Sam Altman, CEO of ChatGPT developer OpenAI, has been ousted from his position.
OpenAI's board no longer has confidence in Altman’s ability to continue in his job, the artificial intelligence company said in a blog post Friday. The post said Altman’s lack of candor in communications with the board was affecting its ability to exercise its responsibilities. It did not offer further information.
Read more: Dr. ChatGPT: A guide to generative AI in healthcare
The blog post said OpenAI President Greg Brockman would be stepping down from his role as board chair but would stay at the company. Later Friday evening, however, Brockman posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that he had quit OpenAI.
OpenAI directed requests for comment to the blog post.
Early Monday morning, the company named former Twitch CEO and co-founder Emmett Shear as its interim CEO, replacing Mira Murati, OpenAI’s chief technology officer, Shear said in a post on X. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said on X that Altman and Brockman would be leading a new AI research group at the tech giant.
Altman has been a proponent of the use of ChatGPT and generative AI in medicine. In a February post on X, Altman touted the potential of “AI medical advisors for people who can’t afford care.” In a March interview with ABC News, he said ChatGPT and generative AI would be able to give “medical advice for everybody that is beyond what we have today.”
Microsoft, which made a reported $10 billion investment in OpenAI, has helped usher generative AI into healthcare. In April, Microsoft made a deal with Epic to integrate OpenAI's generative AI technology into the electronic health record vendor's software. Nuance Communications, a clinical documentation software company owned by Microsoft, added OpenAI’s ChatGPT successor GPT-4 to its latest voice transcription application in March.
Along with his work at OpenAI, Altman has also been an investor in healthcare companies. In July, he and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff were among the investors in Vital Biosciences, a company developing a point-of-care diagnostic test.
