In an open letter, a majority of the company’s employees demand the resignation of OpenAI’s board of directors and the reappointment of fired CEO Sam Altman. The letter was signed by 550 of OpenAI’s 700 employees, who threatened to quit if their demands were not met – writes The Guardian.
OpenAI’s board of directors unexpectedly fired CEO Sam Altman on Friday, followed shortly by the removal of director Greg Buckman from the board. The decision raised astonishment and panic within the company.
Sources in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that the board had changed its mind and would take back Altman, who is considering the offer.
According to CNN sources, the reason behind Altman’s dismissal was that Altman was considering more flexible and faster AI development, while the majority of the board members, led by co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, wanted to proceed more cautiously. This has been a hot topic around the world for months, so in July, OpenAI, along with other major tech companies including Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, signed the July Declaration, in which they voluntarily agreed to adhere to certain principles to reduce the risk of MI. At the beginning of November, the US government took a significant step toward regulating AI through a presidential decree, but EU regulation is already well underway.
OpenAI is also criticized for too rapid and, according to its critics, ill-considered AI development, for example in the form of investigations launched against ChatGPT; Or when you are accused of theft due to copyright infringement for using artwork without permission to train your generative models. Meanwhile, competitors are not idle either, for example, Amazon announced in September that it would invest four billion dollars in Anthropic, which was founded by former OpenAI researchers.
Along with the firing, the company also announced that CTO Mira Murati will temporarily replace Altman. Brockman hinted to X that he and Altman are already preparing for a joint sequel: “Don’t spend time worrying. It’s going to be okay. Bigger things are coming soon.” Of course, this all depends on whether Altman eventually returns to OpenAI after the alleged board shake-up.
Incidentally, Altman also has a crypto project in the works: we wrote about the rather miserable Worldcoin here.
