OpenAI's board learned about ChatGPT's release on Twitter, ex-board member says

• OpenAI's board was as surprised as the public was by ChatGPT's 2022 release, a former member says.
• Helen Toner said the board "was not informed in advance" and actually learned about it on Twitter.

The release of ChatGPT took the world by surprise in 2022 — and a former OpenAI board member says that was the case for the company's board of directors, too.

On November 30, 2022, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman tweeted a link to the chatbot, writing: "today we launched ChatGPT. try talking with it here." But Helen Toner said the board wasn't given a heads-up about the release and learned about it from Twitter, now X.

"For years Sam had made it really difficult for the board to actually do that job by withholding information, misrepresenting things that were happening at the company, in some cases outright lying to the board," she said in an interview with Bilawal Sidhu on "The TED AI Show" that aired Tuesday.

Toner said one example was the ChatGPT release, where "the board was not informed in advance."

Last November, Altman was briefly ousted, with OpenAI's board at the time saying a review found he "was not consistently candid in his communications with the board."

OpenAI reinstated Altman as CEO less than a week later, after facing internal and external pressure. Nearly all the company's staffers had threatened to quit after Altman's firing, and Microsoft said it would hire Altman to lead an AI team.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. OpenAI's chairman, Bret Taylor, said in a statement to the podcast, "We are disappointed that Ms. Toner continues to revisit these issues."

Taylor added that an independent review of Altman's firing "concluded that the prior board's decision was not based on concerns regarding product safety or security, the pace of development, OpenAI's finances, or its statements to investors, customers, or business partners."