Mira Murati: Who is the new OpenAI interim CEO?

Who is OpenAI's new interim CEO Mira Murati?

You may have heard that Sam Altman is out at OpenAI. But enough about Altman. He's old news.

Murati was named as the ChatGPT creator's new interim CEO in the same announcement sharing Altman's sudden exit. However, the transition for OpenAI and its new CEO will likely be a smooth one as Murati has been with OpenAI in a senior executive role for some time.

Here's some things you might want to know about OpenAI's new CEO Murati.

Quick background on Murati

Murati was born in Albania in 1988. At 16, she moved to Canada to attend Pearson College UWC. She graduated in 2012 from Dartmouth with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. While in school, she interned at Goldman Sachs.

Murati worked for Tesla

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has prior connections to OpenAI, namely being an early founder in the company, although he later broke off ties after disagreements with the company's direction.

Now, Musk can say he also used to employ OpenAI's current CEO. Murati spent three years at Tesla as a senior product manager at the EV company. While at Tesla, Murati helped develop the Model X.

She worked as an engineer at a French aerospace company before that. After leaving Tesla, she worked at sensor and VR technology company Leap Motion where she was vice president of the product and engineering division.

When did Murati join OpenAI?

Murati joined OpenAI in 2018 and is considered one of the "brains" behind ChatGPT, as she was involved in its creation. She quickly became the company's CTO.

As CTO, Murati has been profiled a number of times over the past year as OpenAI and its ChatGPT chatbot exploded on the scene. She appeared in The Daily Show last year to discuss artificial intelligence and its potential for good as well as its potential for bad.

Murati has also backed the need for regulation in AI.

"​​It’s important for OpenAI and companies like ours to bring this into the public consciousness in a way that’s controlled and responsible," Murati told Time earlier this year. "But we’re a small group of people and we need a ton more input in this system and a lot more input that goes beyond the technologies — definitely regulators and governments and everyone else."

Now, at 35 years old, Murati is now the interim CEO of the emerging AI industry's largest company.