The last few days have, without a doubt, been one of the most chaotic in Microsoft's entire history, and indeed of the entire technology industry as a whole. We went from ChatGPT creator OpenAI's board firing its co-founder and CEO Sam Altman on Friday, to Altman trying to get back in OpenAI on Saturday and Sunday.
When that plan failed, OpenAI's biggest partner, Microsoft, announced it would bring in Altman to launch a new advanced AI team. Then the majority of OpenAI's employees signed a letter threatening to resign en masse unless Altman was brought back to the company. In the end, Altman was announced as back in charge of OpenAI early this morning, along with a new and bigger board.
The amount of twists and turns in this saga rivaled those in TV soap operas. Today, The Verge posted a new internal memo, written by Microsoft's chief technology officer and EVP of its AI division Kevin Scott, where he thanked all of the company's employees, especially the "huge number of people who went above and beyond over the past few days to help in so many ways."
The memo from Scott stated in part:
We will continue to support our colleagues at OpenAl and the phenomenal work they’ve been doing alongside us in service of that mission. As we have for these past 4+ years, we look forward to continuing our work with Sam and his team.
Scott also mentioned that both Microsoft and OpenAI launched new products during this rather chaotic time, including Microsoft with its Orca 2 language model, and OpenAI with offering voice ChatCPT support for all of its free users. Scott wrote:
It is both humbling and inspiring to be part of such an amazing team at Microsoft, and to have the privilege of working with the team at OpenAl.
At the end of the day, the greatest privilege of my job is working with people who are driven by mission. These last 5 days, I saw people across OpenAI remaining calm and resolute in driving their mission despite all that was happening around them. And I saw people across…
— Satya Nadella (@satyanadella) November 22, 2023
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also posted on his X (formerly Twitter) account today, which also thanked the company's employees "for your resolve and for the work you do each day"
