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Last year, OpenAI organized an unsuccessful coup attempt in order to remove CEO Sam Altman—former board members are now revealing more information about what prompted their actions.
On The Ted AI Show podcast, former OpenAI board member Helen Toner said that Altman didn't tell them about the ChatGPT launch until November 2022.
“We were not informed in advance,” Toner said. “And we learned about ChatGPT from Twitter.”
Toner, who now works as director of strategy at the Center for Security and Emerging Technologies at Georgetown, also noted that Altman repeatedly “withheld or distorted” information, making the work of OpenAI's board more difficult.
“Sam did not disclose to the board that he was the owner of the startup fund OpenAI, although he consistently maintained that he was an independent board member with no financial interest in the company,” Toner said.
She said Altman's actions “hampered the board's ability to trust him” and there were “serious conversations about his removal” until October 2023.
Current OpenAI Chairman and Salesforce Co-CEO Bret Taylor responded to Toner's comments:
“We are disappointed that Ms. Toner continues to return to these issues. An independent review of the decision to fire Altman found that it was not based on concerns about product safety, the pace of development, OpenAI's finances, or its statements to investors, customers or business partners.”
Prior to the current announcements, the specific reasons for Altman's sudden removal had not yet been made public. In March, Sam (not without the participation of Microsoft, which invested billions of dollars in the startup) returned to his position and now works with an updated board in the person of Bret Taylor, OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman, economist Larry Summers, Instacart CEO and ex-Meta head Fiji Simo, former Sony executive Nicole Seligman and former CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Dr. Sue Desmond-Hellmann.
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A few weeks earlier, OpenAI's chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, who had been one of those who led the “rebellion” against Altman, had left OpenAI, but had subsequently apologized for his misguided actions and signed a letter demanding Sam's return. Altman himself wrote in a farewell note that it was hard for him “to lose a good friend and one of the greatest minds of our generation.”
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