After announcing, to everyone’s surprise, its decision to fire its CEO Sam Altman, due to a problem “in his communications”, OpenAI would be on the verge of recalling it. This media fiasco could lead to a return of the company’s co-founder.
What’s going on at OpenAI? At the end of the day on November 17, the creator of ChatGPT announced its decision to fire Sam Altman, its CEO and co-founder. A dismissal as unexpected as it is shattering, while Sam Altman is the man who managed to bring OpenAI to the GAFAM table. Is this linked to a hidden scandal? A plot orchestrated by its competitors? OpenAI simply explained that Altman “ was not always frank in his communications ”, which seems a little weak to fire the man who took the company so high. His dismissal angered many OpenAI executives, who decided to resign, and upset Microsoft, OpenAI’s partner, who would have liked to have been warned in advance.
24 hours later, on November 18, The Verge reveals that the OpenAI board of directors would like to bring back the person it fired and humiliated, while Sam Altman and those who resigned from the company expressed their desire to create a new structure. How to explain such a fiasco?
Will Sam Altman return?
The day before the release of The VergeOpenAI declared that its “board of directors no longer has confidence in the ability [d’Altman] to continue leading OpenAI “. How could he have changed his mind so quickly, after panicking the press around the world on a Saturday, who were wondering about OpenAI’s ability to resist such a fiasco?
According to The VergeSam Altman would demand significant changes in the governance of OpenAI to return, while Mira Murati, former chief technology officer of OpenAI, takes over as interim management of the company.
Will Sam Altman just turn a blind eye to this episode, after expressed several times publicly about his ouster? The return of some of its partners, including Greg Brockman (co-founder and president of OpenAI), Jakub Pachocki (director of research), Aleksander Madry (director of risk management) and Szymon Sidor (a major researcher), who followed Sam Altman, could have importance. They surely motivated OpenAI to change its mind.
How could the company think it could take down the most famous face in the AI world so easily? Or that its investors would not put pressure to save the one to whom OpenAI owes its valuation? Not having warned them in advance is already a mistake. According to ForbesMicrosoft would pressure OpenAI to choose the “stability”. The company is OpenAI’s largest investor.
Whatever happens, this episode reveals a major governance problem at OpenAI, although considered by many to be “the next big one”. Sam Altman would not lack opportunities to bounce elsewhere if he decided to refuse OpenAI’s offer. France also invited the entrepreneur to join it through its digital minister, a few hours after the announcement of the Kyutai laboratory, dedicated to AI, financed by Xavier Niel and Rodolphe Saadé.
Fired by Apple’s board of directors in 1985, Steve Jobs had to wait 12 years to return. The return of Steve Altman a few hours after his dismissal would make the comparison between these two stories less obvious, while many have linked the destinies of these two men for a few hours.
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