Sam Altman fired as CEO of OpenAI

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Chief technology officer Mira Murati appointed interim CEO to lead OpenAI; Sam Altman departs the company.
Search process underway to identify permanent successor.


The board of directors of OpenAI, Inc, the 501(c)(3) that acts as the overall governing body for all OpenAI activities, today announced that Sam Altman will depart as CEO and leave the board of directors. Mira Murati, the company's chief technology officer, will serve as interim CEO, effective immediately.

A member of OpenAI's leadership team for five years, Mira has played a critical role in OpenAI's evolution into a global AI leader. She brings a unique skill set, understanding of the company's values, operations, and business, and already leads the company's research, product, and safety functions. Given her long tenure and close engagement with all aspects of the company, including her experience in AI governance and policy, the board believes she is uniquely qualified for the role and anticipates a seamless transition while it conducts a formal search for a permanent CEO.

Mr. Altman's departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities. The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.

In a statement, the board of directors said: "OpenAI was deliberately structured to advance our mission: to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all humanity. The board remains fully committed to serving this mission. We are grateful for Sam's many contributions to the founding and growth of OpenAI. At the same time, we believe new leadership is necessary as we move forward. As the leader of the company's research, product, and safety functions, Mira is exceptionally qualified to step into the role of interim CEO. We have the utmost confidence in her ability to lead OpenAI during this transition period."

OpenAI's board of directors consists of OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, independent directors Quora CEO Adam D'Angelo, technology entrepreneur Tasha McCauley, and Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology's Helen Toner.

As a part of this transition, Greg Brockman will be stepping down as chairman of the board and will remain in his role at the company, reporting to the CEO.

OpenAI was founded as a non-profit in 2015 with the core mission of ensuring that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. In 2019, OpenAI restructured to ensure that the company could raise capital in pursuit of this mission, while preserving the nonprofit's mission, governance, and oversight. The majority of the board is independent, and the independent directors do not hold equity in OpenAI. While the company has experienced dramatic growth, it remains the fundamental governance responsibility of the board to advance OpenAI's mission and preserve the principles of its Charter.
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This is a shock. Right when OpenAI blows up and becomes one of the most important companies in the world, the person who got the company to that point is ousted by the board. There's no doubt something we don't know about that will come to light soon.
 
Who knows what the issue is. Probably lied about his past career or something. Or did some shady with competing AI companies thats conflict of interest.
 
You have to own a majority share (or equivalent control) in the startup you're running or something like this can happen at any time. Sam didn't have a direct stake in the company he built.
 
Hmm…on one hand boards at most companies are mostly valueless, some figureheads for boomers pretending to do something collecting shares/$$$ in the process. On the other hand, don't know what these allegations are. If something finance related then yes obviously red flag. If it was something creative/tech related, then once again these board members are pretending they're actually contributing to company value and may have just let value walk away and become a potential competitor.
 
Wow, huge news. Elon's revenge?

The new CEO:

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Microsoft finally made their move... j/k

This is huge news nonetheless, and would suggest that there are some major issues with either the internal structure, some sort of scandal that is going to surface about Altman in the very near future, or something even more sinister.
 
Microsoft finally made their move... j/k

This is huge news nonetheless, and would suggest that there are some major issues with either the internal structure, some sort of scandal that is going to surface about Altman in the very near future, or something even more sinister.

I'm gonna guess it's either he was banging a secretary or it's some disagreement about how to make money with the tech
 
He probably had too much integrity to allow the powers that be take all of this in the direction that they want to take it in. So he must be ousted by any means.
 
If true there is something very dystopian about all of this.
OK false alarm if you Google the text it comes from this:

But that is seriously soooooo weird for Google to show that as the Snippet. What the fuck LOL
 
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OK false alarm if you Google the text it comes from this:

But that is seriously soooooo weird for Google to show that as the Snippet. What the fuck LOL


Was most likely his most recent reply last time Google did a crawl of his Twitter page.
 
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From what they said, it seems like some of the engineers there went past him to tell board that he was lying to them about something. Maybe safety.
 
Could a company limit the % of ownership in a company? I wouldn't let any one company hold 49% if I had my say.

Edit: Assuming Sam was the one getting in the way of Microsoft. But I would hope it's what Wildebeest Wildebeest says, that Sam went against them and safety and they ousted him out without any entity pulling the strings.
 
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Hard to overstate how big of a firing this is. The damage control tweet from Satya Nadella just makes it worse lol.

Wild unfounded speculation on my part (not even worth the usual "two cents"):

1) Sam lied about data security. Massive organizations are onboarding Microsoft Copilot with the promise that all their internal data is ringfenced and can't be used by OpenAI for any reason. Imagine if Microsoft Engineers have been uploading extremely confidential source code for the past year, and they only just realized OpenAI has a copy of it on some dude's laptop.

2) Sam saw a Microsoft takeover coming and was fighting it. Maybe went as far as building alliances with top execs who would resign in protest of a full acquisition?

I'm sure we'll know more by the end of the weekend. This is the hottest story in tech and every Silicon Valley reporter is greasing every contact they have right now for the juicy details.
 
From what they said, it seems like some of the engineers there went past him to tell board that he was lying to them about something. Maybe safety.
ChatGPT 4 lied about insider trade and it's actions. Far be it from me to say that's a sign of things to come but what frightens me is that it leads the wrong person to do something dangerous based off information and probability and we just have to deal with the after effects.


 
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Hmm, based on today's news...


Wow. Best guesses

1 - Microsoft is speed running their Nokia destruction and manages to Lumia the company in just a year

2 - General AI was achieved but they wanted to keep it out of the hands of Microsoft. Hence Nadella's reminder that they can access *everything*. This lines up with Sam keeping things from the board.

The two aren't mutually exclusive.
 
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Is doing all lowercase a sign of frustration, or making it feel more personal to the perfect punctuation of AI?
 
I don't get how every single thing Microsoft acquires immediately goes to shit for reasons which are completely out of MS's control. It must be some kind of amazing talent to be able to do this so consistently.
 
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