Crisis at OpenAI: The Pulse of Sam Altman

OpenAI is in the news these days because the Board of Directors decided to fire Sam Altman, its CEO.

OpenAI has offered Sam Altman to return as CEO and change the Board members and he has accepted. The new Board will include Bret Taylor former co-CEO of Salesforce.

In a statement they have indicated that they want to make a “strong partnership” with Microsoft.

As a consequence of all this mess Sam Altman now has more power in the company, he will continue as CEO, his vision to increase revenue and move towards more advanced AI in less time and make changes to the “Super Aligment” philosophy.

On the other hand, Microsoft will have more say in the company’s decisions.

But what has happened?

OpenAI’s CEO was fired via video call. Subsequently, Greg Brockman, co-founder of OpenAI and President of OpenAI, resigned after hearing the news. A decision that no one understood seeing the direction OpenAI has taken in recent years, the amount of investment that has been obtained, and the obvious advances in Artificial Intelligence that have been developed.

In response, Sam Altman reached an agreement in principle to move to Microsoft as well as the rest of the OpenAI employees who wished to do so. It was ideal for Microsoft because it meant acqui-hire, ac quiring OpenAI at zero cost, only hiring its employees, while being able to take part of the control over what OpenAI has already developed since they are on its Azure servers.

Why were OpenAI Global LLC shareholders and OpenAI employees against Altman’s dismissal?

Last week’s valuation of OpenAI according to experts is said to be $90 billion. If on the one hand OpenAI Global LLC investors are pushing not to lose not only the investment they have made but also the future profits they can have thanks to Open AI and on the other hand OpenAI employees who do not want to lose the value of their shares, it is normal both employees and investors want Sam Altman back.

There is no official confirmation of who the shareholders are or in what proportion they are distributed, but Microsoft is said to have 49% and Amazon, Peter Thiel (co-founder, Paypal), Sequoia, Andreesen Horowitz, Bedrock Capital (Silicon Valley mega funds), Khosla Ventures, etc. are said to have stakes.

Differences between OpenAI and OpenAI Global LLC

They split OpenAI into two: OpenAI, which is still a non-profit company, and a subsidiary company, OpenAI Global LLC, with the ability to raise investors and give stock. That’s when Microsoft gave them money, and let them use Azure servers for free for their AI development.

The OpenAI Board of Directors was the one that really controls OpenAI Global LLC, so that the commercial part was not independent of the positive values for humanity of OpenAI. The greatest fear and at the same time aspiration is to develop AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), the artificial intelligence that surpasses human intelligence.

What could have happened to get Sam Altman fired?

Thousands of theories are circulating, from the fact that AGI has already been reached and they don’t want to commercialize or use it, to the fact that Artificial Intelligence is going too fast, to the fact that Altman is only thinking about revenue and being the protagonist.

Sam Altman has been focused on the commercial side for the last while and has been on a tour to get Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds to make AI chips (billions), the DevDay where they presented GPTs, marketable AI agents.

One could say that the Board is divided between those who want to increase funding at all costs and those who want to be cautious about OpenAI’s work and how it may affect humanity. Apparently, Greg Brockman, co-founder, is Sam Altman’s right-hand man and for this reason was also fired shortly thereafter.

What is certain is that Sutskever, one of those who supposedly pushed for Altman’s departure, and who communicated it directly to him, leads the Super Aligment department or team, which is in charge of telling a hypothetical AI with human or superior capabilities what values that AI has, and how to force it to follow human values and not go on its own: https://openai.com/blog/introducing-superalignment

As to why also Greg Brockman, it is understood to be 100% alienated in everything with Sam Altman, but it is only speculation.

He later said he was very sorry and even threatened to leave if the board did not resign.

What is the current status of OpenAI?

Sam Altman is again the Co-founder and CEO of OpenAI.

Greg Brockman is again Co-founder and President of OpenAI

Bret Taylor is the chairman of the new Board of Directors.