The Board of directors of OpenAI, Inc., the 501(c)(3) that acts as the overall governing body for all OpenAI activities, today announced that Sam Altman will depart as CEO and leave the board of directors. Mira Murati, the company’s chief technology officer, will serve as interim CEO, effective immediately.
The reporting is that Sam Altman did not tell the board of OpenAI everything they needed to know. AKA Sam Altman lied to the Board about important information.
OpenAI’s board of directors consists of OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, independent directors Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo, technology entrepreneur Tasha McCauley, and Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology’s Helen Toner.
As a part of this transition, Greg Brockman will be stepping down as chairman of the board and will remain in his role at the company, reporting to the CEO.
Sam Altman is worth over $700 million. He headed Y Combinator, a tech incubator that provided seed funding to companies like Airbnb, Dropbox, and Stripe. In addition, he has served as an angel investor to more than 100 startups, including Asana, Instacart, and Pinterest. The companies he has led, founded, or backed are worth a combined $500 to 600 billion.
OpenAI remains privately held; some of its shareholders include Microsoft, a venture capital firm called Khosla Ventures, Reid Hoffman, and Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook.
Billionaire David Sacks believes that Sam Altman has structured OpenAI where Sam will own most of the company. Sacks says that the funding for OpenAI has been a capped return model. Capped return means that investors get returns up to some multiple say 10X or 100X. When they get their return then there shares revert back to the company. This is how Sam Altman can make the claim that he has no equity in OpenAI. However, Sam was a co-founder of OpenAI (along with Elon Musk).
i loved my time at openai. it was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. most of all i loved working with such talented people.
will have more to say about what’s next later.
🫡
— Sam Altman (@sama) November 17, 2023
Everyone talking about Sam Altman getting fired. But why did Greg Brockman step down as Chairman of the Board and President, yet he remains at the company? 🤔 pic.twitter.com/X23cIqlVmj
— Dave Lee (@heydave7) November 17, 2023
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
“The reporting is that Sam Altman did not tell the board of OpenAI everything they needed to know.”
Know about what? Isn’t that kind of relevant?
effective accelerationism (e/acc for short). e/acc is a variant of accelerationism promoted by the philosopher Nick Land, and they argue that we ought to accelerate technological development rather than slow down.
Safetyst billionaire is an oxymoron. Maybe some intellectuals are right, what they want to save is Capitalism itself from (itself) the threat that AI may pose, but the problem is that even some e/acc billionaires signed the famous open letter.
Odd, and the cascade of notable quittings tells this wasn’t an harmonious and happy rupture.
Nevertheless Altman seemed very optimistic about the technology prospects, and so far he hasn’t lied, if even, he has been underselling it.
The speculations are wild now, but one of the most interesting is that this is due to a strong political disagreement on the board, about the direction of the company after some breakthrough.
Basically, Sam was an e/acc guy (with some reservations of late), while some of the board are safetysts. The rumors is they actually struck gold (proof of AGI?), and the safetyists got the cold feet and finally got enough leverage to eject Altman, and Brockman being loyal to Altman, also left.