“AI safety”, the most worrying thing for all mankind, caused Sam Altman to eventually become “unemployed”
Summary
OpenAI’s primary responsibility is to be “responsible to humanity.”
No Hollywood spy movie would dare to shoot like this.
On November 17, local time, in a video conference, OpenAI’s board of directors suddenly announced that co-founder and CEO Sam Altman would leave immediately, Greg Brockman, a key figure in the development of ChatGPT, was also dismissed, and the company’s CTO Mira Murati was appointed as interim CEO. .
In a post on X, Sam Altman said “I loved my time at OpenAI” and that he would have “more to say about the future later.”
Greg Brockman said, “Sam and I are shocked and saddened by the board’s actions today.” “We will be fine. Greater things are coming.”
Now, everyone is guessing, what happened to OpenAI? Why fire Sam Altman and oust Greg Brockman?
OpenAI’s board of directors consists of OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo, tech entrepreneur Tasha McCauley, and Helen Toner, director of strategy at the Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technologies.
Just before OpenAI announced the dismissal of Sam Altman, Ilya sent Sam a text message informing him to join the video conference on the morning of the 17th. Everyone knows what happened next.
Judging from the current information, the dismissal was notified by board member Ilya Sutskever, who leads an AI security team, and interim CEO Mira Murati was also informed in advance.
The reason why Sam Altman was finally kicked out may not be the “court fight” between chief scientist llya, but the “security” issue that the entire AI industry is talking about and that worries global regulators the most.
“Safety” differences
Before Sam Altman was fired, there had been disagreements and debates within OpenAI about AI safety.
This summer, OpenAI established a security team dedicated to finding technical solutions to prevent AI from running out of control, and to understand and limit the harm of AI to society, such as abuse, economic chaos, disinformation, bias and discrimination, addiction and over-dependence, etc. And said that 20% of the computing power obtained by the company will be used for this work.
One of the people leading the security team is Ilya Sutskever, co-founder, chief scientist and board member of OpenAI, and it was this person who gave Sam Altman a firing ultimatum.
Sam Altman and Ilya Sutskever at an event in Tel Aviv
According to Greg Brockman, on the evening of November 16, US time, Sam received a text message from Ilya asking to talk at noon on Friday. Sam joins a meeting and the entire board is there except Greg. Ilya tells Sam he’s fired and the news will be released soon.
At noon on November 17, Greg received a text from Ilya asking for a quick call. Ilya sent a link to the meeting and Greg was subsequently informed that he would be removed from the board but that the company would retain his role.
Greg was one of the earliest employees at OpenAI, spent a lot of time writing software, was a key figure in the development of ChatGPT and other core products, and held an equity stake in the company. He chose to resign just hours after the board fired Sam Altman, perhaps because of his Is a close ally of Sam Altman.
Around the same time, OpenAI published a blog post. “Mr. Altman’s departure follows a review process by the Board of Directors that concluded that he had been inconsistent in his communications with the Board, which hindered his ability to perform his duties. The Board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue to lead OpenAI,” the company said in a statement. confidence.”
Everyone is questioning whether this is a malicious “coup” at OpenAI. Fired Sam Altman received an outpouring of support and condolences.
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt directly called Sam Altman a hero, praising him for transforming OpenAI from scratch to an extraordinary valuation of $90 billion. Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky also joined in the praise of Sam Altman, calling him one of the best founders of his generation.
At an impromptu all-hands meeting after the dismissal of Sam Altman, faced with accusations of a “coup”, Ilya’s response was said to be, “You can say that,” “but I don’t agree.” He believed that “this is the board of directors fulfilling its duty to Responsibility for the mission of a for-profit organization is to ensure that OpenAI builds AGI that benefits all of humanity.”
In an internal memo to employees, interim CEO Mira Murati cited “our mission and ability to jointly develop safe and beneficial AGI.” She said OpenAI has three pillars, including “maximizing our research program, our safety and alignment efforts — particularly our ability to predict and risk scientifically, and working with others in a way that benefits everyone.” Share our technology with the world.”
Ilya Sutskever, Sam Altman, Mira Murati, Greg Brockman | Wired
OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a non-profit organization. However, in 2019, OpenAI reorganized and Sam Altman became OpenAI CEO, and he helped create a for-profit subsidiary called OpenAI LP to raise capital from outside investors such as Microsoft for training the AI. OpenAI itself remains a non-profit organization governed by a board of directors.
Altman played a key role in raising capital, including $10 billion from Microsoft. Although OpenAI imposes a profit cap on its investors, OpenAI is now valued at $85 billion and is generating $1.3 billion in annualized revenue, Sam Altman recently told employees.
On the other side, concerns about AI security and the commercialization of OpenAI have also divided OpenAI’s internal management. At the end of 2020, a group of OpenAI employees left the company and founded the AI company Anthropic. This company uses security as its selling point. The founder also directly stated that he left because of dissatisfaction with OpenAI’s commercialization and strategy.
Ilya has also been worried about the dangers of powerful AGI in the coming years. Previously, in an OpenAI blog post, he wrote that “enormous superintelligence forces could be very dangerous and could lead to human disempowerment or even human extinction.”
After firing Sam Altman, the OpenAI board continued in a statement, “OpenAI aims to advance our mission: ensuring that artificial intelligence benefits all humanity. The board remains fully committed to that mission.”
Where is the “dishonesty”?
In addition to the “security” issue, the OpenAI board of directors said that Sam Altman was “not candid”. Judging from the existing information, there are also questions about whether Sam Altman concealed expenditures.
On November 15, just two days before Sam Altman was fired, OpenAI controversially announced that it would stop new sign-ups for ChatGPT Plus, the $20-per-month premium version. This highlights the issue of cost and revenue to a certain extent.
Inside sources say OpenAI is losing money on every ChatGPT Plus user and needs time to build up server capacity.
This coincided so much with the firing of Sam Altman that some people speculated whether Sam Altman misrepresented financial data, user numbers or cloud computing costs to the board of directors? Are expenses higher than expected? Or is he blocking the board’s access to relevant information?
Another confirmed connection is that the board also removed OpenAI co-founder and chief technology officer Greg Brockman from his chairmanship because Greg may be concerned about the technical costs of running the OpenAI system. He is one of the most influential people at the startup, with a say in everything from product decisions to setting direction for the engineering team. If spending goes off the rails, two managers could be complicit.
In addition, Sam Altman’s departure also involves some unusual factors. It is reported that Sam Altman plans to use OpenAI technology for Worldcoin, which also raises some concerns about moral hazard.
Sam Altman and Satya made a little joke at the OpenAI Developer Conference | OpenAI
As the “funder” of OpenAI, what is Microsoft’s attitude? According to people familiar with the matter, Microsoft leadership received only 5 to 10 minutes’ advance notice from OpenAI before news of Sam Altman’s firing became public. OpenAI interim CEO Mira Murati told employees at a company-wide meeting on Friday that their relationship with Microsoft remains stable.
Not long ago, Microsoft briefly blocked employees from accessing ChatGPT on company devices on November 9, warning employees that the reason given was security concerns.
It was only 10 days before the OpenAI developer conference. At that time, Sam Altman was still chatting and laughing with Microsoft executives, and even participated in his regular meeting with Microsoft infrastructure executives on the 15th.
“Today was a strange experience in many ways,” Sam Altman admitted on X’s post.
He has said that the ultimate goal of GPT-5 is to create a super AI equivalent to the human brain, but have security issues arise in the development of AI, which ultimately led to this rapid internal “coup”?
After being kicked out of OpenAI, what’s next for Sam Altman?
OpenAI fires Sam Altman timeline
November 6, 2023: OpenAI held a developer conference and launched the “Custom ChatGPT” function.
November 9, 2023: Microsoft issues a warning asking its employees to stop using ChatGPT due to security concerns.
November 15, 2023: OpenAI suspends registration for ChatGPT Plus. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced at the Ignite conference that all innovations in OpenAI will be used on Microsoft’s Azure cloud services.
November 16, 2023: Sam Altman receives a text message from llya advising of a noon talk on Friday.
November 17, 2023: OpenAI’s board of directors suddenly announced that co-founder and CEO Sam Altman will leave with immediate effect. The board concluded after a review that Altman was less than candid in his communications with the board and hampered the board’s ability to carry out its responsibilities. The board has lost confidence in him continuing to lead OpenAI. On the same day, Altman released a statement about his departure on the X platform (formerly Twitter).
Later on November 17, 2023: OpenAI co-founder and former chairman of the board Greg Brockman announced that he, too, would be leaving the company. This comes after the board asked Brockman to step down as board chairman but retain his role in the company.
November 17, 2023: OpenAI names Mira Murati, the company’s chief technology officer, as interim CEO.
