The Open-Shut-Open Case of OpenAI

Building Startups by Ajay Yadav

The ‘No-BS’ BS Newsletter

The last week has been unbelievable for the tech world.

Let’s jump right in🚀 

💻️AI

➡️ The Open-Shut-Open Case of OpenAI

There are a few similarities between last Friday and today.

For example, Sam Altman being the CEO of OpenAI.

The fun part though is that he was fired, offered a new job, and eventually brought back to his company— all in the last ~5 days.

So what really went down at OpenAI that caused this havoc?

We’re skipping other sections today to discuss this extensively.

Let’s go!

Remember OpenAI’s DevDay announcements hinting a strong commercial inclination with custom GPT and the GPT Store?🛒 

This was barely last to last week.

Last Saturday, OpenAI’s board announced Sam Altman’s departure.

The poster boy of OpenAI had been asked to leave. They released a blog post announcing Altman’s departure:

It was being discussed that OpenAI’s board felt a strong disconnect with the way the company was speeding towards commercialising and losing sight of its roots, spearheaded by Sam Altman.

This is how OpenAI had introduced itself to the market in 2015:

OpenAI is a non-profit artificial intelligence research company. Our goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return.

 OpenAI, Introducing OpenAI

Clearly there were layers to this suggestively evasive conversation, but guess who didn’t blink once as soon as the announcement hit?

Microsoft!

Microsoft is a key strategic partner and investor at OpenAI as it offers a vast infrastructure for OpenAI to build on.

Safe to say, Satya Nadella has significant influence in the company even if he doesn’t have a seat at the board. So, as soon as the announcement hit that Altman and colleagues are fired, Nadella announced on Twitter that Sam Altman along with Greg Brockman will be joining Microsoft.

This added to the already-brimming havoc within OpenAI, but one thing was clear: Microsoft was not ready to take the blow of an incident they weren’t included in. Altman’s firing would’ve meant OpenAI’s financials taking a hit, and a big reputation blow. Nadella was not going to let that happen.

This sentiment echoed within OpenAI as well. The employees were not on board with the executive decision of Altman’s removal. And so by Monday, 743 of the 778 OpenAI employees signed a petition threatening to join Microsoft unless Sam returned as CEO and OpenAI's board resigned.

On the same day, Microsoft said that it was ready to hire all OpenAI employees.

It became a very real possibility that 95% of OpenAI’s staff could join Microsoft overnight, and its workforce to be reduced to a mere 30 employees…

And it was finally on Tuesday night that OpenAI’s board announced that an agreement had been reached, Sam Altman is returning as CEO, the board is being updated, and things are mostly getting back to the usual.

There are lots of insights to explore and discussions to hold, but one of the central conclusions of this week of madness is that Altman, and thus OpenAI, will continue to be one of the key drivers of the AI revolution.

Its understood: Majority of the players in Big Tech are for-profit companies. OpenAI disrupted the space by prioritising innovation for good, not profit.

So even if their intentions/agenda has shifted over the years, quite elusively so, I think they’ll recognise the kind of chaos that can unleash when things start getting dishonest and blurry.

This incident again puts the limelight on not losing sight of analysing risks while innovating speed. While things may have returned to what seems normal at OpenAI, this entire week will hopefully propel more diligence, and of course, more ethical AI innovation within OpenAI.

This tweet by Mr Nadella sums up a rather eventful week in the Tech world:

That’s all for today.

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