OpenAI: The Artificial Intelligence Conserved? Reply to Sutskever, the CEO, and the OpenAI OpenAI-Terrorist Letter

Altman’s fingerprints do not appear on the open letter released yesterday and signed by more than 95 percent of OpenAI’s roughly 770 employees that says the directors are “incapable of overseeing OpenAI.” It says that if the board members don’t reinstate Altman and resign, the workers who signed may quit and join a new advanced AI research division at Microsoft, formed by Altman and Brockman. This threat didn’t seem to change the determination of the directors, who were being asked to negotiate with terrorists. Sutskever, a director, now says he regrets his actions. His signature appears on the you-quit-or-we’ll-quit letter. Having apparently deleted his distrust of Altman, the two have been sending love notes to each other on X, the platform owned by another fellow OpenAI cofounder, now estranged from the project.

The directors had concluded that Altman was not candid in his communication with the board, impairing its ability to exercise its responsibilities. Mira Murati was appointed interim CEO. Greg Brockman, like Altman an OpenAI cofounder, was removed from his post as chair of the board and quit the company in solidarity with Altman several hours later.

Sutskever did not appreciate it when I joked that the bizarre org chart that mapped out this relationship looked like something a future GPT might come up with when prompted to design a tax dodge. He told me that we are the only company in the world with a capped profit structure. It makes sense that if we succeed really well, then these GPUs will take my job and your job and everyone’s jobs, and it seems nice if that company wouldn’t make truly unlimited amounts of returns. The board is keeping an eye on the company so it doesn’t shirk its commitment to making sure that the artificial intelligence isn’t out of control.

This would-be guardian of humanity is the same board that fired Sam Altman last Friday, saying that it no longer had confidence in the CEO because “he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities.” The company didn’t provide any examples of the alleged behavior or the reason for its firing, and no one was aware of it until after the public announcement. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and other investors got no advance notice. The four directors on the board kicked the president and chairman off the board. Brockman quickly resigned.