Microsoft will take a non-voting, observer position on OpenAI's board, CEO Sam Altman said in his first official missive after taking back the reins of the company on Wednesday. The observer position means Microsoft's representative can attend OpenAI's board meetings and access confidential information, but it does not have voting rights on matters including electing or choosing directors. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who had recruited Altman to Microsoft after Altman's ouster from OpenAI, had said earlier that governance at the ChatGPT maker needs to change. OpenAI announced a new initial board last week that consists of former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor as chair and Larry Summers, former US treasury secretary. Quora CEO Adam D'Angelo, who was part of the board who fired Altman, also stayed on.

OpenAI said that Sam Altman was officially reinstated as chief executive officer and that it has a new initial board of directors, with Microsoft Corp. joining as a nonvoting observer. The announcement Wednesday, a blog post penned by Altman, comes two weeks after the CEO's shock firing from the artificial intelligence startup, followed by an operatic boardroom power struggle. OpenAI also said that Mira Murati -- who had been chief technology officer until Altman's ousting when she was briefly named interim CEO -- is once again the company's CTO. OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman will return as the company's president after he quit in protest over Altman's firing. Microsoft, the company's largest investor, had not previously had a position on the board before it took the observer role.

Over the course of two months from its debut in November 2022, ChatGPT exploded in popularity, from niche online curio to 100 million monthly active users -- the fastest user base growth in the history of the Internet. In less than a year, it has earned the backing of Silicon Valley's biggest firms, and been shoehorned into myriad applications from academia and the arts to marketing, medicine, gaming and government. In short ChatGPT is just about everywhere. Few industries have remained untouched by the viral adoption of the generative AI's tools. On the first anniversary of its release, let's take a look back on the year of ChatGPT that brought us here.

Microsoft's president says the sacking of OpenAI boss Sam Altman was not because of AI safety worries.

LinkedIn began rolling out a generative AI feature to select users this spring, powered by OpenAI's GPT-4 model, to help premium subscribers write headlines and "about" sections. Users can generate text summarizing what's already in their profile and get spruced-up suggestions offered by the feature, which is highlighted with a gold button that says "write with AI." The capability is available to all of LinkedIn's millions of premium subscribers, and the company said it's exploring expanding access in the future.

The idea of a robot taking your job might sound like science fiction. But a new study suggests it could soon become a reality for many Britons. The study, by the Department for Education, has revealed the jobs most likely to be taken by robots. However, there's sports players, roofers, and steel erectors can all rest easy, with the study suggesting these professions are the safest from the advance of AI technology. The idea of a robot taking your job might sound like science fiction.

Following Sam Altman's rollercoaster of a return as OpenAI's CEO, the company announced that it will now include Microsoft as a non-voting observer on its board. The question remains as to why the firm's largest investor wasn't on its board in the first place, but this seems to be somewhat addressed for now, at least. Altman is joined by co-founder Greg Brockman who resumes his role as President, whereas Mira Murati, who very briefly served as interim CEO throughout the drama, will return to her role as CTO. The announcement also confirms a new board consisting of former Salesforce CEO Bret Taylor (chair), former Clinton Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and original member Adam D'Angelo, who is also Quora's co-founder and CEO. It was earlier rumored that Altman's exit was partly influenced by D'Angelo's seeming conflict of interest, as OpenAI was developing a potential competitor to Quora's Poe service -- the latter offers OpenAI's ChatGPT and GPT-4, along with several other text-generating AI models.

Altman was fired from OpenAI on Nov. 17, kicking off a chaotic five days as the tech industry grappled with the implications of the face of the AI revolution being unceremoniously removed from his company. Five days later, Altman was back, a new board had been appointed, consisting of Taylor, former treasury secretary Larry Summers and Quora CEO Adam D'Angelo, one of the previous board members who had removed Altman. Since then, Silicon Valley has speculated about who else would join the board and ultimately control the fate of the company.

Sam Altman marked his formal return as CEO helm of OpenAI today in a company memo that confirmed changes to the company's board including a new non-voting seat for the startup's primary investor, Microsoft. In a memo sent to staff and shared on OpenAI's blog, Altman painted the chaos of the past two weeks, triggered by the board's loss of trust in their CEO, during which almost the entire staff of the company threatened to quit, as a testament to the startup's resilience rather than a sign of instability. "You stood firm for each other, this company, and our mission," Altman wrote. "One of the most important things for the team that builds [artificial general intelligence] safely is the ability to handle stressful and uncertain situations, and maintain good judgment throughout. Altman was ousted on November 17. The company's nonprofit board of directors said that a deliberative review had concluded that Altman "was not consistently candid in his communications with the board." Under OpenAI's unusual structure, the board's duty was to the project's original, nonprofit mission of developing AI that is beneficial to humanity, not the company's business. That board that ejected Altman included the company's chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever, who later recanted and joined with staff who threatened to quit if Altman was not reinstated. Altman said that there would be no hard feelings over that, although his note left questions over Sutskever's future. "I love and respect Ilya, I think he's a guiding light of the field and a gem of a human being.

OpenAI's new board formally took over on Wednesday and said it would add an observer role for partner Microsoft, capping a dramatic chapter for the artificial-intelligence startup and launching a new phase of difficult decisions. The new board's initial three members were decided as part of CEO Sam Altman's return last week after the previous board abruptly fired him. The replacement directors' priorities include creating an independent committee to review the events around Altman's ouster, OpenAI's interim chairman, Bret Taylor, said in a note to employees on Wednesday.