How OpenAI Got Its Sam Back
Hey folks,
Free users are getting the newsletter early this week since there won’t be one on Thursday because of the US holiday. Obviously the big story is Sam Altman returning and I break down everything you need to know about that below. But paid subscribers check out the Spotify story for a little extra insight into why the upset indie musicians again.
Happy Wednesday!
Tom
Big Story
"Sam Altman to return as OpenAI CEO"
"Sam Altman returns as CEO OpenAI - The Verge"
"Sam Altman to Return as CEO, OpenAI Says - WSJ"
Sam Altman has returned as CEO of OpenAI. He will not take a position at Microsoft, and Microsoft supports his return to OpenAI.
In exchange OpenAI is getting a new board.
Say goodbye to OpenAI Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever, entrepreneur Tasha McCauley, and Helen Toner of the Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology. They are no longer board members. Though Sutskever will apparently stay on as OpenAI chief scientist. And spiritual leader allegedly?
Anyway
Adam D'Angelo, CEO of Quora will be the only person to stay on the board. This is very interesting. While Sutskever received most of the blame for the rebellion against Altman, even when he regretted it, the board stood firm. D'Angelo was occasionally named as the other person who moved against Altman. And today the New York Times has a source saying Altman tried to get Toner pushed off the board. Why do I bring all this up? D'Angelo is the only one not he board with a competing interest, Quora's AI project Poe which just released new features this week.
OK so D'angelo stays on the "initial" board, which implies that this board is temporary. Who else is coming in? Former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor has been named as the new chairman. Former US Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers will join the board. Taylor was named as a possible solution to this all throughout the process. So that isn't a shocker. Summers is surprising but he certainly brings a lot of regulatory experience and government connections which OpenAI is going to continue to need.
And the sources are telling folks right a left that eventually OpenAI wants to have a 9 person board and that Microsoft thinks it might want a seat this time. Expect Altman to get a seat again and probably Greg Brockman, former board chair who has now returned as an employee. Neither one has a seat on the initial board.
Beyond that not much is known for sure. Bloomberg is reiterating the speculation that Altman's efforts to raise money for a chip venture and differences of opinion about how important safety measures should be in developing AI played a part in the breakdown of relations. In fact it might be a combination of worrying about Altman's long list of outside ventures and how those might undermine safety provisions that the more conservative OpenAI folks, like Sutskever, wanted to maintain.
Then there's the Wall Street Journal quoting Toner saying over the weekend that company collapse could be consistent with its mission to make sure "the company develops AI for humanity's benefit—even if that means wiping out its investors."
In any case the next steps are to finalize the board composition. Also everyone agreed that an independent investigator will look into the events that led up to Altman's firing.
As few other interesting tidbits along the way here. Larry Summers has said before that he believes AI is coming for white collar jobs.
OpenAI's interim CEO, Emmett Shear, wrote, "I am deeply pleased by this result, after ~72 very intense hours of work. Coming into OpenAI, I wasn't sure what the right path would be. This was the pathway that maximized safety alongside doing right by all stakeholders involved. I'm glad to have been a part of the solution."
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