Sam Altman – Credit Chen Galili
The world was shocked to hear on Saturday that Sam Altman was ousted from his job as the leader of OpenAI, the company that he founded. Well, now comes word that OpenAI’s board wants Altman back.
People have not even had time to digest the news of Sam Altman’s firing and now they need to get used to his possible return. Apparently, the board’s decision on this matter was not well received by some of the company’s major backers like Microsoft and venture capital firm Thrive. The Washington Post reported that both are pushing for his return.
A number of news outlets are reporting that Ilya Sutskever, Co-Founder and Chief Scientist at OpenAI, and the board are now trying to woo Sam Altman back.
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This whole drama feels like when in 1991 the hard liners in Moocow tried to enact a coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, which then fell apart because the coup leaders had no idea there would be such a negative backlash against them.
There is “buyer’s remorse” and “seller’s remorse,” but is there “firer’s remorse?”
OpenAI’s leaders also removed the company’s co-founder Greg Brockman from the board from the board of directors but kept him on as President. Brockman, however, was not happy with the situation and resigned. At the time he Tweeted, “Sam and I are shocked and saddened by what the board did today.”
Sam Altman was shocked by his ouster, writing on Twitter, “Today was a weird experience in many ways. But one unexpected one is that it has been sorta like reading your own eulogy while you’re still alive.”
In another Tweet Sam Altman wrote, “If I start going off, the OpenAI board should go after me for the full value of my shares.”
In his latest Tweet, Sam Altman wrote, “i love the openai team so much.” But it is not clear if he wants his job back.
Sam Altman was born in St. Louis Missouri to a Jewish family in 1985. Altman studied computer science at Stanford, but never completed his B.A. When he was only 19-years-old, Altman co-founded Loopta location-based social networking mobile application, and managed to raise $30 million for the new company at such a young age.
But Sam Altman is not so quick to get his job back.
Altman is a vocal advocate for responsible AI development. He has argued that AI has the potential to solve some of the world’s most pressing problems, but that it is important to develop AI in a safe and ethical way.
Sam Altman has been named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine and one of the “Best Young Entrepreneurs in Technology” by Businessweek. He is also the founder of the Long Term Future Fund, a venture capital fund that invests in companies working to solve long-term problems like climate change and pandemics.
