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November 18, 2023, 12:50 PM

Top News

OpenAI:
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman departs the company and leaves its board after a board review found he wasn't “consistently candid in his communications with the board”  —  The board of directors of OpenAI, Inc, the 501(c)(3) that acts as the overall governing body for all OpenAI activities …
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LinkedIn: Aki Ranin and Kelvin Mu
Jay Peters / The Verge:
OpenAI CTO Mira Murati becomes the company's interim CEO  —  “Mr. Altman's departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities," the company said in its blog post.
Forbes:
Greg Brockman / @gdb:
Greg Brockman describes Ilya Sutskever's role in Sam Altman's firing and Brockman's removal from the OpenAI board, as well as Mira Murati's foreknowledge  —  Sam and I are shocked and saddened by what the board did today. Let us first say thank you to all the incredible people who we have worked with at OpenAI, our customers, our investors, and all of those who have been reaching out. We too are still trying to figure out exactly...
Jon Victor / The Information:
Sources: three senior OpenAI researchers resign, including Director of Research Jakub Pachocki, and Head of Preparedness Aleksander Madry  —  Three senior researchers at OpenAI resigned Friday night as the artificial intelligence developer suffered fallout from the firing of CEO Sam Altman …
Jay Peters / The Verge:
OpenAI co-founder and President Greg Brockman says he has quit the company “based on today's news”  —  Sam Altman isn't the only major OpenAI executive leaving the company on Friday.  Hours after Altman was fired, with the board saying it “no longer has confidence in his ability …
Kara Swisher / @karaswisher:
Sources: Sam Altman's exit followed a “misalignment” between OpenAI's profit and nonprofit sides, given the company's development speed could be viewed as risky  —  Scoop: There are about to be a lot more major departures of top folks at @OpenAI tonight and I assume Altman will make a statement tonight. But, as I understand it, it was a “misalignment” of the profit versus nonprofit adherents at the company. The developer day was an issue.
Kevin Roose / New York Times:
Source: Ilya Sutskever defended Altman's ouster at an all-hands meeting, saying it was necessary to protect OpenAI's mission of making AI beneficial to humanity  —  Everything seemed to be going his way.  Then his time at OpenAI was over.  —  All over Silicon Valley …
Bloomberg:
Source: Ilya Sutskever and his allies on the OpenAI board may have been put off by Sam Altman looking to raise funds for new companies off of OpenAI's name  —  - Safety and commercialization were central to disagreements  — Microsoft CEO was ‘blindsided,’ furious at Altman's firing
Erin Woo / The Information:
Sources: Mira Murati tried to calm shell-shocked employees in a companywide meeting following the firing of Sam Altman  —  OpenAI Interim CEO Mira Murati on Friday told staff in a companywide meeting that its relationship with Microsoft—its biggest outside source of capital and computing power …
Ina Fried / Axios:
Source: Microsoft learned that OpenAI was ousting CEO Sam Altman just a minute before the news was published  —  Microsoft, which has invested billions in OpenAI, learned that OpenAI was ousting CEO Sam Altman just a minute before the news was shared with the world, according to a person familiar with the situation.
The Official Microsoft Blog:
Forbes:
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:
Nothing pulls its Sunbird-based iMessage app Nothing Chats from Play Store after a researcher found the app is not e2e encrypted, attachments are public, more  —  Sunbird has been promising iMessage support on Android for about a year now, but the company has always seemed rather sketchy.
Jonathan Vanian / CNBC:
Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount Global, Lionsgate, and Comcast suspend ads on X, joining other media and tech companies  —  - Apple has paused its online advertising campaigns on X, formerly Twitter, after owner Elon Musk made antisemitic comments on the platform.
Ina Fried / Axios:
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Martin Coulter / Reuters: