should pursue me for the full value of my shares.”

Altman could be fired at any time, unlike other tech founders like Mark Zuckerberg, according to a report from the news website Semafor earlier this year.

Altman declared that it would be “the first and last time I ever wear one of these” when he posted a picture of himself sporting an OpenAI guest badge on X on Sunday.

Since ChatGPT’s release last year, Altman, who contributed to the founding of OpenAI in 2015, has been one of the most sought-after experts on the advantages and disadvantages of AI, giving speeches at business summits and testimony before the US Congress.