Reentering his role as OpenAI’s CEO is Sam Altman.
Late on Tuesday, the board of the nonprofit organization overseeing OpenAI, which birthed ChatGPT, disclosed that an agreement in principle had been established between Altman and the board. This agreement outlines Altman’s return as CEO, with plans for a new board to replace the one that ousted him last Friday.
With Altman’s return, one of the most closely followed business dramas in tech history should come to a stop and put an end to the massive uprising by OpenAI staff members against his dismissal.
The ordeal began last Friday when the nonprofit organization managing OpenAI terminated Altman from his CEO position, citing his “consistent lack of candor in communications with the board, hindering their ability to fulfill responsibilities.”
Over the course of the following week, OpenAI evolved into a hybrid of Silicon Valley and success. The business named two different acting CEOs; Altman was said to have joined Microsoft, but that announcement was later retracted; deadlines for discussing Altman’s return were allegedly missed; and staff members were threatening to quit in droves.
The CEO of the website Quora and a former early employee of Facebook, Adam D’Angelo, and former White House adviser and Harvard University President Larry Summers will make up the first three members of OpenAI’s new board, the company announced on X.
We are working together to resolve the specifics. In an anonymous message on X, the corporation expressed its gratitude for the patience shown throughout this process.
Although D’Angelo was already on the OpenAI board, other former members will no longer be on it. Tech entrepreneur Tasha McCauley, Ilya Sutskever, the chief scientist of OpenAI, and Helen Toner, the director of strategy and foundational research grants at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, are among the departing members.
Other than their statement on Friday, the board members never provided a clear explanation for their decision to dismiss Altman as CEO.
Brad Lightcap, the chief operating officer of OpenAI, described Altman’s termination as unexpected in a memo he issued to staff members on Saturday.
“With certainty, we can state that the board’s resolution had nothing to do with wrongdoing or anything concerning our finances, operations, security, or privacy policies,” he penned.
The board has been at odds on questions regarding the safe development of AI for more than a year, including how swiftly to implement the technology while maintaining human control over it, according to an article published in The New York Times on Tuesday. According to the publication, Altman erred on the side of speed.
Returning to his role as CEO, Altman expressed his happiness in a separate statement on X.
He wrote, eschewing regular punctuation, “I love OpenAI, and everything I’ve done over the past few days has been in service of keeping this team and its mission together.”
Altman continued, saying he was “looking forward to returning” and “building on our strong partnership” with Microsoft now that the new board was in place. Microsoft and OpenAI have a long history of working together; Microsoft invested in the business, and OpenAI makes use of Microsoft’s cloud computing services.
In a post on X, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella expressed his company’s encouragement about the improvements made to the OpenAI board. We think that this is a crucial first step toward more informed, stable, and efficient governance.
Executives at OpenAI praised the choice.
After Altman was fired, Mira Murati, who served as interim CEO for a short while, shared the OpenAI announcement late on Tuesday along with a plain blue love emoji. The company’s president and co-founder, Greg Brockman, posted on X with the caption, “Returning to OpenAI and getting back to coding tonight.”
For ten years, Altman, 38, has been a mainstay of the San Francisco tech scene. He has served as an advisor to startups, an investor, and most recently, the CEO of the hottest company in the business. Because of this, he became more well-known outside of the tech industry.
Other well-known tech celebrities, like former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, swiftly rallied to his support following his abrupt dismissal on Friday. In a matter of days, almost 740 out of the 770 employees at OpenAI signed a letter to the board of the business requesting Altman’s return.
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