Sam Altman, a co-founder of OpenAI, will take over as CEO again shortly after the board ousted him, the company announced. The IT business said that the “in principle” calls for the appointment of new board members.
It follows Mr. Altman’s dismissal on Friday, which prompted an open letter from employees threatening to quit if he wasn’t given his job back.
In a post on X, previously Twitter, Mr. Altman stated, “I am looking forward to returning to OpenAI. I love OpenAI, and everything I’ve done in the last few days has been to support the continued success of this team and its mission,” he continued. The company would expand on its strong partnership with Microsoft, he concluded.
Source: CNBC
The prominent AI startup was thrown into disturbance last week when the board chose to remove Mr. Altman, which prompted co-founder Greg Brockman to resign. Three non-employee board members—Adam D’Angelo, Tasha McCauley, and Helen Toner—as well as Ilya Sutskever, a third co-founder and the company’s chief scientist, made the decision. However, Mr. Sutskever signed the staff letter urging the board to change course and apologized on Monday for the incident involving X.
In the meantime, Mr. Altman received an offer from Microsoft, the largest investor in OpenAI, to head “a new advanced AI research team” within the corporate sector. OpenAI announced on Wednesday that it will partially reassemble the board of directors that had fired Mr. Altman and that it had agreed in principle to his return to the tech startup.
According to OpenAI, current director Adam D’Angelo will be joined by former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor. Additionally, Mr. Brockman announced his return to the company in a post on X. The interim CEO of OpenAI, Emmett Shear, expressed his “deep pleasure” upon Mr Altman’s return after his intense hours of work.
He said that he was unsure of the best course of action when he joined OpenAI on X, but he went on to say that Mr. Altman’s reinstatement was the pathway that maximized safety alongside doing right by all stakeholders involved.
Source: CNBC
Microsoft is encouraged by the changes to the OpenAI board, according to CEO Satya Nadella. “We think this is a crucial first step towards more informed, stable, and efficient governance,” he said.
Although it has made significant investments in OpenAI, Microsoft does not have a presence in the boardroom. On Friday, the board of OpenAI abruptly announced that Mr. Altman would be fired, citing a “loss of confidence” in his leadership. This marked the beginning of a power struggle within the company. It’s unclear what he was supposedly not forthright about, but he was accused of not being consistently clear in his communications. As a result, almost every employee at OpenAI, more than 700 in total, signed an open letter threatening to quit if the board did not step down.
According to the letter, Microsoft promised them that all OpenAI employees would have jobs if they wanted to work for the company. Later on Tuesday, though, it was evident that talks were taking place to make it possible for Mr. Altman to return.
However, the turmoil of the last several days has prompted concerns about how a quartet of individuals could be responsible for decisions that have rocked a multibillion-dollar technology company. This is partially due to OpenAI’s unique goals and structure.
OpenAI was established in 2015 with the goal of developing safe artificial general intelligence that benefits all of humanity as a non-profit organization, as like many charitable organizations. The pursuit of shareholder interests was not part of the mission. The non-profit board continued to be in charge, and in 2019 it established a for-profit subsidiary, but its objectives stayed the same.
The board members who fired Mr. Altman have not yet provided an explanation for their choice; Elon Musk is one of those who has pushed their members to say something. However, it hasn’t happened yet. Ms. Toner posted on X “now we can all get some sleep,” in response to the announcement of the reinstatement of Altman and new board.
