OpenAI, the artificial intelligence (AI) company known for creating ChatGPT, said Friday that Sam Altman would be stepping down as CEO after a review found that he was “not consistently candid in his communications with the board.”
Mira Murati, the company’s chief technology officer, will take over in the meantime, the company said in a statement.
“OpenAI was deliberately structured to advance our mission: to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all humanity,” the board of directors said in statement. “The board remains fully committed to serving this mission.”
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“We are grateful for Sam’s many contributions to the founding and growth of OpenAI,” it continued. “At the same time, we believe new leadership is necessary as we move forward.”
The board’s chairman, Greg Brockman, will also be stepping down but will remain at the company, according to Friday’s press release.
After OpenAI launched ChatGPT last November, the AI-powered chatbot quickly surged in popularity, sparking a race among other tech companies to develop and unveil their own AI-based tools and prompting concerns among lawmakers about how to regulate the rapidly progressing technology.
In the face of growing concerns about AI, Altman appeared before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing this spring and warned that the technology could “cause significant harm to the world.”
“I think if this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong, and we want to be vocal about that,” he said at the time. “We want to work with the government to prevent that from happening.”
However, just two months later, The Washington Post reported that OpenAI was being investigated by the Federal Trade Commission for potentially engaging in deceptive privacy practices or harming consumers.