Culture

WTF Just Happened With OpenAI?

by Ky Stewart  23 November 2023
openai sam altman microsoft

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In what might be one of the biggest tech stories in recent memory, OpenAI — the company behind ChatGPT — ousted the CEO and co-founder Sam Altman. The news then prompted another co-founder, Greg Brockman, to quit. Shortly after, Altman was hired by Microsoft, which prompted 700 OpenAI employees to write an open letter to the company threatening mass resignation and migration to Microsoft if Sam isn’t reinstated as CEO. Now after five days and four CEOs, Sam Altman is back at the helm of OpenAI. Someone get the Succession writers onto this ASAP. 

For those of you not completely in the tech world, or just terrified by artificial intelligence (AI), OpenAI is a San Francisco-based company founded in 2015 by Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever, among others. Sam Altman and Elon Musk served as the original board members, but Elon resigned in 2018 due to a potential conflict of interest because of his role as CEO of Tesla. 

ChatGPT is probably the most notable creation to come out of OpenAI. It’s the chatbot that produces text responses to human prompts which many people use to cheat on exams. OpenAI also produces Dall-E, which creates AI images based on text prompts. Sam Altman was widely considered to be the figurehead of OpenAI and the reason behind its success with ChatGPT and Dall-E. It’s currently valued at $90 billion, making it the third most valuable private company in the world. Microsoft has also pumped $13 billion of investment into OpenAI over several years, helping to push it to the forefront of AI advancement. 

Now, however, OpenAI has been in a freefall after what appears to have been a leadership coup severely backfired. 

November 17, 2023: OpenAI Board Announces “Leadership Transition”, Fires CEO Sam Altman; Greg Brockman Quits

Everything kicked off when OpenAI penned a statement announcing that the company would be going through a leadership transition. The statement said that Mira Murati, OpenAI’s chief technology officer, had been appointed as interim CEO. It also said that the OpenAI board of directors voted to remove Sam Altman from the company after a “deliberative review process by the board”.

The review process “concluded that [Altman] 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.” Yikes.

The use of the word “transition” is interesting as it is vague, considering they essentially fired Altman and it wasn’t a mutual decision. 

As expected, Twitter (X, or whatever) went into a frenzy over the news, with many left with more questions than answers after the OpenAI statement. Many thought Sam would start his own company. 

Shortly after the news broke, Sam Altman posted his own statement on Twitter saying “i loved my time at openai [sic]. It was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. most of all i loved working with such talented people.” He finished the tweet off with “will have more to say about what’s next later.”

All eyes quickly shifted to fellow OpenAI co-founder and President Greg Brockman as he shared a message he’d sent to the OpenAI team following news of Altman’s departure. 

“I’m super proud of what we’ve all built together since starting in my apartment 8 years ago”, the message says, “but based on today’s news, i quit.” Drama.  

Here’s where things start to get really juicy. A few hours after posting his original message, Greg posted a full timeline rundown, in third person, of what exactly unfolded in the board meetings. “Sam and I are shocked and saddened by what the board did today,” he said. “We too are still trying to figure out exactly what happened.” He then took a swipe at fellow co-founder Ilya who seemed to orchestrate Sam’s removal. 

“Last night, Sam got a text from Ilya asking to talk at noon Friday. Sam joined a Google Meet and the whole board, except Greg, was there. Ilya told Sam he was being fired and that the news was going out very soon.” See this is why you should never join a last minute work meeting. 

Greg’s timeline continued: “At 12:19pm, Greg got a text from Ilya asking for a quick call… Greg was told that he was being removed from the board (but was vital to the company and would retain his role) and that Sam had been fired. Around the same time, OpenAI published a blog post.” 

The same night it was reported that three senior OpenAI researchers resigned in the wake of the company’s shock announcement. According to The Information, Jakub Pachocki (research director), Aleksander Madry (AI risk evaluation head), and Szymon Sidor (researcher), all resigned after OpenAI fired Altman. This is all getting too much for me. 

November 18, 2023: OpenAI Tries To Reinstate Sam Altman 

It would appear that all the backlash OpenAI received following their coup led the board to begin talks with Sam Altman to return as the CEO. It’s believed that Microsoft also pressured the board for a similar outcome. The Verge reported that a source close to Altman said the board agreed “in principle” to resign to make way for Altman and Brockman to return. That, however, missed a 5pm deadline and the board was “waffling”. 

At the same time, OpenAI’s Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwon sent staff a memo on Saturday night saying the company was “optimistic” it could bring back both Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, along with the other employees who had resigned. 

There were final discussions between Sam Altman and the OpenAI board on November 19. Sam tweeted a photo of his guest badge saying it would be “last time” he would wear one. I love that energy, to be honest. 

November 19, 2023: OpenAI Announces New CEO, Microsoft Hires Sam Altman

Late on Sunday evening, it was announced that Twitch co-founder Emmett Shear would become the next CEO of OpenAI. The third one in three days. 

Emmett shared a lengthy Twitter post early on Monday morning saying he got “a call inviting me to consider a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: to become the interim CEO of OpenAI”. He said he consulted with his family and reflected on it “for just a few hours” before he accepted. Emmett said that he took the job, despite having left his role at Twitch to spend time with his nine-month-old child, because “OpenAI is one of the most important companies currently in existence”. That’s slightly alarming but let’s move on. He then acknowledged that Sam’s firing was not handled properly and damaged people’s trust in OpenAI. I don’t know if there was much trust there to begin with, if I’m being honest.

Two hours before Emmett posted his manifesto length tweet, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella tweeted (you can really tell Twitter is the go-to place for tech bros) a message of support to OpenAI, announcing that Microsoft had hired Sam Altman and Greg Brockman to “lead a new advanced AI research team”. That’s truly an iconic move from Microsoft. It even saw their stock hitting record highs.

Both Sam and Greg retweeted Satya’s message — and they both said “the mission continues”, which is incredibly cringey but what else can we expect from these people? In Greg’s tweet he mentioned that the initial leadership of the team would be made up of himself, Sam, and the three researchers who resigned from OpenAI. 

November 20, 2023: OpenAI Staff Revolt, Threaten Mass Resignation

Following the announcement of the new CEO and the Microsoft hires, OpenAI staff revolted against the company. An open letter to the OpenAI board, signed by over 700 OpenAI employees, said that the board had “undermined” the company and called for them to resign from the board and reinstate Sam and Greg. If not, the signatories of the letter said they would resign from OpenAI and follow Sam and Greg to Microsoft. For context, there are only 770 employees at OpenAI. 

Interestingly, Ilya Sutskever was one of the signatories on the letter, which is odd considering he is the one who fired Sam and removed Greg from the board in the first place. However Ilya shared his regrets for his “participation in the board’s actions”. Former interim CEO Mira Murati then tweeted “OpenAI is nothing without its people”. 

Clearly this put a lot of pressure on the OpenAI board, which stood to lose almost all of its staff. Although it was announced that Microsoft hired Sam and Greg, the deal hadn’t been finalised. The Verge reported that because of Ilya’s switch to supporting Sam, there were only two board members left who needed to change their minds to reinstate Altman. Altman then posted to Twitter a somewhat cryptic message saying “we are all going to work together some way or other… one team, one mission”. 

November 21, 2023: Sam Altman Reinstated As OpenAI CEO

After a five-day saga that included an attempted coup, Sam Altman will be reinstated as CEO of OpenAI. Greg Brockman will also return, along with a new board. 

The new board will be made up of Bret Taylor, Larry Summer, and Adam D’Angelo, who was part of the previous board that fired Altman. According to The Verge, a source close to the negotiations says that the sole job of this initial board will be to appoint a new board made up of nine people. It’s largely believed that Microsoft will have a seat on that new board. 

Speaking of… what about that Microsoft role Sam and Greg were offered? Shortly after the news broke, Sam once again hit Twitter saying he loves OpenAI and that when he made the decision to join Microsoft on Sunday “it was clear that was the best path for me and the team”. He then said “with the new board and w satya’s support, i’m looking forward to returning to openai, and building on our strong partnership” with Microsoft. 

Of course, Satya then retweeted Sam’s post, saying “We are encouraged by the changes to the OpenAI board. We believe this is a first essential step on a path to more stable, well-informed, and effective governance”. He continued, “Sam, Greg, and I have talked and agreed they have a key role to play along with the OAI leadership team.”

It’s hard to not think of the damage this past week has caused to the reputation of OpenAI, though I’m sure Sam feels great about how much the employees believe in his leadership considering how willing they were to jump ship and follow him.  

Still, it is alarming to see how easy it was for a company like OpenAI to fall into pieces in just a matter of days, especially given the safety risk it presented for both the company and for AI research as a whole. As Vox reported, the threat to AI safety posed by Sam and Greg moving to Microsoft was far too great for OpenAI to not rehire the both of them. There are still plenty of conspiracies around what exactly led to the breakdown in communication between Sam and the board and if there was AI progress considered “too powerful” in the works. Regardless, there’s a deep tension between OpenAI being set up as a nonprofit but having made immense commercial gain. It’s a tension where safety sometimes falls to the back of the mind when those in charge set their sights on profit. As Vox noted, there’s a scramble for AI regulation across the globe but until then everything essentially rests in the hands of Sam Altman who certainly demonstrated how powerful he is after this week. Should we trust him when he says he has humanity’s best interests at heart? 

Despite the coup ultimately failing, it’s scary that it happened in the first place — especially for a company that aims to be smarter than humanity while serving it. I’d like to think those potentially creating the robots who will one day run our lives can at least cohesively run a business and not attempt to overthrow each other. Call me an idealist.

Ky is a proud Kamilaroi and Dharug person and writer at Junkee. Follow them on Instagram or on X. 

Image: Getty