- It's been a wild week at OpenAI. In fact, wild doesn't begin to cover it.
- We now know Sam Altman's returning to the company after being fired, but we are still very confused.
Sam Altman is set to return as CEO of OpenAI after one of the most confusing weeks in Silicon Valley history.
Altman's shock ousting came on Friday when the OpenAI board removed him from the CEO role with immediate effect, citing his less-than-candid communications as their reasoning.
Things pretty much spiraled from there after fellow cofounder and former company president Greg Brockman followed Altman out of OpenAI and into Microsoft.
By Monday, almost all employees at OpenAI had signed a letter threatening to quit unless Altman returned and the board resigned. Just a day later, Altman was back as CEO, and the board was largely replaced.
The unprecedented mess has left commentators wondering what could have caused one of the most important AI companies to shoot itself in the foot.
The vague language and general lack of explanation provided by the board — even to its most important investors — has let speculation run wild.
We may never know why Altman was ousted
It's the million — or $86 billion — dollar question on everyone's minds.
Why was Sam Altman suddenly fired as CEO of OpenAI?
The board's initial explanation included a scathing statement about Altman's communication. In a blogpost, the board said:
"Mr. Altman's departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities. The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI."
The statement implied Altman had been dishonest or even lied to the board in some capacity. If this is the case, as Business Insider's Alistair Barr points out, the public deserves to know what, if anything, he lied about.
OpenAI insiders told BI's Kali Hays that Sutskever had offered employees two explanations for Altman's ousting regarding personnel issues. However, employees weren't convinced.
Was there conflict over the safety of AI?
The drama at OpenAI highlighted one of the biggest debates in tech: the safety of advanced AI development.
Some industry experts have issued extreme warnings about the tech's potential danger, including the risk it may one day wipe out humanity. Recently, the legitimacy of these concerns has come into question, with several AI heavyweights — including AI godfather Yann LeCun — accusing Big Tech of having other motives for hyping up fears around AI.
Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI's chief scientist who was rumored to play a central role in Sam Altman's ousting, was committed to AI safety. Sutskever and Altman often clashed over differences around ways to reduce AI's potential harm to humanity, Bloomberg reported.
While Altman has expressed concerns about the safety of AI, he has also been pushing the commercialization of ChatGPT — possibly at a pace the safety-conscious board was not OK with.
OpenAI appeared to push back on the speculation around AI safety's role in Altman's departure. Employees were told over the weekend his dismissal had nothing to do with "malfeasance or anything related to our financial, business, safety or security/privacy practice," a message viewed by The New York Times said.
Will OpenAI change its complex structure?
One of the more popular theories for Altman's ousting is that tensions between the nonprofit board and the for-profit arm of OpenAI finally came to a head.
The nonprofit board, which included chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, ultimately had the power to fire Altman because of the company's unusual structure.
Sources inside OpenAI at the time told The Atlantic that the release of ChatGPT had highlighted underlying ideological conflicts between the nonprofit board and the for-profit arm.
Pressure to commercialize the chatbot created divisions among leadership, they said. While OpenAI's safety teams wanted to slow things down, the product teams pushed to capitalize on the hype. The launch of further products, including a premium tier of ChatGPT powered by GPT-4, only served to exasperate the issues, sources told the outlet.
By Tuesday, the board had been all but replaced, with only Quora CEO Adam D'Angelo holding a seat on the new team.
What is Microsoft thinking?
OpenAI ousted Altman without consulting its lead investor, Microsoft.
This reportedly didn't go down well with its CEO Satya Nadella. After leading talks to try and get Altman reinstated at OpenAI, Nadella later hired him and Brockman to head up an AI team at Microsoft.
Nadella has been clear that he doesn't want to be caught off-guard about major leadership shakeups at OpenAI in the future.
While appearing on a podcast with journalist Kara Swisher, Nadella said OpenAI should've consulted Microsoft before firing the former CEO. He added that it would've been the "very least" the board could have done.
He seemingly still does not know why Altman was fired, telling Bloomberg: "The board has not talked about anything that Sam did other than some breakdown in communications."
Commentators had speculated that Microsoft would be after an OpenAI board seat — or at least a more formalized communication system — in the wake of the fallout.
What's up with the suspicious letter from 'former employees'?
Never one to be left out of the drama, Elon Musk also weighed into the chaos on Tuesday by sharing a letter supposedly from former OpenAI employees.
BI has yet to verify the authenticity of the letter. It was notably unsigned, and the original source had been removed.
The letter made unverified claims about Alman and Brockman over their management at OpenAI.
The letter said: "Throughout our time at OpenAI, we witnessed a disturbing pattern of deceit and manipulation by Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, driven by their insatiable pursuit of achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI)."
Several OpenAI employees have dismissed the claims on X, however.
"The attacks on Greg's and Sam's character say more about the accusers. Totally false," Peter Welinder, a VP at OpenAI, said on X. "I mean, we argue about GPU allocation all the time! Sam's job is to decide. Ofc someone will be disappointed. Grow up."
Representatives for OpenAI did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.