OpenAI’s CEO brought back after termination
On Nov. 17, the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, was terminated without prior notice and reinstated after two weeks. His rehiring came after over 500 OpenAI employees threatened to leave the company unless Altman’s CEO position was returned. An announcement on the OpenAI website detailed the board’s reason for his removal.
“Mr. Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities. The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI,” said OpenAI.
Flickr / Contributor
Sam Altman discussing his opinions during TechCrunch at Moscone Convention Center in 2019.
In the aftermath of Altman’s rehire, new members were appointed to the board during the major turnover. An NPR article pointed to alternative sources from inside the company that felt the board’s statement was not genuine, as they said Altman’s termination was a consequence of his trying to rapidly monetize the formerly non-profit company. This raised concerns over the power of ChatGPT and whether or not Altman’s leadership will intensify societal risks related to artificial intelligence.
However, the claims of Altman’s lack of communication and monetary gain had been unobserved by 95 percent of OpenAI’s employees who refused his removal from the company. Altman has been referenced to have this kind of following such as the Looped incident, which some denote his commanding presence.
In previous years, Altman has been active in the Silicon Valley tech scenes. He attended Stanford University from 2003-2005 and left before receiving a degree to pursue entrepreneurial opportunities. Altman co-founded the social networking company Looped in 2005. Notably, he was working on a startup accelerator Y-combinator when he was fired from his position as president. The Washington Post reported statements from two anonymous people close to Altman.
“Altman had developed a reputation for favoring personal priorities over official duties and for an absenteeism that rankled his peers and some of the start-ups he was supposed to nurture,” the anonymous sources stated.
Regarding AI in the tech scene, there are two different opposing philosophies. On one side are the effective accelerationism (E/Accs) or people in favor of the acceleration of AI capabilities. Inversely are the Decels; people wanting to slow down AI’s advancements. As mentioned earlier, Altman has been seen by some to value money over mission. This has intensified criticism of him by Decels, who see the advancement of systems like OpenAI’s ChatGPT as dangerous and unregulated. However, E/Accs views the rapid progress of AI to be a large contribution to society.
Noah Pust (‘26) said that while AI comes with its challenges, it overall will have a positive impact as it has multiple benefits that can help a society advance, even if there are some problems along the way.
“With this could come a lack of job needs at a rate we’ve never seen before. And we’ll have to figure out how to adapt to that,” Pust said. “Like all past advancements, the issue isn’t the technology itself, but rather how we react to it.”
However, Govind Raman (’26) is against the use of AI as he said he believes AI is so fraught with danger because the interests of competing parties can go to great lengths to ensure their needs are met.
“I think the main reason AI is bad is because the world is not a perfect place. Free speech is one concern that we have with AI,” Raman said. “We’re already already seeing on social media apps like Twitter, in countries like Saudi Arabia, that speech is being restricted using AI.”
Artificial intelligence is approaching $200 million in investment by 2025. Their future and mission are said to continue to be under high scrutiny and praise. ChatGPT and OpenAI, along with Altman, will maintain a presence in the tech scene for many years to come.
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