AGI Workers Revolting or Classical Utilization of Power? Maybe Sam Altman’s vision is different than that of the board of directors at OpenAI
A busy week for OpenAI, a turmoil, CEO fired, Staff angry with the decision of terminating their CEO, senior figures in the company revolting against the board of directors and Sam Altman joining Microsoft.
Friday, November 17th, 2023, must have been a normal last working day of the week for millions of people, no meetings, new projects being proposed, and everyone was getting ready for the weekend and Thanksgiving, however, the atmosphere was completely different at OpenAI’s office on that day.
OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman suddenly got fired from his position in the company with immediate effect, Mira Murati, the Chief Technology Officer was appointed Interim CEO, and OpenAI’s board of directors announced the change of management personnel on the same day citing their reasons for terminating Sam Altman, the main reason was “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”.
OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT & DALL-E has seen tremendous success since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, however, it looks like this was a misalignment or difference in views between the board of directors and Sam Altman, as of this moment, it is not clear what triggered the sudden change in management, however, indicators show that it was untimely as OpenAI isn’t suffering from bad management or poor performance which are the biggest reasons CEO’s get fired, also, it seems that Altman is a popular guy, what happened next was unexpected.
Greg Brockman, the chairman who was included in the announcement to be stepping down from his position as Chairman and will be reporting to the CEO, On November 18th, 2023, posted on X (formerly Twitter) that he’s proud of the work he and the team have done at OpenAI and he will stay a strong advocate for AI and its role of safe AGI that benefits humanity, however based on the news, he quits from OpenAI.
November 19th, 2023, a number of OpenAI staff sent an ultimatum to the board of directors threatening to leave their positions in the company and join Microsoft in a new venture, the list of demands were:
1) Reinstate Sam Altman and Greg Brockman
2) The board of directors to resign and be replaced by independent members.
After this, there was a big move on social media accounts of OpenAI staff showing disagreement with the new change in what looks like an organized movement, everyone was tweeting “OpenAI is nothing without its people.”
Amid news speculating that talks between the board of directors at OpenAI and Sam Altman is ongoing, and a reinstatement is possible, we’ve been getting news about Sam Altman and Greg Brockman joining Microsoft to start a new AI venture which will most likely attract many of OpenAI’s staff.
Conclusion
It’s still not clear as to the real reasons behind all the chaos in OpenAI in the past couple of days, but one can speculate that it might just be a different point of views between Sam Altman and the board of directors in how the company is managed, or, it might be something bigger and has to do with breakthroughs in AGI and how it will affect humanity.
