The OpenAI crisis worsened when many employees resigned after the removal of the CEO
The turmoil at OpenAI continued to escalate after founder Sam Altman was abruptly ousted on November 17, when three top artificial intelligence researchers reportedly quit the company.
In a blog post, OpenAI's board of directors announced Altman's ouster as CEO because of his persistent lack of candor in his dealings with the board, which prevented him from fulfilling his responsibilities. According to the article, Chief Technology Officer Meera Murthy has now become the interim CEO.
The decision has since sparked a wave of resignations at the company. Greg Brockman, founder and president of OpenAI, announced his departure hours later. OpenAI's senior staff has reportedly resigned, including research director Jakub Pacocki, event manager Alexander Madry, and senior researcher Szymon Sidor.
“There's no way you can burn through $90b in enterprise value overnight.”
OpenAI board pic.twitter.com/8zmTBz3mNt
— Alex Cohen (@anothercohen) November 18, 2023
At least one employee was fired along with Altman's firing. Alex Cohen, who was responsible for preparing presentations for OpenAI's board of directors, has lost his job. “No one told me why I was fired, but Sam texted me ‘wtf' and the next thing I know my Slack and Gmail are disabled,” Cohen said on X (formerly Twitter), predicting more OpenAI employees will quit in the coming days. :
“I would wager that 40% of OpenAI's employees are currently looking at new roles. Sam and Greg were a big reason people joined the company and without them I don't know why they would be there.”
OpenAI's decision to remove Altman is believed to have stemmed from disagreements at the startup with Ilya Sutskever, co-founder and chief scientist, particularly with new fundraising and AI development.
Altman's next steps are unclear following the latest development. He is the founder of Tools for Humanity – the developer of the crypto project Worldcoin – and has been approached about joining new projects. Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson invited Altman to join the ecosystem's decentralized Large Language Model (LLM).
Sam @sama since you have some free time now. Hit me up if you are interested in doing decentralized LLM. It will be an interesting Cardano Partnerchain.
— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) November 18, 2023
Magazine: Are DAOs Overhyped and Dysfunctional? Lessons from the front lines
