Sam Altman has regained all the reins at OpenAI. The current commissioners of the company behind ChatGPT announced on Friday that Altman has been given back his old position as general manager, after a law firm’s investigation revealed that Altman did not do anything to justify his dismissal last fall by the previous commissioners.
OpenAI unleashed a global AI hype a year and a half ago when it launched language robot ChatGPT. To the surprise of the outside world, Altman and his co-founder Greg Brockman were dismissed in mid-November 2023 by the other members of the OpenAI board (which consists of executive directors and controlling directors, comparable to supervisory directors in the Netherlands). His dismissal followed an investigation that allegedly showed that Altman “was not consistently frank in his communication to the board and that the exercise of his responsibilities was therefore hindered.”
Altman’s dismissal led to chaos at OpenAI. Under pressure from investors and staff, Altman returned a few days later, and the co-directors who had dismissed him left.
However, Altman was not officially regained his position as ‘chief executive officer’ at the time. He also agreed to an external investigation. The now completed investigation, which is based on 30,000 documents and conversations with employees and (former) board members and which has not been made public, would show that Altman’s dismissal would be the result of a “breach of trust” between the previous board and Altman.
What the break was about remains vague in OpenAI’s own summary: “The decision was not driven by concerns about OpenAI’s product safety or security, development pace, finances or public statements.” At the time, the story went around that fellow board members accused Altman of wanting to move too quickly with the technology that OpenAI is pioneering: generative artificial intelligence, which can be used to create text, audio, video and images that can hardly be distinguished from human creations. . Altman would not have been open about new developments for an even faster and better version of the models behind the smart language robot ChatGPT.
According to the law firm that conducted the investigation, the then directors were convinced that their actions – the dismissal – would help solve the company’s “management challenges”. The board “did not expect” at the time that Altman’s dismissal would destabilize the company. The previous board is accused of making the dismissal decision in a very short period of time, “without prior notice to key stakeholders, without a full investigation and without giving Mr. Altman the opportunity to address the board’s concerns.” to take.” Although the previous board had the right to fire Altman, the law firm believes, based on all documents and conversations, that there was no need for Altman’s dismissal.
The OpenAI commissioners conclude on the basis of the report that Altman and Brockman were rightly rehired at the time. Now that the report has been completed, they will regain full control over the company they once co-founded. “We unanimously conclude that Sam and Greg are the right leaders for OpenAI,” said Bret Taylor, CEO of OpenAI.
Remarkably, as a result of the undisclosed investigation, the OpenAI board has decided to draw up a number of new guidelines for good governance, tighten the conflict of interest policy and set up a whistleblower scheme. An additional governance committee will also be established to focus on the implementation of OpenAI’s “core mission”.
Musk charges
A legal battle is currently also underway regarding the core mission of the AI company. Altman and Brockman founded OpenAI in 2015 with tech billionaire Elon Musk. The idea at the time was to organize OpenAI in such a way that private companies would not gain power over the artificial intelligence that the company developed, but that this would benefit society. This would be achieved, among other things, by disclosing the data behind the language models and publishing them scientifically.
Musk has sued OpenAI because the company allegedly denied this approach when it attracted Microsoft as a financier. He accuses the company, as well as Altman and Brockman, of breach of contract and unfair business practices. OpenAI hit back this week by revealing Musk’s emails showing that the billionaire was fully aware of the AI company’s commercialization and even attempted to merge OpenAI with Tesla, Musk’s electric car company.