Sam Altman to join Microsoft | Okadabooks shutting down

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Sam Altman, Greg Brockman to join Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team

Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, announced that OpenAI’s co-founders Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and colleagues will be joining Microsoft in the aftermath of Sam Altman’s ouster from the CEO position.

After the dismissal of Sam Altman on Friday last week and OpenAI CTO, Mira Murati taking over, several senior staffers including former Chairman and President Greg Brockman, Director of Research Jakub Pachocki, Head of Preparedness Aleksander Madry and Senior Researcher Szymon Sidor tendered their resignations in protest. Numerous additional OpenAI staffers quit in solidarity.

In light of this development, sources close to Altman say that the board itself, in a stunning reversal, “agreed in principle” to resign while reinstating him to his former position. This was supposed to happen on Sunday but it did not.

Some hours later, co-founder and board director Ilya Sutskever announced that Sam Altman won’t return as CEO of OpenAI, despite efforts by the company’s executives to bring him back. He also announced that Emmett Shear, co-founder of Amazon-owned video streaming site Twitch, will take over as interim CEO.

Thereafter Satya Nadella, who has been at the centre of the discussion between Sam Altman and the OpenAI board, announced Sam Altman next steps. He said Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, together with colleagues, will be joining Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team.

Nadella however said in interviews on CNBC and Bloomberg TV last night, that it’s possible Sam Altman could return to OpenAI in some capacity.🤔

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STARTUPS 

OkadaBooks is shutting down 📉

OkadaBooks, a Nigerian-based digital publishing platform, announced that it is shutting down. It made this down via a post on the X platform today.

Launched by Nigerian writer Okechukwu Ofili in 2013, OkadaBooks provides a platform for authors to publish and distribute their books digitally. The platform allows users to discover, buy, and read a wide range of digital books, including novels, non-fiction, poetry, and more. OkadaBooks aims to make literature more accessible by leveraging technology to connect authors and readers.

According to the statement by the company, “after much consideration and reflection, we have come to a difficult decision. OkadaBooks will be closing its virtual doors on November, 30 2023.”.

The company stated that it explored various avenues to keep the virtual bookshelves alive, but unfortunately none yielded fruit.…..read more

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SOCIAL MEDIA

WhatsApp rolling out option to authenticate account with email address verification

WhatsApp is now rolling out an update to let users link their account to an email address. As a result, people can authenticate on WhatsApp using email verification instead of SMS. The feature was previously available in a beta version of WhatsApp, and now everyone can use it.…..read more