Last year, OpenAI organized a failed coup attemptin an effort to oust CEO Sam Altman — now former board members are revealing additional information about what prompted them to take these actions.
In the podcast The Ted AI Show, one of the former OpenAI board members Helen Toner said that Altman did not tell them about the launch of ChatGPT until November 2022.
«We were not informed in advance,» Toner said. «And we found out about ChatGPT on Twitter».
Toner, who currently works as the director of strategy at the Center for Security and Emerging Technologies at Georgetown, also noted that Altman repeatedly «withheld or distorted» information, making it difficult for the OpenAI board to do its job.
«Sam did not inform the board of directors that he was the owner of the OpenAI startup fund, although he constantly claimed to be an independent board member with no financial interests in the company», Toner said.
According to her, Altman’s actions «really hurt the board’s ability to trust him» and by October 2023 there was «serious talk of his dismissal».
Brett Taylor, the current chairman of the OpenAI board and co-executive director of Salesforce, responded to Toner’s comments:
«We are disappointed that Ms. Toner continues to revisit these issues. An independent review of the decision to terminate Altman’s employment found that it was not based on concerns about product security, development pace, OpenAI’s finances, or its statements to investors, customers, or business partners».
Until the current announcement, the specific reasons for Altman’s sudden suspension had remained unspoken. In March, Sam (not without the participation of Microsoft, which invested billions of dollars in the startup) returned to his position and is now working with a new board of directors, including Brett Taylor, OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman, economist Larry Summers, Instacart CEO and former Meta executive Fiji Simo, former Sony executive Nicole Seligman, and former Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation CEO Dr. Sue Desmond-Gellmann.
A few weeks earlier, with OpenAI Chief Researcher Ilya Sutskever left, who was one of those who led the «uprising» against Altman, but later apologized for his mistaken actions and signed a letter demanding Sam’s return. In his farewell post, Altman himself wrote that it was hard for him «to lose a good friend and one of the greatest minds of our generation».