We started the last working day of last week with OpenAI’s decision to fire its CEO Sam Altman. Afterwards, we watched the events as if we were watching a TV series. While it was announced that Altman would move to Microsoft, OpenAI employees also announced that they were ready to resign after Altman. Eventually, OpenAI’s board of directors changed and Altman returned to his position.
Microsoft played an important role in the progress of the process. The commercial wing of OpenAI, which was initially non-profit, later established, also received a very serious investment from Microsoft. The company also has an artificial intelligence structure within itself. So no matter what, Microsoft employees would be affected by this situation.
Microsoft’s internal correspondence revealed
Kevin Scott, the company’s CTO and Executive Vice President, sent a message to employees about the process and showed his gratitude. While Scott stated that the situation at OpenAI remains uncertain due to recent events, he nevertheless stated that their joint work with the company, which has been going on for more than 4 years, will continue.
Another point that stood out in Scott’s post was that both Microsoft and OpenAI teams continue to work with a sense of “undiminished urgency.” Stating that Azure’s new computing artificial intelligence, Orca 2 research, one of the MSR predecessors, and ChatGPT’s voice usage features have been introduced since Friday, the Microsoft manager also stated that any of these three features is a major breakthrough for most companies. Scott concluded his post by thanking the employees.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also made a similar post on X, thanking employees for both their efforts and patience.