Sam Altman has made a comeback to the OpenAI board after a series of dramatic events in November 2023, which initially saw him being let go from the company, only to be reinstated shortly thereafter.
According to a statement released on March 8, Altman has been reappointed to the OpenAI board of directors, alongside three new members: Sue Desmond-Hellmann, the former CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Nicole Seligman, the former executive vice president and general counsel at Sony Corporation; and Fidji Simo, the chair of Instacart.
Just four months ago, Altman was removed from the board and temporarily dismissed from his position as the company’s CEO. In November 2023, Cointelegraph reported that Altman was fired by the OpenAI board for allegedly not being consistently transparent in his communications with them. However, this decision was met with discontent from the company’s employees, with 505 out of 700 signing a letter demanding the board’s resignation.
In a separate statement on the same day, OpenAI announced that the law firm WilmerHale had conducted interviews with several board members and examined over 30,000 documents. It was acknowledged that the previous board had not anticipated the extent to which their sudden decision to remove Altman would destabilize the company.
Bret Taylor, the chair of the OpenAI board, has confirmed that Altman and Greg Brockman are still the preferred choices to lead the company.
Meanwhile, on March 6, OpenAI released a series of emails exchanged between its board members and Elon Musk regarding Musk’s desire to transition the company into a for-profit entity.
This development comes after Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI on February 29, alleging a breach in the original agreement to make AI advancements freely accessible to the public through a multi-billion dollar partnership with Microsoft. Musk’s lawsuit requested that OpenAI return to its principles as an open-source company, while also seeking an injunction to prevent the for-profit exploitation of artificial general intelligence technology.
In other news, experts have voiced concerns about OpenAI’s future, suggesting that the company is in a precarious position and may follow a similar path to WeWork. Additionally, Musk’s lawsuit has shed light on the truth behind AI reply guys, the panic surrounding Copilot images, and the creation of Trump deepfakes using AI technology.