Photo/VCG

On November 17, US time, OpenAI was hit by a major shake-up in its top management. The company announced that Sam Altman would no longer serve as CEO and resigned from the company, and the CTO took over as interim CEO. Greg Brockman stepped down as chairman of the board, but remained with the company.

According to foreign media, Sam Altman, who has been the leader of OpenAI, shocked the company and the outside world with his sudden departure. In 2015, he co-founded OpenAI with Musk and others; in 2019, he left his position as president of Y Combinator and became CEO of OpenAI. Under his leadership, OpenAI launched heavyweight AI models such as GPT-3, DaLL-E, and the world-famous chatbot ChatGPT.

The reporter of “Daily Economic News” noticed that Altman’s resignation news instantly “ignited” the overseas media, and the search term “Sam Altman” on Google Trend soared exponentially. Netizens commented on OpenAI and Altman’s X (formerly Twitter) accounts, some guessing the reasons, some expressing regret, and some even compared this event to Jobs leaving Apple in 1985.

Photo/Google Trend

In addition, Tesla CEO Musk, who has always been at odds with Altman, also joined in the fun, posting a “job application link” and captioning it “in case anyone needs it”, implying that he would use this opportunity to poach talent from OpenAI.

The first job AI took was Sam's

OpenAI’s board of directors said on Friday that Altman would resign as CEO. The company said it had conducted a thoughtful review process and concluded that Altman was not honest in his communication with the board, hindering his ability to perform his duties. The company statement said, “The board no longer believes in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.”

Later, Altman responded on social media X (formerly Twitter), saying: “I enjoyed my time at OpenAI, which was full of change for me personally, and I hope for the world as well. Most importantly, I loved working with this talented group of people.”

What happened inside OpenAI, which has been on fire this year? What kind of “dishonesty” would be big enough to make a company fire a popular celebrity CEO on the spot? Under Altman’s tweet, netizens expressed their puzzlement. One netizen wrote: “If OpenAI is controlled by super artificial intelligence, Sam please blink twice.”

Photo/Twitter

Some netizens made fun of the situation under OpenAI’s official account, saying things like: “Did Sam get replaced by GPT-5?” “Is AGI the new internal CEO?” “Sam’s job was the first one that AI snatched from humans”.

Photo/Twitter

NBD noticed that the day before Altman was fired, according to foreign media reports, OpenAI's board of directors conducted research on when the company will “achieve AGI”. AGI, or artificial general intelligence, is defined as “a highly autonomous system that can perform beyond human capabilities in the most economically valuable jobs.”

“Imagine being the board of directors fired the buy that created AGI, for hiding the creation of "AGI" for them. Sam’s creation of AGI is as much of a fact as it is that the sun will rise. He's literally the most valuable free agent on earth right now.

A netizen posted a question asking why Altman resigned, and another netizen’s reply got some approval: “(Altman) achieved AGI, but he hid it in the basement.”

 

 

 

A Jobs script replayed?

Many netizens called Altman’s resignation his “Jobs moment”: “Heavyweight! This is the most shocking news in the tech world since Jobs left Apple!”, “This is your Jobs moment”, “Witnessing the contemporary Steve Jobs moment!”.

 

The “Jobs moment” here refers to the story of Steve Jobs, the father of Apple, who left the company in 1985 due to internal power struggles and later founded Pixar Animation Studios. At that time, many foreign media reported that Jobs was “kicked out” of his own company, and the reason for his resignation was speculated by the outside world to be the unsuccessful development of his “Office” project, which caused intense debates within the company.

However, many years later, in 1997, Jobs returned to Apple, where led Apple through the financial crisis, and achieved today’s glory. John Sculley, the former CEO of Apple, also said that letting Jobs resign was a huge mistake. 

Musk joins the fun to make X platform more active

X platform hangs link for xAI traffic Some netizens also made fun of the discord between Altman and Musk, saying “I can hear Musk’s laughter from New Zealand!” A parody account of Musk’s blue V account Elon Musk(Parody) commented on Altman’s tweet: “Honestly, bro, did Grok scare you?” and attached a close-up photo of Musk. It is reported that Grok is the first AI large model product released by Musk’s xAI team.

 

Photo/Twitter

Later, Musk himself seemed to pay attention to this news, and the official account of his X platform also posted a “job application link”, with the text “in case anyone needs it”, implying that he regarded OpenAI as a “talent pool” for xAI. It is reported that Musk, as a veteran member of OpenAI, had worked with Altman to establish an artificial intelligence laboratory, but left the board of directors in 2018 because he thought that the subsequent development of OpenAI deviated from his original idea.

The reporter of “Daily Economic News” noticed that Musk and Altman have always been at odds, and Musk criticized OpenAI for becoming a company that is “actually controlled by Microsoft and pursues profit maximization”. He also publicly criticized OpenAI’s “closed source” behavior as not a good practice earlier this month.

Altman, on the other hand, called Musk a “jerk”. It is reported that when Musk left the board of directors in 2018, the reason he gave was that he had a conflict of interest with Tesla. But earlier this year, foreign media reported that Musk left the company after being rejected when he proposed to take charge of OpenAI.

And now, both Musk and Altman, the two “veteran” members of OpenAI, have left the company. Whether OpenAI can achieve new achievements under the leadership of the new CEO remains to be further observed.