ChatGPT hit the market a year ago this November, and in that short time, it’s pulled off something that hasn’t happened in the last decade. Suddenly, time, business, and even how people work have all changed. If Google brought the Internet revolution, ChatGPT brought AI disruption.
So, when it comes to ChatGPT news, it’s always a bit of a bang. But just when everything seemed to be going swimmingly, a piece of news dropped: Sam Altman, the co-founder and CEO of OpenAI (ChatGPT’s parent company), got the boot from the directorship last week—yeah, the founder shown the door. It’s not the first time this has happened. Steve Jobs went through it, and more recently, Ashneer Grover of BharatPe faced a similar situation.
But what’s the deal? Why did the directors decide to give Sam Altman the pink slip?
OpenAI was established in 2015 with a team of 12 people, including Ilya Sutskever, Greg Brockman, Trevor Blackwell, Vicki Cheung, Andrej Karpathy, Durk Kingma, Jessica Livingston, John Schulman, Pamela Vagata, Wojciech Zaremba, Sam Altman, and Elon Musk. Elon Musk resigned from the board of directors in 2018.
Now, the exact reason for Altman’s departure hasn’t been disclosed yet. But there has been some brewing tension among these AI researchers, feeling that Altman was sidelining them in some way.
Apart from that, the AI community was concerned about the risks associated with AI, but Altman wasn’t giving it the attention it needed.
And that’s the reason the board of directors decided to show Altman the door.
However, Investors pressure kicked in, and Altman was reinstated within a few days. Here’s the official statement.
Who are OpenAI’s investors?
Besides the founders, there are individual investors like Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, Jessica Livingston, a founding partner of Y Combinator, and some corporate investors like Microsoft, Khosla Ventures, and Infosys.
It’s being said that Altman was brought back under the pressure of Microsoft and the investors because at this stage, investors don’t want any risks.
Why was Sam Altman brought back? Were they afraid Altman would start another OpenAI?
Well, it’s often seen that ousted CEOs come back to the market with double the power and a fantastic product. Altman undoubtedly has that capability. Plus, this week, nearly 770 OpenAI employees signed a letter threatening to resign if Altman wasn’t reinstated.
Is there a conspiracy brewing in OpenAI?
On Friday, OpenAI founder Sam Altman was fired. His co-founder Greg Brockman quit. Two interim CEOs took over the top job. Workers went on strike, then threatened the board. Microsoft rehired Altman.
Rumors suggest that Altman was already contemplating removing another board member when a critical paper came across his desk.
So, is everything running smoothly at OpenAI now? Well, not really. It seems like a temporary solution. We’ll have to wait and see what the real issue is. Big companies often face these problems, and looks like OpenAI, despite its revolutionary and promising nature, is not immune.
