NOVEMBER 22, 2023
OpenAI said Sam Altman will return as chief executive of the artificial-intelligence startup that he co-founded, ending a dramatic five-day standoff between him and the board that fired him.
OpenAI said the parties were “collaborating to figure out the details.” The company announced the formation of a new initial board that won’t include three of the four board members involved in removing Altman.
The new board will include Bret Taylor, the former co-CEO of Salesforce; Larry Summers, the former Treasury secretary; and Adam D’Angelo, the only member of OpenAI’s previous board to remain. Taylor will be the chairman, the company said. Altman won’t be on the initial board.
The previous board and Altman’s camp also agreed to conduct an independent investigation into his conduct, the decision to oust him last week and its aftermath, a person familiar with the matter said.
The new board is expected to add as many as six additional members, the person said, in addition to continuing its duties.
An OpenAI spokeswoman declined to comment on the investigation or the board expansion. She declined to elaborate on what other details were still under discussion.
After the announcement, Altman posted on X, “i love openai, and everything i’ve done over the past few days has been in service of keeping this team and its mission together.”
The announcement marks the end of an impasse over who would lead the company that has become synonymous with the boom in AI technology. Since the board unexpectedly fired Altman on Friday, investors have been pushing the directors to reinstate him, employees have threatened to quit en masse and Microsoft, OpenAI’s largest backer, said it was hiring him to lead a new advanced AI research team.
Altman and his camp had spent much of the past few days pushing to restore him as CEO and board member of OpenAI, people familiar with the discussions said. Altman also pushed for all of the previous directors to resign. The board initially rejected those demands.
The solution that emerged late Tuesday split the difference. While Altman is back as CEO, neither he nor Greg Brockman, the OpenAI co-founder who quit in protest on Friday, recovered their board positions. Meanwhile, only one of the four board members behind the initial decision to remove Altman—D’Angelo, the CEO of question-and-answer service Quora—will stay on the board.
The other three directors will step down. Those board members are Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s chief scientist and co-founder; Tasha McCauley, an adjunct senior management scientist at the Rand Corp., a policy nonprofit; and Helen Toner, a director at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology, a research organization tied to Georgetown University.
Toner posted late Tuesday, “And now, we all get some sleep.”
The confusion over OpenAI’s future and leadership created a dayslong drama that gripped Silicon Valley and the business world. People waited to see who would blink between a nonprofit board defending what it saw as the company’s mission to safely develop AI and the man perceived as the face of the revolution in the technology.
While Altman’s return resolves the immediate issue of who will lead the company, it raises other questions, including what scars will be left on everyone involved after this crisis.
Brockman posted on X early Wednesday that he was “getting back to coding tonight.”
Emmett Shear, former CEO of Twitch who had been named as one of two interim chief executives of OpenAI since Friday, posted on X that he was “deeply pleased by this result.”
“This was the pathway that maximized safety alongside doing right by all stakeholders involved,” Shear wrote. “I’m glad to have been a part of the solution.”
Many details are still unclear, including what role—if any—Microsoft will play in an expanded board. It is also unclear if the board will make changes that give investors additional protections.
OpenAI was founded in 2015 and is governed by a nonprofit organization with a board devoted to making artificial general intelligence safe and available for all. Under that structure, the board has no obligation to protect investor returns, but to ensure that the company’s technology is beneficial for humanity, according to OpenAI’s website.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella posted on X that he was encouraged by the changes announced by OpenAI. “We believe this is a first essential step on a path to more stable, well-informed, and effective governance,” he posted. Altman said that with the new board and the support of Nadella, he is looking forward to returning to OpenAI and building on its strong partnership with the software giant.
Courtesy: WSJ
