Is OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman's firing scandal due to an attempt to oust a board member who wrote a paper critical of the company?
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On November 19, 2023, OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman will step down from his position as CEO by decision of the board of directors, and at the same time, he will leave OpenAI. The news made a big splash around the world, as President Greg Brockman and some senior executives also left OpenAI to follow Mr. Altman. As for why Mr. Altman's relationship with the board of directors has deteriorated, it is reported that troubles surrounding a paper written by one of the directors are one factor.
Before Altman's Ouster, OpenAI's Board Was Divided and Feuding - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/21/technology/openai-altman-board-fight.html
Behind the Scenes of Sam Altman's Wild Ouster From OpenAI - WSJ
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/altman-firing-openai-520a3a8c
OpenAI has an unusual structure in that there is a ``profit sector that conducts business'' under ``OpenAI as a non-profit organization.'' OpenAI explains that this is 'to build artificial general intelligence (AGI) that is safe and benefits all humanity.' Even though OpenAI was doing well on the business front, Mr. Altman was suddenly dismissed because the board of directors decided that it was a nonprofit organization.
This is not the first time that relations between Mr. Altman and the board have soured. In 2021, OpenAI's co-founder and vice president of research, Dario Amodei, left OpenAI, and at this time, several people, including Amodei, tried to kick Altman out of OpenAI. However, as Mr. Amodei and his colleagues' plan failed, Mr. Amodei and his colleagues eventually left OpenAI and established a rival company, Anthropic .
This time, the board members who supported Mr. Altman's dismissal were OpenAI's chief scientist Ilya Satskyvar, Adam D'Angelo, co-founder of FAQ site Quora, entrepreneur Tasha McCauley, and Georgetown Helen Toner, director of the Center for Security and Emerging Technology;
The Wall Street Journal quoted OpenAI board members as saying, ``The decision to fire Mr. Altman was not triggered by a single incident, but by a gradual loss of trust and increasing anxiety over time.'' 'Because of that,' he explains. In fact, OpenAI's board of directors explained that ``Mr. Altman has not consistently been honest in his communication with the board.''
OpenAI has three directors resigning from 2022 to 2023. Among the three was Reid Hoffman, a co-founder of LinkedIn and an investor in OpenAI. According to The Wall Street Journal, the resignation of Mr. Hoffman and others has tilted OpenAI's board toward academics and outsiders, weakening understanding of Mr. Altman and his vision. Furthermore, there was no consensus on who should be appointed to the three vacant positions on the board of directors, and the positions remained vacant until the time of writing this article.
The major cause of discord between Mr. Altman and the board of directors was a paper published by Mr. Toner, one of the board members.
Mr. Toner jointly published a paper titled ``Artificial Intelligence and Costly Signals'' in October 2023 with members of the Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology.
Decoding Intentions - Center for Security and Emerging Technology
https://cset.georgetown.edu/publication/decoding-intentions/
In the paper, Toner writes, ``Anthropic (OpenAI's rival) is delaying the release of its chatbot AI Claude until other companies come out with products with similar performance, and that ``we are in a hurry to release ChatGPT.'' 'We are determined not to release the album without cutting corners.' This part seems to have angered Mr. Altman, who expressed dissatisfaction with the paper, saying, ``While praising Anthropic's methods, it seems to be criticizing OpenAI's safety efforts.''
In particular, OpenAI has been the subject of an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission since July 2023, and Mr. Altman warned Mr. Toner by email that this paper could work against him.
U.S. authorities begin investigating OpenAI after ChatGPT generated ``disgraceful, misleading, and false descriptions about individuals'' - GIGAZINE
Mr. Toner countered that ``This paper is an academic paper that analyzes the challenges that ordinary people will face when trying to understand the intentions of countries and companies developing AI,'' but Altman He answered, ``The criticism from members of OpenAI's board of directors carries a lot of weight.'' Furthermore, Mr. Altman claimed that Mr. Toner had ``damaged the company'' and made a move to remove him from the board of directors.
According to The New York Times, Mr. Satsukivar told Mr. Altman at this time that he thought that he was focusing too much on growth alone, ignoring the balance between AI growth and AI safety. In the end, Mr. Satsukivar supports Mr. Altman's dismissal because he values the safety of AI.
When the plan to fire Mr. Altman was proposed by the board of directors, Jason Kwon, OpenAI's chief strategy officer, said, ``Mr. Altman's ouster jeopardizes the future of the company, and this is a responsibility of the board.'' It's a betrayal,' he said. However, Toner said, ``OpenAI's mission is to develop artificial intelligence that benefits all humanity,'' and even if the company were to go bankrupt by ousting Altman, it would be in the interests of all humanity. There is a possibility of doing so.'' In the end, the directors' opinion was that ``OpenAI would be stronger without Mr. Altman.''
The board of directors has appointed former Twitch CEO Emmett Shea as the new CEO after Altman's dismissal. However, several employees responded to the internal Slack message announcing an all-hands meeting that included Mr. Shea with an emoji pointing up the middle finger, and more than a dozen people came to the site. More than 700 of its 770 employees wrote an open letter stating, ``Unless the current directors are removed and new independent directors are appointed, we will resign from OpenAI and join Mr. Altman and Mr. Brockman.'' Signed.
90% of OpenAI's employees demand ``Sam Altman's return and the resignation of all directors'' and threaten to go to a new company unless he quits, and Ilya Satskyvar, who is said to be an opponent, also turns to Altman's faction - GIGAZINE
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