Ilya Fired Sam Altman on Google Meet

An interesting thing to note about Sam Altman’s firing from OpenAI is that Ilya Sutskever, co-founder and chief scientist at OpenAI, reportedly used Google Meet to inform him that he was being fired, with the news set to be made public very soon.

Similarly, to inform Greg Brockman, about his removal from the position of the chairman of the board, Ilya sent a Google Meet link. This is ironic as Microsoft has 49% stake in OpenAI and still its members turned to Google Meet  to send a message which could completely redefine the future not just of OpenAI but of the whole tech ecosystem.

This is even more funny considering Microsoft chief Satya Nadella announced at Ignite 2023 that they have added Copilot to Teams. 

After Altman’s departure, numerous OpenAI employees are considering whether to stay. Three senior researchers have already resigned. Meanwhile, Heng-Tze Cheng, Director of Bard Research, announced on X that both Google DeepMind and Bard Research are actively seeking new talent. 

Cheng stated, “We continue to be actively hiring at Google DeepMind & Bard Research. Please send me a message if you or anyone you know might be interested! Looking forward to working together to build the most helpful AI for everyone.”

Google has recently postponed the release of Gemini to the first quarter of next year, suggesting challenges in its development and putting the tech giant in a catch-up position with OpenAI. 

Now is an opportune moment for Google to expedite the release of Gemini, particularly with potential delays in the launch of GPT-5. 

Meanwhile, taking a dig at OpenAI employees, X shared its job search tool, which the microblogging site rolled out on the web for all users, emphasising that it is completely free to use.