Last updated on: Tuesday, November 21, 2023.
This week on the Friday 17 Nov, Sam Altman was fired from his position of CEO by its board of directors of OpenAI. Move has been much speculated for the motives and forms behind the action taken by the board.
Sam has been the driving force behind the famous Chat based Gen AI tool ChatGPT which brought the fame and value to the company shares. He took the company from nothing to billions. Sam Altman has become one of the most recognised CEOs for his views and ability to communicate the issues that we face in the modern world with AI technology. He had earlier also advocated for the regulation of the AI technology and its potential risks of using it in a real world scenario.
While leaving the company Sam was just 38 years old and had built one of the out successful and promising verticals in the AI industry. ChatGPT has been setting benchmarks and continuing to release new models with higher capabilities including image generation using DALLE.
Reasons behind the removing Sam Altman
Although the real reason behind the move has not been made satisfactorily clear to everyone, the board has said that ‘he was not consistently candid in his communications’ as the cause for this change.
Sam was an open critic of the AI usage and its impacts on jobs and security all over the world. At many instances Sam had shared his honest opinions about the effects AI about the loss of jobs and other impacts. This could have been an instance where many were afraid of leaping into the AI tech and could have hunted the business of AI industry. Some wonder if this was one of the cause for this decision.
After affects of Sam’s removal from the position.
After Sam Altman was removed from his position, President and co-founder Greg Brockman has also quit.
Both Sam and Greg after the move, posted on the platform X(formerly Twitter). Both shared the feeling that their time in the company was transformative and loved the work they did at OpenAI. Greg also shared that the move came to them as a “shock” and “saddened by what the board did”.
Sam in the end has also shared he “will have more to say about what’s next year”. Here are the tweets shared by Sam and Greg –
What’s next for the company?
After removal of Sam Altman from the board, OpenAI has appointed Mira Murati, who was the CTO of the company as interim CEO. Mira has worked under many successful companies and has held important positions such as Senior Product Manager at Tesla.
One of the recent reports suggest that the investors are trying to engage in conversation with the company to reinstate Sam Altman’s position in the company and bring him back on board.
We are following up on the news for the upcoming decisions of the board and Sam’s decision on the matter.
Source – https://openai.com/blog/openai-announces-leadership-transition
Altman’s Demands
Sam Altman reportedly put forth 2 demands to rejoin OpenAI:
- Immediate resignation of the board members behind his termination (these positions were to be filled with new members elected by the investors and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella).
- Microsoft Teams will be used, exclusively, to conduct all future virtual meetings at every organization level.
Reinstating Altman also meant bringing back co-founder Greg Brockman.
3 Days, 3 Different Leaders?
Although the board had purportedly said yes to Altman’s 1st demand, some of them did not resign before the agreed upon deadline, thereby closing doors for Altman and Brockman. In a surprise move by the board, interim CEO Mira Murati has also been removed from her position for publicly supporting Altman. As revealed by OpenAI Board Director, Ilya Sutskever, the nonprofit board has now appointed Emmett Shear (former CEO of Twitch) in her place.
Employees threaten to resign
In an open letter, over 500 employees have showed solidarity with Altman and threaten to resign if he is not reinstated as the CEO. Microsoft has assured any and all employees of OpenAI, a job at their new subsidiary, helmed by Altman and Brockman, should they choose to resign OpenAI. (Link to the letter).
This letter clearly showcases the utter exasperation of the staff over the series of events that have occurred over the past few days and the lack of proper communication or transperancy.
Shear’s First Move
Sharing his “three point plan over the next 30 days”, Shear is assuring everyone to thoroughly investigate the entire incident involving Altman’s removal. He has also addressed the issue of keeping employees, investors and customers in the dark and wishes to open up communication channels between them and the leadership, in order to better reform the management to drive the best results for customers.
Will Altman return?
There is word going around that negotiations have reopened between Altman, Shear and the board members on his possible return to the helm. This also comes amid pressure from the investors who want Altman to be reinstated. With Thanksgiving just around the corner, the push to resolve this crisis is higher. On Monday, OpenAI’s Vice President of Global Affairs, Anna Makanja, informed the staff (via memo) that they had been in “intense discussions” with the board, Altman and Shear to unify the company.
Amid the chaos, Salesforce CEO, Marc Benioff, has also offered jobs to any OpenAI researcher who has resigned.
