11/24/2023: Sam Altman is Back at OpenAI
This is actually old news but I wanted to wait for more details. After days of standoff, Sam Altman is now back as OpenAI CEO. But he will stay off the board for now. OpenAI has a new board with former Twitter chair and former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor (chair), former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo. It’s a minimal three-person board but I suppose they are going to expand this board after Thanksgiving. For the very least, the board now consists of industry heavy weights. Bret Taylor did a fantastic job at Twitter and made sure Elon honored his acquisition offer. I read through the lawsuit Twitter filed against Elon Musk last year and found most people involved behaving quite poorly. But Bret Taylor really handled the chaotic Twitter situation with grace. He was also an extremely accomplished engineer and entrepreneur. I had a brief overlap with him at Facebook when he was the CTO. He is a genius. Bret is a great choice. Larry Summers was the Treasury Secretary in the Clinton Administration. He is very connected to the tech industry. Sheryl Sandberg used to be his chief of staff. Adam D’Angelo is the only original board member that remains. Adam is an extremely thoughtful person and an accomplished engineer, investor and entrepreneur. This new board is very very qualified.
I assume the board made the decision to fire Sam Altman for valid reasons although the execution turns out to be disastrous. It is reported that before Sam’s ouster, several OpenAI researchers sent a letter to the board warning of a powerful artificial intelligence discovery that could threaten humanity and Sam has been trying to push one of the board members off the board. It is unclear why the board didn’t discuss with various stakeholders before trying to fire him but I suspect that Sam Altman is super persuasive and the board was afraid they would get swayed by him without getting their point across. Now, their point regarding AI safety is loud and clear. That’s the silver lining. I do think this non-profit structure is too complicated, unstable and probably won’t age well over time. After this fiasco, they are probably going to revamp their legal structure so by default the stakeholders are better represented and governance has a stronger connection to the operations.