ChatGPT maker OpenAI agrees deal for ousted Sam Altman to return as chief executive
ChatGPT maker OpenAI says it has agreed a deal for Sam Altman to return as chief executive after he was ousted by its board.
The agreement “in principle” involves a new board being installed, the company said.
In a post on X, OpenAI said: “We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to return to OpenAI as CEO.”
“We are collaborating to figure out the details. Thank you so much for your patience through this.”
It followed a threatened mutiny by OpenAI staff, who worked on ChatGPT, the generative AI model which gave millions of people the ability to have questions answered by artificial intelligence (AI) after it launched last year.
The vast majority of them said they would quit and work for Microsoft if the board did not resign and if Mr Altman and his ally and company president Greg Brockman, who left in solidarity with Mr Altman, were not reinstated.
The pair had been hired to work at Microsoft, OpenAI’s biggest investor, on a new AI research project.
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CEO of OpenAI Sam Altman speaks to Sky News
The new board of directors, which operates on a not-for-profit basis, unlike conventional boards, will include the former US Treasury secretary and economics professor, Larry Summers.
It will be chaired by the former CEO of Salesforce and co-creator of Google Maps Bret Taylor, with the CEO of question and answer site Quora Adam D’Angelo remaining on the board.
Read more:
How the chaos at OpenAI has unfolded – and why it matters
Who is Sam Altman?
OpenAI’s board operates on a non-commercial basis, unlike the company, as it was originally founded as a not-for-profit with the goal of building safe and beneficial AI “for the benefit of humanity”.
Mr Brockman said of his return, which came on Tuesday night west coast America time, that he was “getting back to coding tonight”.
Sam Altman exerts a strong hold on the tech world
Just three days after Sam Altman was ousted as chief executive of OpenAI by its board members, he has upturned the decision and even been offered the chance to select the first members of a new board of directors.
Such is the hold he has on the tech world and on one player in particular.
Microsoft is key to this power struggle – the company has invested more than $10bn into OpenAI and was reportedly informed of the previous board’s decision to dismiss Altman just minutes before the announcement was made publicly.
The tech giant then offered jobs to not only Altman and fellow OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman, who resigned in solidarity, but to more than 700 of the company’s staff.
Executives at the company are now pushing for a position on the new board and have warned that they do not want any more “surprises”.
OpenAI is the company behind ChatGPT, which earned its name for making generative AI available to the public.
The chatbot was used by hundreds of millions of users in just the first couple of months after its launch last year, positioning the non-profit at the forefront of AI and giving it significant influence over how the technology impacts our daily lives.
Mr Altman said: “I love OpenAI, and everything I’ve done over the past few days has been in service of keeping this team and its mission together.
“When I decided to join Microsoft on Sunday evening, it was clear that was the best path for me and the team.
“With the new board and with Satya’s [the CEO of Microsoft’s] support, I’m looking forward to returning to OpenAI, and building on our strong partnership with Microsoft.”
The reason for Mr Altman’s sacking on Friday night remains unclear.
The board had said he “was not consistently candid in his communications with the board”.
But in a letter to the board, employees said: “Despite many requests for specific facts for your allegations, you have never provided any evidence.”
The company’s interim chief executive Emmett Shear said Mr Altman was not removed over “any specific disagreement on safety”.
“Their reasoning was completely different,” he added.
It was not immediately clear what the future will hold for Mr Shear.
He posted on X (Twitter) that he was “deeply pleased by this result, after [around] 72 very intense hours of work”.
The former head of game streaming platform Twitch added: “Coming into OpenAI, I wasn’t sure what the right path would be. This was the pathway that maximized safety alongside doing right by all stakeholders involved. I’m glad to have been a part of the solution.”
Dozens of websites, banks and apps are being affected by a major internet outage.
The problem, which started on Monday morning, appears to be related to an issue at Amazon Web Services (AWS).
As of 9.20am, there were more than 2,000 reports of the Amazon Web Services outage in the US alone, according to Downdetector, which monitors issues and outages in real-time.
On its service status page, the company said it was seeing “increased error rates” and delays with “multiple AWS services”.
Here’s what we know so far.
Pic: PA
Pic: PA
Pic: PA
What has been affected?
Multiple banks, the HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) website, mobile phone networks and video-chatting platform Zoom are among the websites having technical issues.
All Amazon products – including Prime Video and Amazon Music – have also been affected, as well as the main Amazon website.
Here’s a full list of what has been affected by the internet outage, according to Downdetector:
• Snapchat
• Ring
• Roblox
• Amazon Web Services
• Life360
• My Fitness Pal
• Amazon
• Xero
• Signal
• Canva
• Fortnite
• Blink Security
• Zoom
• HMRC
• Clash Royale
• Clash Of Clans
• Asana
• Wordle
• Slack
• Smartsheet
• Epic Games Store
• Duolingo
• Amazon Alexa
• Jira
• Vodafone
• Tidal
• Coinbase
• Atlassian
• IMDB
• Amazon Prime Video
• Pokemon Go
• BT
• Peloton
• EE
• Ancestry
• Square
• Playstation Network
• Eventbrite
• Amazon Music
• Sky
• Flickr
• Hay Day
• Rocket League
• Perplexity AI
• Dead By Daylight
• Bank Of Scotland
• Lloyds Bank
• Halifax
What has AWS said?
AWS confirmed it was suffering from “increased error rates and latencies” for multiple services.
In a statement on its website, the company said: “We are actively engaged and working to both mitigate the issue and understand root cause,” an update on its website says.
“We will provide an update in 45 minutes, or sooner if we have additional information to share.”
The company is posting regular updates on the situation and said its engineers were “immediately engaged” as soon as they spotted the issue.
Concentrated in the US
ThousandEyes, a website that tracks the performance of local and wide area networks, servers and applications, shows many of the outages appear to be concentrated in the US.
A large portion is focused in Virginia, which is widely considered as the global capital for data centres.
Has something like this happened before?
US
Donald Trump mocks ‘No Kings’ protests with AI video of himself dropping brown sludge on protesters from jet
Donald Trump has responded to so-called “No Kings” rallies with an AI video of himself in a fighter jet, pouring brown sludge over protesters.
Millions of people were expected to take part in the demonstrations this weekend – the second such gathering after an initial nationwide day of protest in June coinciding with the US president’s birthday.
The term “No Kings” reflects the belief by some that Mr Trump is behaving like a “king” and some in his administration are depicting him as a monarch.
A protester in costume as Donald Trump presents the president as a prisoner in chains in Seattle. Pic: AP
One of the rallies in New York. Pic: Reuters
On Sunday, the president shared the AI video on his social media platform, Truth Social.
In the clip, an AI-generated version of Mr Trump is wearing a crown and sitting in a jet with “King Trump” written across it, to the soundtrack of Kenny Loggins’ Danger Zone, from the film Top Gun.
The jet then drops thick brown sludge on to AI-generated protesters.
Supporters say the marches are a patriotic defence of free speech, while critics are calling them anti-American.
A large inflatable effigy of Mr Trump in Chicago. Pic: Reuters
This protest took place in Washington DC. Pic: AP
Mr Trump’s Republican Party has dismissed the demonstrations as “Hate America” rallies.
Many of the events featured marching bands, huge banners and signs, as well as effigies of the president and demonstrators wearing inflatable costumes.
Thousands gathered along the waterfront in Portland, Oregon. Pic: AP
Protesters at the Wyoming State Capitol got creative with their signs. Pic: Wyoming Tribune Eagle/AP
The protests follow Mr Trump’s return to the White House and come against the backdrop of a government shutdown which has closed federal programmes and services.
There has also been criticism of what some see as an aggressive executive, confronting Congress and the courts, in ways that protest organisers believe are a slide toward authoritarianism.
This event in San Francisco was among thousands taking place across the US. Pic: Reuters
A ‘No Kings’ sign, outside City Hall in Los Angeles. Pic: Reuters
So far, the atmosphere at most of the protests appears to have been largely energetic and upbeat, with protesters calling for accountability and protections for civil liberties.
Organisers said events would be peaceful – a direct response to Republican and Trump administration claims that the protests could be unsafe.
Two survivors of a US airstrike, targeting what Donald Trump has described as a “drug-carrying submarine” in the Caribbean, have been repatriated to their home countries.
The US president posted footage of Thursday’s operation, part of a recent military campaign targeting boats transporting drugs to America.
“It was my great honor to destroy a very large DRUG-CARRYING SUBMARINE that was navigating towards the United States on a well known narcotrafficking transit route,” Mr Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“US intelligence confirmed this vessel was loaded up with mostly Fentanyl, and other illegal narcotics,” he added.
The US military staged a helicopter rescue for the survivors on Thursday after the strike on their semi-submersible
vessel, suspected of trafficking illegal narcotics. They were then transported to a US Navy warship.
Two other crew members on board were killed.
The semi-submersible vessel was struck by US forces on Thursday, leaving two dead and two survivors. Pic: @realDonaldTrump/Truth Social
President Trump confirmed the survivors would be returned to their home countries of Colombia and Ecuador “for detention and prosecution”. Both countries subsequently confirmed they had been handed over.
“America will not tolerate narcoterrorists trafficking illegal drugs, by land or by sea,” he added.
On Saturday, Colombian President Gustavo Petro posted on X: “We have received the Colombian detained on the narco submarine, we are happy he is alive and he will be processed according to the law.”
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Trump sends CIA into Venezuela and threatens land attack
Read more from Sky News:
Venezuela’s president pleads for peace
Is Trump planning to attack Venezuela?
Venezuela’s Nobel Peace Prize winner
The Trump administration has said previous strikes in the Caribbean have killed 27 people, raising concerns among some about the legality of the military operations.
The strikes also come against the backdrop of a US military buildup in the Caribbean that includes guided missile destroyers, F-35 fighter jets, a nuclear submarine and around 6,500 troops as the US president escalates a standoff with the Venezuelan government.
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Venezuelan president: ‘We don’t want a war’
On Wednesday, Mr Trump disclosed he had authorised the CIA to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela, adding to speculation in Caracas that the US is attempting to topple Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
Mr Maduro has denied any connection to drug smuggling and claimed the US boat strikes are a pretext for regime change, and violations of sovereignty and international law.
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