GitHub and Scale AI CEOs refused the OpenAI CEO's post vacated by Sam Altman

Before Emmett Shear, GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and Scale AI founder Alex Wang were asked to take up the OpenAI CEO position which they refused.

Emmett Shear has been appointed as the new interim CEO of OpenAI after Sam Altman refused to come back. (AFP)

Following the removal of Sam Altman as the OpenAI CEO, the path to pick the right candidate to fill the position was not easy for the board members and they looked to be in an unseemly rush. Soon after the firing, Mira Murati joined as the interim CEO, however, after the news of Altman joining Microsoft was announced, the employees, including Murati, wanted to reinstate Sam Altman and they threatened mass resignations from the company. But to everyone's shock, he refused to come back unless the OpenAI board of directors were sacked.

During the search for the right candidate, OpenAI reached out to several candidates to take the position of CEO. Finally, the company appointed Emmett Shear as the new interim CEO. Check out who refused the top position at Open AI.

OpenAI CEO candidates

The Information reported that before selecting Emmett Shear for the position, the company also considered the former CEO of Microsoft-owned GitHub, Nat Friedman, and Alex Wang, the co-founder and CEO of Scale AI due to their expertise in the field. However, both the known tech personalities refused the position in OpenAI forcing it to look for more candidates who would be interested in taking up the position of the CEO.

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Nat Friedman is an active investor in AI startups and currently, he is a board member at the Arc Institute, and an advisor of Midjourney. Whereas Alex Wang contributes to the development of AI applications. Wang is known to be one of the youngest self-made billionaires with the development of the platform Scale.ai.

Yesterday, Microsoft CEO announced that Altman would be joining the company as CEO of the new AI research team, but Satya Nadella clarified today that it may not happen and Altman may well go back to OpenAI. The back-and-forth saga has been quite interesting as well as surprising as there have been so many changes made in just a few days of time. Remember, after sacking Altman, OpenAI had appointed Mira Murati as interim CEO. She was removed from that post when Shear was appointed.

Altman is also making confusing claims online which still make it unsure of his next move on whether he will be joining Microsoft or will he come back to OpenAI. Stay tuned for more updates on the ongoing OpenAI saga.

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