Artificial intelligence is the current hype in the tech industry. And OpenAI is the leading company in the field of artificial intelligence. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has quickly become the face of AI in general.
That’s why it was such a shock when OpenAI’s board of directors he suddenly announced on Friday evening that Altman had left the company. Then, less than 24 hours later, word quickly spread that OpenAI wanted Altman back. What?!
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The situation with OpenAI and Sam Altman is still developing and there is a lot we don’t know. But here’s everything you need to know so far:
Who is Sam Altman?
Sam Altman is one of the original founders of OpenAI, funding the company in 2015 along with a group of other investors such as Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. At the time, Altman was a partner at startup incubator Y Combinator. He would later become president of the organization.
In 2019, Altman stepped down from his role at Y Combinator and joined OpenAI as its CEO. A few years later, in 2022, OpenAI will launch its chatbot ChatGPT, and in just a few months, ChatGPT will become the fastest growing app of all time.
OpenAI boots Sam Altman
Altman’s exit from OpenAI on Friday night stunned the tech world, as there were no indications that relations between Altman and the leading artificial intelligence organization were on the rocks. Even more surprising was the manner in which Altman was released and what exactly the OpenAI board said in its announcement. The timing was also unusual, as companies typically wait until markets close when they make such announcements in hopes of controlling the worst fallout.
“Mr. Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he had not been consistently forthright in his communications with the board, impeding his ability to exercise his responsibilities,” OpenAI’s post said. “The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue to lead OpenAI.”
Rumors and speculation quickly spread on social media, as tech industry executives, journalists and observers scrambled to make sense of the situation based on the board’s announcement.
Shortly after OpenAI was announced, Altman break his silence of X, the Elon Musk-owned platform formerly known as Twitter.
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“I loved my time at Openai. It was transformative for me personally and, hopefully, a little for the world. Most of all, I loved working with such talented people,” Altman published. “I’ll have more to say about the next one later.”
Altman’s post also lacked details, but it did provide some insight into Altman’s take on the situation — and perhaps the reason Altman was fired wasn’t one he felt he needed to hide from.
OpenAI’s president steps down
Another shock happened on the same Friday evening. In its announcement of Altman’s departure, the board also announced that OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman is stepping down as chairman of the board.
The board’s statement also said Brockman remains with the company in his other roles.
However, the board appears to have been unaware that Brockman intended to side with Altman and leave the company entirely. Soon after Altman posted on X, Brockman followed with his own announcement that he was leaving OpenAI.
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“Based on today’s news, I’m leaving,” he publishedadding that he is proud of his time at OpenAI.
How Altman’s firing went down
Brockman wasn’t done after announcing he was leaving the company he helped found. Late Friday night, he decided to share his version of events for Altman’s removal from the company.
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According to Brockman, Altman received a text message Thursday night from OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutzkever about a meeting the next day. At Friday’s Google Meet meeting, Altman was fired by the entire board, minus Brockman, who was not present. Brockman says he was later informed he was removed from the board, but was retained in his other positions at the company.
According to Brockman, most of OpenAI’s leadership was unaware of Altman’s removal until that day. He says OpenAI’s then-CTO and current interim CEO Mira MuratI was informed of the news only the night before.
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Why was Sam Altman fired?
We still don’t know exactly why Altman was fired for sure.
However, tech journalist Cara Swisher reported that the main problem appears to have been “displacement” between the for-profit side and the non-profit side of OpenAI.
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According to Swisher, Sutskever was able to get the board behind him regarding his concerns about the direction in which OpenAI is moving. OpenAI was originally founded as a more open source non-profit. However, over the years, the company increasingly moved into its for-profit division, led by Altman.
Altman was it is said more focused on profit and product development than on issues such as AI safety, which has raised concerns among the nonprofit organization OpenAI, which also oversees the company.
OpenAI now wants Altman back
While the nonprofit wing, led by the board of directors, had its say in Altman’s case, investors in the nonprofit arm were he is not happy with him.
Big tech companies like Microsoft have invested heavily in OpenAI. The computer giant alone, for example, has pledged $13 billion to the company. And it’s certainly not because Microsoft feels strongly about the nonprofit’s AI ethos. He invested in the for-profit OpenAI run by Sam Altman.
According to a report from Forbeswhile investors don’t have the power to bring Altman back, they’ve been pushing OpenAI’s board of directors to do so.
And, apparently, it worked. On the edge reported on Saturday — less than 24 hours after Altman’s firing — that the board had contacted Altman to work out a return to the company.
However, the deal, which would see the board resign and Altman and Brockman return to their roles at OpenAI, never went through as the Saturday night deadline passed.
OpenAI employees, for their part, expressed their disapproval of Altman’s firing. Some of them made their point clear supports for the now former social media executive. Three senior OpenAI researchers took a different approach and resigned from the company. According to The informationthese researchers are OpenAI Research Director Jakub Pachotsky, Risk Intelligence Team Leader Alexander Madry, and Senior Researcher Shimon Sidor.
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As of now, OpenAI assures its employees that an agreement is being worked on for Altman’s return and that “remains optimistic.” Altman has too shared his appreciation for your colleagues.
“I really love the openai team,” he said in an X post.
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However, Altman may still decide to go his own way and start his own AI company. It seems many of his former employees would move there to work with him. And he will have more control and say how he runs things.
At the moment, it seems that anything can happen.
