Less than a day after Sam Altman was ousted as CEO of artificial intelligence giant OpenAI, several reports have surfaced suggesting that the company, or at least its major investors, including Microsoft, are in talks to bring him back.
The coup on the six-member board of directors, which includes Altman and company founder and chairman Greg Brockman, was led by chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, The Verge and The New York Times reported. It took place at noon on Friday without Brookman's involvement and without any prior discussions with Altman or the company's major investors.
Those investors — and Microsoft in particular, which poured an estimated $13 billion into the former nonprofit — turned a blind eye. And while the Redmond-based tech behemoth issued a public statement expressing “tremendous confidence” in the post-Altman OpenAI, many news outlets are reporting that Microsoft was playing on Altman's leadership and was a central player behind the scenes. Moving to return him to lead the company.
Neither OpenAI nor Microsoft has confirmed any of these reports. Other OpenAI investors are also pushing for Altman's return, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Can Altman come back?
The chaos stems not only from what Altman has been doing for the company — most recently revealed at a packed Dave's keynote a week ago — but he's starting something new and will be in direct competition with his former employer, he said. Reuters
Altman's sudden dismissal triggered a series of significant departures from the company, starting with Brockman.
“I'm so proud of what we've all built together since we started in my apartment 8 years ago,” Brockman wrote on Twitter, referring to Altman's previous farewell message. “We've been through hard times and good times together, achieving so much for all the reasons it should have been impossible.
“But based on today's news, I quit,” he said.
Several other OpenAI employees followed Altman and Brockman out the door, including three key AI researchers, the report said.
On Saturday, The Verge reported that a significant group of OpenAI employees would leave the company if Altman did not return, which updated the report late Saturday that the negotiations had missed the 5 pm PT deadline set by those employees. “If Altman decides to leave and start a new company, his employees will definitely go with him,” the outlet reported.
Has OpenAI achieved AGI?
As for why Sutskever and three other board members chose Altman to step down, The Verge said it was the result of a “power struggle between the research and production sides of the company.”
Indeed, many AI watchers raised the prospect of the OpenAI research team reaching a major milestone a few weeks ago, forcing a showdown between OpenAI's nonprofit, humanist origins and its massively successful for-profit corporate future.
“Unlike traditional companies, the board is not responsible for maximizing shareholder value, and none hold equity in OpenAI,” The Verge noted. “Rather, their mission is to ensure the creation of ‘broadly useful' artificial general intelligence, or AGI.”
Given the universal threat that AI could advance beyond what humans can control — a stage known as The Singularity — a major breakthrough in AI could create a divide between those who want to slow things down and those who want to impose them. Even faster forward.
“Sam, it must be something [Altman]Greg [Brockman]Dan Sirocker, CEO and founder of RewindaAI, and the board agreed to remain confidential for the benefit of OpenAI and the world at large. “Furthermore, the firing would only make sense if the action was determined by the board to ‘threaten secure AGI. It would be broadly useful.'
Many have seen the corporate drama in 2011. They compared it to when Apple's board of directors fired Steve Jobs in 1995. The technology visionary later led the Cupertino company to become the most valuable company in the world. He was hired and fired on the same day eleven years apart.
In Altman's case, however, the comeback could be much faster.
This is a developing story and will be updated as information becomes available.
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