Good morning and a happy Tuesday to you. Let’s get right into it, shall we?
1. Optus’ CEO steps down
About an hour after we published yesterday’s edition of 5 Things, Optus owner Singtel announced that the Australian telco’s CEO, Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, would be resigning. The announcement came two weeks after one of the worst network outages in Australian history, enduring almost an entire day and affecting both Optus network and NBN customers. The company is now searching for a new CEO, and chief financial officer Michael Venter has been assigned the role of interim CEO.
2. Sam Altman… Goes to Microsoft?
Staying on CEOs for a moment, and former CEO of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI (ousted over the weekend) has moved to Microsoft. Altman has moved to the beast of Redmond as the head of a new advanced artificial intelligence team, alongside OpenAI’s former president, Greg Brockman. Meanwhile, Twitch co-founder Emmett Shear has come on board as OpenAI’s new CEO. 500 of the 750 employees at OpenAI have threatened to resign from the company, demanding that Altman be reinstated as CEO.
3. Australian Red Cross looking into AI
Coming back to Australia, and as reported by itNews, the Australian Red Cross has said that generative AI will be a “godsend”, and could lead to improved distribution of organisational resources (without such a high need for technical integration specialists). The organisation is working to integrate Boomi AI into its operations – the system is built to let users make natural language requests, to help APIs and data models coincide with each other.
4. X acknowledges advertiser exodus
X (formerly Twitter) CEO Linda Yaccarino has acknowledged that some of the platform’s biggest advertisers, such as Apple, Oracle, and IBM, have pulled their ads from the platform, but claims that their decisions to do so were informed by “detractors and fabricated distractions,” according to Forbes. The big spenders pulled ads due to antisemitism concerns on the platform, originally brought to light by Media Matters.
5. Oh alright, how about one more CEO story?
It’s a fairly quiet part of the year as far as tech news goes, so it’s very nice of all these companies to organise ousting their CEOs at the same time. This time around, it’s the CEO of self-driving car company Cruise, Kyle Vogt. As reported by Engadget, Vogt announced his resignation on X: “The last 10 years have been amazing, and I’m grateful to everyone who helped Cruise along the way. The startup I launched in my garage has given over 250,000 driverless rides across several cities, with each ride inspiring people with a small taste of the future,” the former CEO said. Extreme scrutiny has been applied to Cruise as of late, with self-driving car operations suspended across the U.S..
BONUS ITEM: Turns out Snoop Dogg’s announcement that he’s “quitting smoke” was… A stove ad.
Snoop Dogg is still smoking weed
— Culture Crave 🍿 (@CultureCrave) November 20, 2023
Fooled everyone for a stove ad pic.twitter.com/LAQjVhfz8t
Anyway. Have a nice Tuesday.