OpenAI CEO and co-founder Sam Altman has returned to the company’s board following an external investigation into the turmoil that led to the company abruptly firing and rehiring him in November.
OpenAI said in an investigation by law firm WilmerHale that Altman’s firing was “the result of a broken relationship and loss of trust” between Altman and his former board of directors, and that the CEO’s actions “did not constitute a forced dismissal.” “There was no such thing,” he concluded.
For more than three months, OpenAI said little about the circumstances that led its then-board to fire Altman on Nov. 17. In a statement at the time, the board accused Altman of not being “consistently candid in his communications,” adding that it “no longer has confidence in his leadership.” Less than a week later, many within the company threatened to resign if he did not return to his role, including board chairman Greg Brockman, who responded to his dismissal by resigning as president. He returned to the position of CEO.
In addition to sharing their findings, the ChatGPT maker also announced: Sue Desmond Hellman, former CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Nicole Seligman, former Sony General Counsel. and Instacart CEO Fiji Simo.
The move is a way for the San Francisco-based artificial intelligence company to show investors and customers that it is moving beyond an internal dispute that nearly wiped out the company last year and made global headlines.
Many of OpenAI’s conflicts are rooted in its unusual governance structure. Founded as a nonprofit organization with a mission to securely build the AI of the future to help humanity, the company is still a large, fast-growing company managed by a nonprofit board bound by its original mission. .
The findings were published Thursday by the New York Times. shine light on Referring to the internal circumstances leading up to Altman’s dismissal, he said that OpenAI’s chief technology officer Mira Murati questioned the CEO’s management style. Ilya Satskeva, co-founder and chief scientist at OpenAI, reportedly expressed similar concerns about Altman’s alleged “history of manipulative behavior.”
Altman addressed the allegations during a call with reporters on Friday, saying: He is dismayed to see people leaking information that attempts to “set us at odds” and lower team morale. At the same time, he apologized, saying he had learned from his experience and could have handled the dispute with his former director “more gracefully and carefully.”
“I’m glad it’s all over,” he said.
The investigation found that the previous board acted within its discretion. However, OpenAI said it also determined that Altman’s actions “did not warrant exclusion.” He said Mr. Altman and Mr. Brockman remain the right leaders for the company.
“After our investigation, we concluded that there was a significant rift in trust between the former board and Mr. Sam and Mr. Greg,” board chairman Brett Taylor told reporters Friday. “And similarly, we conclude that the board acted in good faith, that it believed its actions could alleviate some of the challenges it recognized at the time, and that it did not anticipate some of the instability.” Ta.”
Days after his abrupt firing, Altman and his supporters, with the support of Microsoft, a business partner who is close to most of OpenAI’s employees, reinstated Altman and Brockman into management and made them board members. ‘s Tasha McCauley, Helen Toner, helped orchestrate the return of Elijah. Sutskever retained his job as principal investigator.
Mr. Altman and Mr. Brockman did not regain their seats on the board at this time. But a new three-person board has been formed, led by Taylor, a former Salesforce and Facebook executive who also chaired Twitter’s board before Elon Musk took over the platform. . Other names included former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo, the only former board member to remain.
OpenAI had hired law firm WilmerHale to investigate the events that led to Altman’s ouster. OpenAI said WilmerHale conducted dozens of interviews with the company’s former board of directors, current executives, advisors and other witnesses during the investigation. The company also said the law firm reviewed thousands of documents and other corporate activities.
The board said it would also make “improvements” to the company’s governance structure. The company announced it would adopt new corporate governance guidelines, strengthen internal policies regarding conflicts of interest, create a whistleblower hotline for employees and contractors to anonymously submit reports, and create additional board committees.
The company has other issues to contend with, including a lawsuit filed by billionaire Elon Musk, who helped raise OpenAI’s early funding and co-chaired its board after its founding in 2015. I still have it. Musk claimed that the company was betraying its founding mission in the pursuit of profit.
Legal experts have expressed doubts about whether Musk’s claims, which center on alleged breach of contract, would hold up in court.
But about its unusual governance structure, how “open” it should be about its research, and how it might pursue something called artificial general intelligence that would perform as well as, or better than, general artificial intelligence. , has already been forced to make internal conflicts public. They are better than humans at many tasks.
OpenAI and Microsoft are also being sued by various news outlets, including The New York Times, The Intercept, Alertnet, and Raw Story, alleging that their generative artificial intelligence products violate copyright laws.
