Several senior employees, including former chairman and president Greg Brockman, director of research Jakub Pachocki, head of preparedness Aleksander Madry, and senior researcher Szymon Sidor, submitted their resignations in protest shortly after Altman was fired on Friday afternoon. At that meeting, a large number of additional OpenAI employees were planning to resign out of solidarity. If Altman decides to start a new AI startup, they are reportedly ready to follow him, much like Jerry Maguire.
After Altman was fired, it was claimed in an internal memo that his termination had nothing to do with “malfeasance or anything related to our financial, business, safety, or security/privacy practices,” according to Axios ‘ reporting.
As part of a long-term partnership between the two, Microsoft has contributed about$ 10 billion to the OpenAI venture’s coffers this past January. It continues to have “utmost confidence” in Mira Murati, the interim CEO of OpenAI, and in the partnership as a whole.
Despite these assurances, rank-and-file employees received little notice of the change in leadership before it was officially announced ( Altman himself received even less notice ). Less than a day before being fired, Altman attended the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum and continued to actively support and recruit for the company in the days leading up to his termination.
Because of the company’s non-profit origins, which prevent investors from making company-wide decisions, neither Altman nor Brockman are guaranteed a return to power, according to the New York Times. Instead, they let the board’s members make those decisions. The OpenAI board included both Altman and Brockman. Only Ilya Sutskever, Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo, Helen Toner, director of strategy at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, and computer scientist Tasha McCauley remain members despite their departures.