Sam Altman has returned to OpenAI as CEO, but the details of exactly why the board pushed him out in the first place are still a mystery.
Could it have been a simple as … bad vibes?
Different theories over the last five days have been floated: The board feared he wasn't being careful enough about the possibility of AI destroying humanity. Or maybe the board member who is also Quora CEO was miffed that ChatGPT's latest updates might compete with his own AI product.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said he hadn't been told the reason — and the would-be replacement CEO, Emmett Shear, also was reportedly unable to get the board to give him a specific explanation of what Altman did.
Now, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that the reason may have been even more unclear: The board might have simply — and vaguely — gotten the ick.
From the Journal, emphasis ours:
People familiar with the board's thinking said there wasn't one incident that led to their decision to eject Altman, but a consistent, slow erosion of trust over time that made them increasingly uneasy. Also complicating matters were Altman's mounting list of outside AI-related ventures, which raised questions for the board about how OpenAI's technology or intellectual property could be used. The board agreed to discuss the matter with their counsel. After a few hours, they returned, still unwilling to provide specifics. They said that Altman wasn't candid, and often got his way. The board said that Altman had been so deft they couldn't even give a specific example, according to the people familiar with the executives.
From that description, it sounds like the board really couldn't pinpoint exactly what was wrong, other than some sort of ~bad vibes~.
And if that is the case, it sounds like we'll never know the specific reasons. (And the board couldn't even name them!)
But ultimately, they did have a point: In the end, Altman got his way.