It’s been nearly two years since OpenAI’s board of directors (very briefly) fired Sam Altman over a lack of confidence in his abilities at the helm of the company. Thanks to the ongoing feud between Altman, who got his CEO seat back within a matter of days, and OpenAI co-founder Elon Musk, we now have some more insight into what led to that short-lived coup attempt. Ilya Sutskever, the former chief scientist of OpenAI, was recently deposed as part of Musk’s lawsuit against Altman and revealed why he and other members of the board plotted to push out their CEO.
According to the deposition, Sutskever spent more than a year considering the possibility of ousting Altman from his leadership role. That desire eventually manifested in a 52-page memo that Sutskever submitted to independent members of the OpenAI board, in which he described Altman as exhibiting “a consistent pattern of lying, undermining his execs, and pitting his execs against one another.” The former chief scientist who founded the company with Altman also said that, at the time, he believed the appropriate action for the board to take was to terminate Altman.
According to Sutskever, things within OpenAI were growing contentious. By his account, Altman had been undermining Mira Murati, the chief technology officer at the time, and pitted Sutskever against OpenAI’s then-research director and current chief scientist, Jakub Pachocki, by telling them “conflicting things about the way the company would be run.” That seemed to be part of a broader pattern of behavior for Altman, who allegedly was pushed out of startup accelerator Y Combinator for similar reasons—starting lots of projects without direction and providing different stories to different people, who were made to feel like they were competing with each other.
For those reasons, among others, Sutskever said he wanted Altman out, and he waited until board dynamics “would allow for Altman to be replaced as the CEO.” Once the conditions seemed right, he pounced, sending out the memo. He got his wish, and the board fired Altman on November 17, 2023—nearly one year after ChatGPT was first made public.
Sutskever said he expected OpenAI employees to be indifferent about the leadership change, but was surprised to learn that many were upset. Several high-ranking employees walked immediately, and 738 employees signed a petition promising to leave the company if Altman wasn’t reinstated as CEO. Altman’s exit from the company lasted about as long as a holiday weekend, and he returned to OpenAI on November 21, 2023.
During his brief time out of the leader’s seat, Sutskever revealed that OpenAI and Anthropic had conversations about a potential merger that would have placed Anthropic’s leadership at the head of OpenAI. That conversation seemed serious, as Sutskever stated that he remembered members of OpenAI’s board being largely supportive of such a merger. But it fizzled as the company experienced widespread mutiny and brought Altman back. In turn, the board members who ousted Altman and backed an Anthropic merger stepped away.
Obviously, Altman held onto power, as he’s still running the company, has successfully re-shaped itself into a for-profit corporation, and is reportedly preparing for an IPO in the near future. Who knows how much of that would have happened if Sutskever’s wish to push him out had held for more than a few days.
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