OpenAI brings Sam Altman back as CEO less than a week after he was fired by board

jayandp@sh.itjust.works to Technology@lemmy.world – 383 points –
OpenAI brings Sam Altman back as CEO less than a week after he was fired by board
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I'm still wondering why he was even fired in the first place. I'd thought that perhaps I just hadn't paid proper enough attention and missed the reason, but nope, no reason was ever given.

There were some rumours that he was pushing the commercial side too fast, potentially ignoring ethical issues. Given Altmans lobbying against AI regulation in the EU I find that plausible.

Since now apparently the investors won it proves that the special structure of for-profit owned by non-profit intended to keep them honest does not work - and we urgently need to have regulation in place, as self-regulation does not work.

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I read something about him not being honest with the board, or keeping things from them? Didn't see any elaboration, though.

That's all they have said as well.

We fired the guy for a reason, it was a good reason honest, no we're not going to tell you what it was. Anyway we've hired him back now so it's fine, stop asking questions.

They have been asked to provide that by the media, the first temporary CEO they named, and their investors, some of which even threatened to sue of they didn't disclose it. So either it is something so discriminating to the board they're willing to rather sink with it, or they actually don't have anything solid at all and fired him without cause bue to something personal/unprofessional.

The reason that makes the most sense in one of the articles I've read is that they fired him after he tried to push out one of the board members.

Replacing that board member with an ally would have cemented control over the board for a time. They might not have felt his was being honest in his motives for the ousting, so it was basically fire now, or lose the option to fire him in the future.

Edit: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/21/technology/openai-altman-board-fight.html

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