Mcb777 Login How 'strangest episode' in history of tech industry unfolded over 5 days

One of the strangest episodes in the history of the tech industry ended as startup events often do: With a party in San Francisco’s eclectic Mission District.Late on Tuesday (November 21), OpenAI said Sam Altman was returning as its chief executive officer (CEO), five days after the artificial intelligence (AI) startup’s board of directors forced him out, following a mass revolt among the 700+-member staff who threatened to decamp with him to Microsoft.Altman’s reinstatement capped a corporate drama that mixed piles of money, a pressure campaign from allies, intense media attention and a steadfast belief among some in the AI community that they should proceed with caution with what they are building.Now OpenAI, which for two days appeared to be on the brink of collapse just a year after introducing the popular ChatGPT chatbot, is replacing a heavily criticised board of directors with a more traditional group that has former US treasury secretary Lawrence Summers and a former executive from the software giant Salesforce, Bret Taylor.Adam D'Angelo, who was on the original board and had voted to oust Altman, apparently had second thoughts amid the staff protest and is the only holdover. D'Angelo is co-founder and CEO of the question-and-answer site Quora.— OpenAI (@OpenAI) More board members — who could be plucked from OpenAI’s biggest investor, Microsoft, and the AI research community — are expected to join soon. Altman was not named to the new board, and it was not clear if he ever will be.On Wednesday (November 22), what appeared to be emerging from the mess was a company better suited to handle the billions of dollars thrown its way and the attention it has received since it released ChatGPT. But some already argue that it will not be as attuned to OpenAI’s original mission to create AI that is safe for the world.The battle for control of OpenAI that took place over the last five days was essentially between those who advocate caution in the rapidly evolving field of AI, which they feel — as so many scientists and public intellectuals — poses a profound risk to society and humanity, and the more business-oriented constituency that thinks the fears are overblown and wants AI to grow naturally. medium nocaption105437139Not on the same pageWhen Altman, 38, was fired just after noon on Friday, OpenAI was pitched into chaos. Its employees and Microsoft, which has invested $13bn in the company, were blindsided. (Details of what happened here.)Microsoft is said to have a 49% stake in the company, valued at $80bn. Microsoft's incorporation of OpenAI's main product ChatGPT into its search engine Bing enables it to compete against Google, which dominates the search field.OpenAI has an unusual governance structure. It is controlled by the board of a nonprofit, and its investors have no formal way of influencing decisions. But no one anticipated that four members of the board — including OpenAI’s chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever, a co-founder — would suddenly remove Altman, claiming that he could no longer be trusted with the company mission to build AI that “benefits all of humanity”.The fallout was immediate. OpenAI’s president, Greg Brockman, who also helped found the company eight years ago, quit in protest. medium105437624So, what did the board decide to fire Altman? According to two people familiar with the board’s thinking, the board had grown increasingly frustrated with Altman’s behaviour over the last year.One episode in particular illustrated how fraught the relationship between the board and Altman had become, the New York Times reports.Both sides focused on an October research paper co-written by Helen Toner, an OpenAI board member who serves as a director of strategy at Georgetown University’s Centre for Security and Emerging Technology.Altman complained to Toner that the paper seemed to criticise OpenAI’s efforts to keep its technologies safe while praising a rival. He argued that “any amount of criticism from a board member carries a lot of weight,” he wrote in an email to colleagues.Toner defended the paper as academic research, but Altman and other OpenAI leaders, including Sutskever, later discussed whether she should be removed from the board, a person involved in the conversations said.But Sutskever, who is worried that AI could one day destroy humanity, unexpectedly sided with Toner and two other board members: D’Angelo and Tasha McCauley, an adjunct senior management scientist at the Rand Corp.During a video call on Friday, Sutskever read Altman a statement that said Altman was being fired because he was not “consistently candid in his communications with the board”, NYT says in its report. medium105437766Days of back and forthOver the next five days, Altman and his allies pressed the board to bring him back and for the board to resign. On Sunday (November 19), he and company executives negotiated at OpenAI’s offices. But, that night, the talks collapsed, and the board named Emmett Shear, a co-founder of Twitch, as interim CEO.Then Microsoft offered a Plan B: To hire Altman to run a new AI research lab for Microsoft with Brockman. OpenAI’s executives orchestrated a letter from employees saying they’d follow Altman to Microsoft if he wasn’t reinstated. More than 700 of OpenAI’s 770 employees signed, including Sutskever, who said in a post on X that he “deeply regretted” his role in ousting Altman.The pressure made the other board members dig in their heels, three people familiar with their thinking said, according to NYT. The board was still determined to force Altman to change his behaviour, two people familiar with the board’s deliberations said. The twistEventually the board was forced to relent and reinstate Altman, along with Brockman. The talks now centred on how to constitute a new board that everyone could trust and one that would also keep a check Altman’s power. For this, it also spoke with the CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, several times.— sama (@sama) — gdb (@gdb) Altman’s allies offered a board slate of D’Angelo, Summers and Taylor, a seasoned Silicon Valley executive. Taylor, who will be the new board’s chair, oversaw the $44bn sale of Twitter to Elon Musk when he led Twitter’s board last year.D’Angelo (also part of the original board) was the board’s main leader in negotiations and held out for concessions from Altman during the tense back and forth, two people familiar with the talks said, NYT reports.The board considered Summers, who has recently established himself as an authority on AI and economics, to be an independent thinker with enough management experience to hold his ground against Altman, said two of the people familiar with the negotiations. He has also served on the boards of other technology companies, including the financial services company Block, formerly known as Square.— satyanadella (@satyanadella) By Tuesday evening, they had a deal. Thanksgiving (on November 23) helped. Despite all their disagreements, everyone agreed the chaos should not spill into Thursday, one person said, according to NYT.But there is still plenty of work to be done.. Over the next six months, the board will analyse and potentially change OpenAI’s unusual structure, one of these people said.Watch: Sam Altman's take on AI, the dangers and the regulations medium nocaption102287438Inputs from NYT, TNN