The BBC’s technology editor Zoe Kleinman looks at the humans at the heart of OpenAI’s governance drama.
Five days after he was suddenly sacked, Sam Altman is going back to his old job as the boss of OpenAI, creator of the chatbot ChatGPT.
The emoji that’s been most bandied around on my work chats so far today is the one of the exploding head.
We still don’t know why he was fired in the first place. But the board of directors at OpenAI discovered something which troubled them so much they went to extraordinary lengths to oust him, acting quickly and quietly, informing almost nobody.
In a statement they implied he had somehow not been honest with them: accusing him of not being « consistently candid » in his communications.
Despite the gravity of all that, and the appointment of two new CEOs in almost as many days, what followed was a spectacular explosion of support for Mr Altman from within the firm itself – and it’s worked.Coded messages, coloured hearts
Almost every single member of staff co-signed a letter saying they would consider quitting if Mr Altman wasn’t reinstated. Chief scientist Ilya Setskover, one of the board which made the original decision, was one of those signatories. He later wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that he regretted his role in Mr Altman’s departure.
« OpenAI is nothing without its people » was posted on X by many workers, including Mira Murati who was at the time the interim CEO.
