Sam Altman fired as CEO of OpenAI
Sam Altman fired as CEO of OpenAI
Sam Altman has been fired as CEO of OpenAI, the company announced on Friday.
“Mr. Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities,” the company said in its blog post.
EDITED TO ADD direct link to OpenAI board announcement:
https://openai.com/blog/openai-announces-leadership-transition
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What'd he do?
No idea, but given how sudden and out-of-the-blue this is, and the fact that he was co-founder of OpenAI (meaning that to some degree the board is pushing him out of his own company) you can make an educated guess that's it's huge.
My guess, personally, is financial malfeasance,if only because personal misbehavior usually involves some hemming and hawing before a company concludes that the ejectee "is no longer a good fit and does not represent the values held by our organization." This was very sudden, no one saw it coming, and that's not too usual.I guess we'll see, lol.
EDITED TO ADD I've changed my mind after a closer look at the wording of the board announcement. Given the language (Altman lied to them) and the chairman stepping down (but remaining in the C-suite) I’m starting to think that maybe Altman was trying to take something in an unapproved direction and present it as a fait accompli but got found out before he was ready to reveal it:
Mr. Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities. (paragraph 3)
As a part of this transition, Greg Brockman will be stepping down as chairman of the board and will remain in his role at the company, reporting to the CEO. (paragraph 6)
It's worth keeping in mind the explicit mention of their key responsibility at the end, which was the original non-profit charter of "ensuring that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity."
Whatever it was it's spicy enough that they're trying to bury the press release in the late Friday afternoon news graveyard
Edit: even better, whatever they're trying to distance themselves from is so important they didn't even wait for the closing bell on the market.
I interpret their wording that he lied to the board repeadetly and made some unethical backdoor deals of evil.
More likely he didn't want to be evil and all the board cares about is money
Almost certainly the opposite - it's the board that is non-profit and Sam has been the one bringing billions of dollars of commercially-tied investment
Makes me wonder if he wanted to put ethical guardrails on the product that would’ve been less profitable for the board.
It's the non-profit board, not an investor board. None of the members have equity in the company.
Yeah I'm going with the board doesn't like the commercially tied investment deals from other companies.
I’ve worked with some non-profits… that are greedier than for-profits. The board just kinda… y’know…. Money.
…tax-free tho
Quick edit: donations make hella money and old people love to leave mills hahahaha
Unverified, but I saw some rumor about sexual abuse in his past. Look it up.
Those allegations have been floating since ~2021, I have a hard time believing they'd take emergency action on them 2-3y later.