The board of directors of OpenAI, the company behind the powerful ChatGPT, announced significant changes in its leadership on Friday. Sam Altman, who served as executive director, has departed from his position, while Mira Murati was named interim CEO to lead the AI organization.

Murati has been part of OpenAI’s leadership team for five years and is highly regarded by the company for her diverse experience in research, products, and security. Her deep understanding of the company’s values and operations makes her a natural choice to assume the leadership role.

In a statement, the board of directors expressed their appreciation for Sam’s contributions to the founding and growth of OpenAI but emphasized the need for new leadership as the company moves forward in its mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all humanity.

The reasons for Altman’s departure were not disclosed by the board but were reportedly related to issues with communication and transparency. According to sources close to the matter, Altman was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, which hindered his ability to exercise his responsibilities effectively. The board no longer had confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.

Greg Brockman, current chairman, will step down from his role but will remain with the company reporting to Murati. The board consists of prominent figures such as chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo, technology entrepreneur Tasha McCauley, and Helen Toner of Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technologies. They will closely monitor compliance with OpenAI’s mission and principles outlined in its charter.

OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit in 2015 before restructuring in 2019 to balance raising capital with preserving its nonprofit mission and governance structure. Despite its spectacular growth over the past year due to ChatGPT’s success as a generative AI platform that revolutionized technology industry standards worldwide – “Despite