- Date
- 27 November 2023
Full Disclosure:
Conclusion of Sam Altman and Open AI
By Jaysen Sutton |
Hi Reader šš½,
Last week, I wrote about the drama surrounding OpenAI. At the time of writing, the story was moving so fast that I didnāt know what the outcome was going to be. Was Sam going to stay at Microsoft? Were the 650+ employees from OpenAI going to resign and join him? Why was Sam fired? Since then, the interim CEO, Emmett Shear resigned (he also couldnāt find clear, concrete reasons why Sam was fired). Sam is back at OpenAI and the board has changed.
What is most interesting for you aspiring lawyers is perhaps the unusual structure of OpenAI. OpenAI began as a non-profit, before announcing a ācapped profitā structure (much to Elon Muskās dismay) to raise the money it needed from investors like Microsoft to invest in computing power and hiring/retaining some of the smartest people in the world.
What is key here is that the nonprofit board governed the for-profit subsidiary, which is the tension that led to the huge fallout with OpenAI. When you have a board, half filled with outside directors, who are making decisions to promote the mission of the company (ābuilding safe and beneficial artificial general intelligence for the benefit of humanityā), this can conflict with a for-profit startup mentality of moving quickly and scaling fast.
Allegedly, Sam was moving too fast and some members of the board didnāt like it. The challenge is that itās the people, the employees, who make up the success of a company, and for a visionary business like OpenAI, theyāll route for the people they see leading the team day after day (like Sam), and not the people who meet periodically to review its progress (the board).
Have any thoughts? I'd love to hear your perspective below!
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