The CEO of OpenAI will be returning
OpenAI: Bringing Safety to the AI World: An OpenAI Perspective on the Recent Board Advisory Board Disruption Controversy
The announcement was the latest development in a drama that began last Friday, when OpenAI’s board of directors removed Altman over apparent differences of balancing safety with artificial intelligence with the desire to release new AI tools into the world.
When Openai announced that a man was returning, he posted “I love openai, and everything I’ve done over the past few days has been in service of keeping this team and its mission together.”
Helen Toner, a key board member in the ousting of Altman, gave a shout out on her twitter account that we are all getting some sleep.
Kelly Sims, a partner at Thrive, said that Openai had the potential to be one of the most consequential companies in computing. Sam and Greg have a deep commitment to the company’s integrity, and an ability to inspire and lead. We couldn’t be more excited to have them back at the company they founded and helped build into what it is today.
The deal to return appears to be a done deal but there is still some last minute paperwork to be completed. Over the last few days, I have worked to keep this team and its mission together.
After removing Altman last Friday, the board originally appointed CTO Mira Murati as interim CEO. It took Greg Brockman, the company president, from his position as chairman. Brockman quit several hours later.
Altman, Brockman, Elon Musk and others founded OpenAI about eight years ago as a nonprofit AI research lab. It went from being a small company to becoming a profitable powerhouse under the leadership of Altman. Last year, the company released ChatGPT, setting the pace for the tech industry’s focus on a sophisticated type of artificial intelligence known as generative AI.
I joked that the bizarre chart that mapped out this relationship looked like something a future GPT might create when forced to design a tax dodge, which Sutskever did not appreciate. “We are the only company in the world which has a capped profit structure,” he admonished me. It makes sense, if you believe that if we succeed really well, the company will take my and your jobs, and everyone’s jobs, and it would be nicer if they didn’t make so much money. In the meantime, to make sure that the profit-seeking part of the company doesn’t shirk its commitment to making sure that the AI doesn’t get out of control, there’s that board, keeping an eye on things.
The board no longer had confidence in the CEO after firing him last week, because he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board. The company didn’t give examples of the allegedly bad behavior or let anyone know about it until just before it was made public. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and other investors were not given advance notice. The four directors, representing a majority of the six-person board, also kicked OpenAI president and chairman Greg Brockman off the board. Brockman resigned very quickly.
Altman’s firing triggered an extraordinary few days in which he discussed returning to the company before agreeing to join Microsoft instead. Hundreds of staff signed a letter threatening to leave the company in protest of the board’s handling of Altman’s removal. Almost 100% of the company had added their name to the letter by the afternoon.
Even ChatGPT might have struggled to dream up such a convoluted story of corporate intrigue. There are questions surrounding what led to his dismissal.
