Ultraman, the "father of ChatGPT", was suddenly ousted: several things have been shown since the developer conference

Author: Ji Zhenyu, Source: Tencent News

At noon on November 17, US time, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI and known as the "father of ChatGPT", was suddenly removed by the board of directors.

OpenAI's official statement released on the same day said that the board of directors launched a special investigation and concluded that Altman was not completely honest in the communication process with the board, so the board lost confidence in his continued leadership of the company, and decided to replace Altman with the company's chief technology officer, Mira Muratti, to serve as the company's interim CEO until the next permanent CEO is found.

The statement also said that the company's former chairman, Greg Brockman, will also step down as chairman but remain with the company, reporting to interim CEO Mira Murati. But shortly thereafter, it was revealed that Brockman had also resigned.

The news undoubtedly shocked everyone, and just two weeks ago, at the first developer conference in OpenAI's history, Altman, as the company's CEO and de facto spokesperson, announced a series of high-profile product updates and major advancements. Through the technical prowess and judgment of future trends demonstrated at this developer conference, OpenAI has once again established itself as a leader and core in this round of generative AI boom around large language models.

At present, Ultraman himself has only made a brief response and has not elaborated on the reason for his departure, but said that there is still something to say in the future, leaving a lot of suspense.

In fact, since the developer conference was held, until the past few days, OpenAI has experienced a series of events, large and small, which also reflects that there may have been problems within the company, and these problems are gradually expanding and becoming public, and Ultraman's departure has become the final foothold of this series of events.

During his tenure as CEO of OpenAI, Altman was the de facto face of the company, and many people directly equated him with OpenAI or GPT, and his unexpected departure will undoubtedly have a significant impact on OpenAI and the AI industry as a whole. After the news, OpenAI will hold an all-staff meeting on the same day to stabilize the morale of the military, OpenAI's largest partner Microsoft immediately said that it will continue the partnership, but its role in the process and the role it will play in the future remains to be seen, and other companies are watching the fire from the other side. This incident may become a turning point for the AI industry to redivide its power pattern and reposition its development direction in the future.

Sudden Evictions: No Less Than the Tech Industry's "911"

At noon on November 17, U.S. time, OpenAI officially issued a statement, saying that the company's CEO Sam Altman will no longer serve as CEO, and the CTO will serve as the interim CEO until the next successor is found. At the same time, the company's former chairman, Greg Brockman, will step down from this position, but will remain with the company and report to the new CEO.

According to OpenAI's official statement, Altman did not leave voluntarily, but because the board of directors launched an investigation that concluded that Altman was not completely honest in the process of communicating with the board of directors, which shook the board's confidence in his continued leadership of the company.

Shortly after the news was released, Ultraman himself also made a brief response through his personal Twitter account, saying that he loved the time he worked at OpenAI, which was a turning point for him personally, and he hoped that this time would also have a turning point for the world, and most importantly, he loved working with a group of talented people. At the end of the statement, Altman stated that "I will have more to say about what I will do next."

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Ultraman's sudden expulsion from the board of directors is undoubtedly a blockbuster news for the technology industry, and some people even commented that this is no less than a "911 incident" in the technology industry.

Ultraman's importance to OpenAI is self-evident. As one of the earliest founding members, Altman has served as the CEO of OpenAI full-time since 2020, and then OpenAI has devoted itself to the research and development of large language model GPT, and at the end of 2022, with the release of ChatGPT, it quickly became popular, becoming the center of this round of AI wave with large language models as the core. In this process, Altman, as the CEO, is also the actual spokesperson of OpenAI, and under his leadership, OpenAI has maintained rapid development and leading position in the industry for a year after the official release of ChatGPT. Two weeks ago, OpenAI held its first developer conference in the company's history, releasing a series of updates, including GPT-4 Turbo, as well as GPTs and the corresponding GPT store, once again leading the industry in the direction of GPT that everyone can develop and customize GPT.

Altman himself is even hailed as the new "King of Silicon Valley", such a title is not an exaggeration, just in May of this year, Altman opened a round of global visits, heads of state and leaders, from the British prime minister, the French prime minister to the Singapore prime minister, lined up to meet Altman according to his schedule to discuss the ethics and regulatory framework of artificial intelligence.

Another important player in this round of OpenAI's rise is Microsoft. Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI in 2019, and in 2023, after ChatGPT's outstanding capabilities were verified, Microsoft added another $10 billion to provide strong support for the huge amount of money and computing power that OpenAI needs to spend in the process of developing large models.

Taking advantage of this wave of generative AI around large language models, OpenAI, as a core leading company, has also risen in valuation, with the latest valuation reaching nearly $90 billion, making it one of the most valuable unicorn startups in the world.

After the news of Altman's departure as CEO, many people in the tech circle commented. Schmidt, the former chairman of Google, said on his personal Twitter, "Ultraman is my personal hero, he built a company from zero to a 90 billion valuation and changed our world forever, and I can't wait to know what he does next." It's incredible that I and billions of people will benefit from his future work, and thank you for all that you have done for us. ”

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Airbnb founder Brian Chesky said that Altman is one of the best entrepreneurs of our time and has made unprecedented contributions to our industry.

Microsoft, OpenAI's largest investor, issued a statement after the news that it would continue its partnership with OpenAI. "We have a long-standing relationship with OpenAI, and Microsoft remains committed to working with the new CEO and her team to bring the next generation of AI to our customers," said Frank Shaw, a spokesperson for the company. ”

Since the developer conference, has everything been in sight?

The news of Ultraman's expulsion from OpenAI's board of directors was very sudden, and there was no conclusive news other than the public statement in which the board said that Ultraman had the problem of "inauthentic communication". However, combing through some of the large and small events that OpenAI has experienced in the past period of time may be able to highlight a trace of the clues behind this incident.

On November 6, OpenAI held its first developer conference, at which OpenAI announced GPTs, that is, GPT tools that everyone can customize, and the corresponding GPT store. At the same time, OpenAI also released a series of self-developed and customized GPT tools, which made many developers cry, believing that the applications they developed based on OpenAI's API in the past were subverted by OpenAI in minutes.

On November 8, ChatGPT encountered a large-scale outage, and many users reported that the service could not be used, and an OpenAI spokesperson responded that the failure was deliberately attacked, and the attack method was DDos, that is, the attacker exhausted the resources of the attack target by sending a large amount of traffic, resulting in normal traffic unable to reach the intended server.

On November 9, Microsoft, OpenAI's largest investor, did not allow employees to use ChatGPT, saying it was due to "security concerns."

On November 15, Altman announced on his personal Twitter account that registration for the paid version of ChatGPT Plus was suspended because the usage after the developer conference exceeded OpenAI's current capacity to handle it, and the company wanted to ensure that the experience of existing users would not be affected.

On November 17, Altman was removed from the board of directors as CEO.

The above series of events may reflect that there are already some problems within OpenAI, at least after the developer conference, which began to intensify and gradually become public. Some analysts believe that Ultraman and Microsoft, the "biggest financier", have big differences on the future development direction, and these differences have not been properly resolved.

According to the statement, at the same time as Altman leaves CEO, his close partner, the company's former chairman Greg Brockman, will also step down as chairman and report to the company's former CTO, now interim CEO Mira Muratti. But soon after, news broke that Brockman also announced his resignation, which means that the company's original core executives have been purged by the board of directors.

According to public information, OpenAI's board of directors, in addition to the above two, also includes OpenAI Chief Scientist IIya Sutskever, Quora CEO Adam D'Angelo, GeoSims CEO and Georgetown Safety and Technology Center Helen Toner.

Interestingly, at a public event just two days ago, Yan LeCun, chief scientist and Turing Award winner of social giant Meta, and Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, had a debate, Brad Smith said that OpenAI, which Microsoft has invested in, is a non-profit organization, so people should trust the products of the non-profit organization OpenAI more than a for-profit company like Meta.

But the remarks were slammed by many who believe that OpenAI is not a non-profit company at all at the moment, and it does not have any openness. In this regard, OpenAI had to issue a statement on the company's structure again, saying that Microsoft did not invest in OpenAI, but only invested in OpenAI's profitable subsidiaries.

According to the previous investment agreement signed between Microsoft and OpenAI, Microsoft's profit from OpenAI is limited to the income before reaching AGI, that is, general artificial intelligence.

Once the board of directors of OpenAI's parent company declares that AGI has been reached, Microsoft will no longer be able to receive any profit revenue share from OpenAI.

The board of directors that decides whether OpenAI will reach AGI is composed of the above 6 people, but now, the board of directors has fallen apart, Ultraman was expelled from the board of directors, the former chairman stepped down, and the board of directors actually has only 4 people left. It is unclear whether the board will make additions or adjustments once the permanent CEO is in place.

OpenAI's follow-up trend: It may cause a huge earthquake in the industry

There is no doubt that Altman's departure will bring a huge shock to the company and the industry, and the news was released at the same time as Microsoft's stock price fell sharply by nearly 2%, and as the incident fermented, more effects are gradually emerging.

The most immediate impact is OpenAI itself, a startup that is currently popular in the field of generative AI, and is in danger in an instant. The change of CEO without warning is not a good thing for any company, and the latest news is that OpenAI will urgently convene a plenary meeting convened by the new interim interim CEO on the 17th, and the specific information about this meeting is not yet known.

Recently, OpenAI is in contact with some potential investors and plans to cash out some employees at a valuation of nearly $90 billion, but it is still unknown whether this unexpected event will affect this financing.

At present, on social platforms, many people have compared Ultraman to Steve Jobs of the year, when Jobs was expelled from the board of directors, but then returned and led Apple to the top. Whether Ultraman will replicate such a path is unknown, but at least judging by his brief response on Twitter, the story is far from over.

The new AI ecosystem that OpenAI ambitiously wants to build is currently clouded by more uncertainty about this unexpected event. At the first OpenAI developer conference that just ended earlier this month, Altman, then CEO, outlined the future industry direction envisioned by OpenAI to the outside world, continuously delegating the generation ability of GPT to ordinary people, so that the threshold for developing GPT applications is constantly lowered, and OpenAI itself as a platform to lead the formation of a new industry ecology.

The bigger impact lies with the AI industry as a whole. At present, a new wave of generative AI driven by the popularity of ChatGPT is in full swing, and OpenAI, as the core and benchmark of this round of craze, is the focus of attention and pursuit of countless people, but the CEO was suddenly removed by the board of directors, which caught the entire industry off guard. Although Microsoft, OpenAI's largest partner, said at the first time that it would continue to cooperate in the future, it did not rule out the possibility of more changes in OpenAI's own development direction and partnership with Microsoft after the change of management in the future.

For others, it's now more of a "fire-watcher". OpenAI in the Ultraman era and OpenAI in the post-Ultraman era must be different, which means that the pattern of the AI industry in the future and the development direction of the entire industry may undergo new changes, and this incident is an important turning point for a series of changes in the future.

Source: Golden Finance