INSIDE OPENAI
As OpenAI abandons its non-profit status, here is a look back at the company’s unconventional structure and its comms fiasco last year, which raised questions over whether corporate governance can really save us from the whims of AI bots. This article is from Communicate magazine’s first quarter issue.
OpenAI is founded as a non-profit “with the goal of building safe and beneficial intelligence for the benefit of humanity”.
OpenAI forms unusual corporate structure in which ‘capped-profit’ subsidiaries would raise money from investors, like Microsoft.
OpenAI’s non-profit board of directors ultimately controls the organisation.
This structure works incredibly well: OpenAI raises money to build artificial general intelligence (AGI) in a safe and responsible way.
The AGI proves to be astoundingly lucrative and scalable.
OpenAI founder and CEO Sam Altman receives a text one Thursday night from one of OpenAI’s co-founders asking him to join a Google Meet chat the next day.
OpenAI reportedly contacts CTO Mira Murati, tapping her to be the next OpenAI CEO.
The board blames a “breakdown of communication” from Altman, but investors and employees are blindsided.
The implication is that Altman was too aggressively commercialising OpenAI’s products, raising the risk of creating a rogue artificial intelligence.
Three senior OpenAI researchers resign. Investors pressure OpenAI’s board to reinstate Altman, and many employees threatened mass resignations.
In an internal memo, COO Brad Lightcap says management had “multiple conversations with the board to try to better understand the reasons and process behind their decision”.
One of Altman’s conditions for returning is the removal of the board members instrumental in his exit.
Emmett Shear becomes interim CEO and, in a note to employees, the board says that Altman won’t be returning.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announces that Altman is joining Microsoft “with colleagues”.
Microsoft has invested more than $13 billion in OpenAI.
Over 500 of 700-plus employees sign an open letter urging its board to resign and threatening to join Altman’s Microsoft team.
Incredibly, the letter’s signatories included one board member who had led the effort to fire Altman.
OpenAI reinstates Sam Altman as CEO and revamps its board of directors.
In a statement, Altman says: “I love OpenAI, and everything I’ve done over the past few days has been in service of keeping this team and its mission together.”
An OpenAI employee admits that, despite nearly all staff signing up to follow Altman out the door, “no one wanted to go to Microsoft”, calling it “the biggest and slowest” of all the major tech companies.