Microsoft gets a seat on the OpenAI board but is not allowed to vote

Microsoft will have a seat on OpenAI’s board of directors, but will not be allowed to vote on it. Director Sam Altman announced this. A number of directors who voted to fire Altman a few weeks ago are gone and will not return.

Altman becomes CEO, Mira Murati returns as CTO and Greg Bockman returns as president, writes Altman. There are also already some members of the board of directors, such as a co-CEO of Salesforce and the CEO of Quora. Board member Ilya Sutskever voted for Altman’s dismissal and came to regret it. He will not return as a director, but will still work at OpenAI. Helen Toner and Tasha McCauley were directors and will not return. It is not yet clear who will sit on the board for Microsoft. Microsoft is an investor in OpenAI.

That old board decided to fire CEO Sam Altman two weeks ago. Altman then looked set to lead a research department at Microsoft, but after many of the employees protested the firing, Altman returned to OpenAI and the board resigned. According to sources, the conflict between the old board and Altman was about how OpenAI should deal with Project Q*, an AI model that can independently solve math problems and would come close to general artificial intelligence.