Firing of Sam Altman from OpenAI

Submission 3,795

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Overview

Firing of Sam Altman from OpenAI, also known as Sam Altman Ousted From OpenAI, refers to the dismissal of former OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on November 17th, 2023, that led to a spurt of memes and speculation about the internal workings of the company behind ChatGPT in the latter half of 2023. Altman was fired from his position while Greg Brockman was released as the chairman of the board of directors. AI and tech enthusiasts on X and Reddit, among other sites, shared memes and discourse about Altman's controversial firing, which was reportedly due to him withholding information from the board.

Background

On November 17th, 2023, artificial intelligence research organization Open AI (who created products like GPT and DALL-E) released a statement from their board of directors saying that CEO Sam Altman had been fired due to his history of "not [being] consistently candid in his communications with the board."^[1]

The letter (shown below) also stated that Greg Brockman would be released from his position as chairman of the board, however, he would retain his role at the company, reporting to the CEO. Additionally, the letter noted that Mira Murati, OpenAI’s chief technology officer, was appointed as interim CEO.

The news was shared by OpenAI's official X account on November 17th,^[2] and was discussed on the /r/Futurology and /r/Technology subreddits shortly after.^[3]^[4]

Developments

On November 17th, 2023, Greg Brockman took to his X^[5] account to detail the events leading up to the firing. The post recounted how Ilya Sutskever, chief scientist and co-founder at OpenAI, had texted Altman on Thursday to schedule a Friday afternoon call (seen below).

Also on November 17th, Altman took to his X^[6] account to publish a post acknowledging his firing, saying that he "loved my time at openai" and that he "will have more to say about what’s next later." The post gathered over 98,000 likes in three days (seen below).

According to the New York Times,^[7] OpenAI held an all-hands meeting the afternoon after its announcement on November 17th where Ilya Sutskever defended Altman's ousting, saying that it was not a hostile takeover but a necessary move in order to protect OpenAI’s mission of "making AI beneficial to humanity."

On the evening of November 17th, Brockman then made another post to his X^[8] account to announce his voluntary resignation from OpenAI (shown below). Brockman's announcement was closely followed by Director of Research Jakub Pachocki and Head of Preparedness Aleksander Madry resigning as well.

Internal and Investor Backlash Against Altman's Firing

According to Axios,^[9] OpenAI's COO Brad Lightcap circulated an internal memo saying that the company's management team was not involved in Atlman's firing and that the decision was not based on any "malfeasance or anything related to our financial, business, safety, or security/privacy practices."

Moreover, Altman's ousting jeopardized the upcoming sale of OpenAI employee shares, which initially valued the company at $86 billion. According to TechCrunch, OpenAI's board of investors expressed their unhappiness with the company's decision and with the public outcry against Altman's firing.^[10]

On November 19th, 2023, OpenAI appointed another CEO, Emmett Shear, the cofounder of the video streaming site Twitch, as a replacement for Murati. Murati has notably been publically supportive of Altman throughout the ordeal.^[11]

On November 20th, Altman and Brockman then announced their plans to join Satya Nadella at Microsoft, heading a new advanced artificial intelligence research team (shown below). The duo were reportedly joined by several high-profile colleagues from OpenAI.^[12]

Also on November 20th, Ilya Sutskever made a post on X^[13] (seen below) seemingly backtracking on his role in Altman's firing, saying, "I deeply regret my participation in the board's actions. I never intended to harm OpenAI. I love everything we've built together and I will do everything I can to reunite the company."

OpenAI Employees Threaten To Resign

Early on the morning of November 20th, 2023, several OpenAI employees posted the phrase "OpenAI is nothing without its people" on X (shown below).^[15]^[16]^[17]^[18]

On November 20th, over 700 OpenAI employees signed a letter^[14] threatening mass resignation if Altman was not reinstated to his position as CEO of OpenAI. The letter (shown below) comes a day after Microsoft's Satya Nadella offered OpenAI employees the opportunity to join Microsoft under Altman's leadership. According to reports, 95 percent of the company's 770 employees had signed the letter by Monday evening.^[29]

Speculations About Who Instigated Altman's Firing

Some internet users speculated if Quora CEO, Poe founder and OpenAI board member Adam D'Angelo was responsible for Altman's firing. For example, on November 20th, 2023, X^[23] user @scottastevenson and Redditor^[24] /u/Bakagami- made posts alluding to D'Angelo's role in the controversy (seen below).

Dustin Moskovitz was also discussed as a possible instigator in Altman's firing, as seen in a post by X^[25] user @pnegahdar (seen below). However, he denied the allegations on his Threads account, saying that the news came as a surprise to him on November 17th, 2023.^[26]

Online Reactions

Initial reactions to the news in late November 2023 showed tech and AI enthusiasts expressing their shock over Altman's firing, given that he had played a critical role in modeling OpenAI's public image, and undertaken the task of fundraising for the company.

X^[19] user @nullpointered posted a meme on November 18th, 2023, joking about the initial confusion and uncertainty that surrounded the news of Altman's firing, gathering over 6,000 likes in three days (seen below, left). Other users joked about Yudkowsky's anti-unfettered AI stance being indicative of internal tensions at OpenAI, as seen in a post by @growing_daniel^[20] (seen below, right).

X^[21] user @roon posted a joke about OpenAI's internal structure on November 20th, gathering over 2,000 likes in less than 24 hours (seen below, left), while X^[22] user @0xgaut joked about how Microsoft's Satya Nadella benefited from the tensions at OpenAI over the weekend (seen below, right).

Memes referencing Altman's dismissal also spread on Reddit in late November 2023. For example, on November 17th, Redditor tstyes posted a meme to /r/dankmemes^[27] under the title "Hey man, give me my AI back" that received over 380 upvotes in four days (seen below, left). On November 20th, Redditor gamerboi6969 posted another example to the /r/dankmemes^[28] sub, receiving over 200 upvotes in roughly 24 hours (seen below, right).