OpenAI staff were later told by the chief operating officer, Brad Lightcap, in an internal company memo his sacking was over a “breakdown in communication between Sam and the board”, and not “malfeasance or anything related to our financial, business, safety, or security/privacy practices”.

Last year, it launched ChatGPT, a text-based AI-powered tool that allows users to enter prompts and receive human-like responses and is now used by millions.

Earlier in November, he was one of 100 delegates who travelled to Bletchley Park for the UK’s AI summit, where he met Rishi Sunak.

This was the board doing its duty to the mission of the non-profit, which is to make sure that OpenAI builds AGI [artificial general intelligence] that benefits all of humanity,” he said, according to The Information.

The changes at OpenAI have shocked the wider sector, with one investment advisory firm describing them as an “earthquake”, a “soap opera” and a “Netflix documentary in the making”.

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