OpenAI executive shakeup raises concerns about future of AI

A wide swath of Silicon Valley has hitched its hopes and fortunes over the past few years to the kind of generative artificial intelligence technologies that OpenAI helped popularize.

Many industry experts point to the debut of ChatGPT late last year as an iPhone-like moment, ushering a potential shift in the way people interact with computers via written prompts that can produce creative, seemingly human-like text.

Just as Apple had the late Steve Jobs acting as the company’s esteemed figurehead, articulating the appeal of the iPhone and personal computers to the masses, so too did OpenAI have its own charismatic leader in Sam Altman.

With Altman out as CEO — at least for now — after his sudden firing on Friday, the Apple comparisons are flowing freely. Jobs was fired as CEO of Apple in 1985, a move that lives in Silicon Valley lore, since it was after his return in 1997 that Apple found the path that eventually made it the most valuable company in the U.S.

Altman, who previously ran startup accelerator Y Combinator, has spent the past year cozying up to world leaders and making routine appearances at tech events, turning the 38-year-old executive into an industry celebrity, in the mold of Jobs, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

Along with Altman, OpenAI’s board removed Greg Brockman from his role as chairman. Later Friday, Brockman said he was quitting the company.

“What happened at OpenAI today is a Board coup that we have not seen the likes of since 1985 when the then-Apple board pushed out Steve Jobs,” longtime startup investor Ron Conway said Friday evening in an X post. “It is shocking; it is irresponsible; and it does not do right by Sam & Greg or all the builders in OpenAI.”

Efforts are already underway by OpenAI investors to get Altman back,…