OpenAI’s chaos took another turn Monday morning when most of the company’s employees threatened to quit unless the board resigns and reinstates former CEO Sam Altman and ex-president Greg Brockman. According to Wired And Kara Swisheraround 500 employees, including several executives, signed the letter.
Swisher noted that OpenAI has 700 employees. Several of them, including technical director Mira Murati (who held the highest position in the company on an interim basis for less than a weekend), written the early Monday, “OpenAI is nothing without its collaborators.”
The letter to the board is the latest development in a series of events that began Friday afternoon, when OpenAI board fired Altman. The board said Altman had not been “consistently candid in his communications with the board, which hindered his ability to carry out his responsibilities.” As such, the board felt it no longer had “confidence in his ability to continue to lead OpenAI.” Brockman told OpenAI staff in an email Friday that he was resigning as president “based on today’s news.”
Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap later said in a leaked internal memo that Altman was fired due to a “communication breakdown”, not “malfeasance or anything relating to our financial, business, safety or security/privacy practices”,
Altman and Brockman held crucial discussions with the OpenAI board this weekend in an attempt to reinstate their former roles. But these discussions did not end in favor of the former CEO and president. The board of directors instead chose to hire Emmett Shear, former CEO of Twitch as Acting CEO of OpenAI.
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