AI at War: Sam Altman vs OpenAI’s Board

Currently piecing the puzzle together: the situation with Sam Altman, OpenAI and the Board just went into all out turmoil.

So, a few hours back, the board of OpenAI fired Sam Altman.

Which is crazy- essentially, he had become the face of modern AI.- almost inseparable.

And, it seems, the board took a vote and ousted him.

Which begs the question- why? And why so abrupt?

The letter reads with some hostility:

By corporate standards, this seems quite vicious. Obviously something was brewing before this happened…

As a result of Sam’s removal, Greg Brockman (cofounder and President of OpenAI) also resigned. This is wild.

Why?

Because OpenAI is the golden star of tech right now, with many projecting its valuation to skyrocket to trillions of dollars. And Sam is one of the most successful CEOs of the last two decades for his work there…in a few years the valuation skyrocketed from 0 to $80 billion, no small feat.

More than anything, this seems to be analogous to when the Apple board got rid of Steve Jobs…

Anyways, many theories have been tossed back and forth, all over social media, but let’s first detail the string of events that took place yesterday, the day it actually occurred:

Sequence of events:

-The night before, Sam got a text from Ilya (another board member) asking to talk at noon the next day, and Sam agrees. Sam joins the meeting via google meet and was notified he’s being removed from the company

-At 12:23, Greg joins a google meet (not Microsoft teams again!) and was notified he was being removed from the board

-Within minutes, the memo goes out saying there’s been a “change in leadership”

Putting the pieces of the puzzle together, this seems like a haphazard corporate takeover- a coup of sorts.

Pretty wild- it’s why vetting board members is critical in a company (many such cases have occurred).

Here is Sam’s response on Twitter:

Well, that’s a teaser if I’ve ever seen one!

Why would the board do it?

Things get even crazier…not even the investors were notified of this!

Diving deeper into things, it seems to be that the board members who are for regulation and have worked in “think tanks” and policy establishments (Helen and Tasha) voted against Sam in this situation. 

But…it also seems that Adam D’angelo, the founder/CEO of Quora may have something to do with this. He sits on the board and seemed to have launched a product competitive to GPTs, called Poe, a while back.

Could this be out of spite? Or a disagreement on Acceleration of AI? Or something else? We might not know, but for a company that has changed the arc of human history in a few years, this seems like a big detail. Also interesting they did the firing when the markets close on a Friday…

Seems like this was highly preplanned by a few board members, and everyone else, even investors, were kept in the dark.

Now, there have been some second order consequences of this decision.

Reports are going out now that there is some churn in engineering leadership at the company, which is to be expected.

Anyways, will keep you posted.

Peace out.