Who Survived the OpenAI Board Shakeup? Find Out Now!
Sam Altman’s unexpected comeback as the CEO of OpenAI on Tuesday, following his recent dismissal, marks the culmination of a turbulent phase that exposed significant conflicts within the Artificial Intelligence community.
The board that fired Altman as CEO of ChatGPT’s creator has been almost completely replaced following a worker revolt, cementing his position at the helm of the company.
The only survivor in the boardroom in the new Altman era is Adam D’Angelo, CEO of the question-and-answer website Quora.
He will be joined by former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor and former US Treasury Secretary and Harvard University President Larry Summers.
In Summers, Altman finds a seasoned economist and prominent figure in Washington who has spoken out about both the dangers and opportunities of ChatGPT for the “cognitive classes.”
“ChatGPT is replacing what doctors do, listening to symptoms and making a diagnosis, before it changes what nurses do,” Summers told Bloomberg News earlier this year.
Altman and OpenAI founder Greg Brockman, who stepped down as the company’s CEO after Altman’s resignation, will not return to the board, which could soon have as many as six new members, the Wall Street Journal reported.
“I love the opener, and everything I’ve done the last few days has been in service of keeping this team and its mission together,” Altman wrote on social media late Tuesday on X, formerly Twitter.
– Disputes about departure –
The five-day saga began on Friday, when Altman was fired from the board for still unclear reasons.
The board said in a statement that it had fired Altman because “he was not consistently honest in his communications with the board,” without elaborating.
It staunchly resisted attempts to bring him back and cycled in two new CEOs over the weekend before three of its four remaining members were fired on Tuesday to pave the way for Altman’s dramatic return.
Some media outlets reported that there had been concerns that OpenAI was rapidly moving away from its stated mission of “building safe and useful artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity” for commercial gain.
However, OpenAI’s interim CEO Emmett Shear said in a social media post that he had been assured that “the board did *not* remove Sam because of any specific security disagreement,” without explaining why Altman had been fired.
– Fears of artificial intelligence control –
Altman’s return reinforces his position as a leader in the rapidly evolving field of generative artificial intelligence.
But the deal also underscores Microsoft’s growing power over the future of OpenAI.
During Five Days in the Wilderness, Altman briefly worked at the tech giant, which has poured billions of dollars into OpenAI and helped launch ChatGPT, whose success spawned a multibillion-dollar global race for AI research and development.
In an X post confirming his return, Altman cited “satya’s support” in his decision to return to OpenAI, referring to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
“I look forward to returning to openai and building on our strong partnership with msft,” Altman added in an apparent reference to Microsoft.
While OpenAI’s ChatGPT is the most well-known large language model — or LLM — many other big tech companies, including Google and Facebook parent Meta, have invested heavily in powerful AI technology, raising concerns about its governance.
Earlier this month, Western governments and tech companies agreed on a new security testing system to ease concerns about the growth rate of artificial intelligence and the lack of global safeguards to control it.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told a conference in London that the world is “playing catch-up” in efforts to regulate artificial intelligence, with “potential long-term negative consequences” for everything from jobs to culture.
