OpenAI's "coup drama", which spanned five days and experienced reversals and reversals, ended with an "attempted coup". The people in Silicon Valley who were on the front line of "eating melons" without sleep and food may finally have a good night's sleep. At midnight local time on November 21, the emerging American artificial intelligence giant OpenAI announced that it had reached an agreement in principle. Former CEO Sam Altman (Sam Altman) will return to the company as CEO and "form a new board of directors composed of chairman Bret Taylor, Larry Summers and Adam D'Angelo."
The new board of directors only retains Quora’s CEO Adam D’Angelo, and as some relevant sources previously revealed, Bret Taylor, the former co-CEO of cloud software giant Salesforce, and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers will join OpenAI’s new board of directors. OpenAI pointed out in the statement that it is cooperating to discuss relevant details and thanks for your patience.
Foreign media reported that according to relevant sources, the new small board of directors will review and appoint a board of directors of up to nine people, and the management of Ultraman and OpenAI have agreed to hire an external independent law firm to conduct an investigation into the incident.
Some netizens observed that, perhaps out of excitement, OpenAI directly called Ultraman "Sam" in the first version of the tweet, and then changed it to the full name of "Ultraman Sam" a few minutes later.
OpenAI's statement (before modification), source: X
On the OpenAI official website, as of press time, the first news on the homepage is still "OpenAI announces management changes" that started everything on the 17th.
After the announcement, Altman quickly forwarded it with love and "salute" symbols, and posted: "I love OpenAI, and everything I have done over the past few days has been to maintain the integrity of this team and its mission. When I decided to join Microsoft on Sunday night, this choice was obviously the best for me and the team. With the support of the new board of directors and Satya (Microsoft CEO), I look forward to returning to OpenAI and continuing to develop based on the strong cooperation with Microsoft."
Taylor, who is about to join the new board of directors, also retweeted OpenAI’s announcement, while Summers’ last tweet was still from a week ago.
Source:X
Greg Brockman, former president of OpenAI, also quickly forwarded and commented: "Amazing progress has been made today, and we will be stronger and more united than ever." Later, he also said: "Returning to OpenAI & starting programming tonight."
At nearly two o'clock in the morning local time, the excited Brockman posted another photo with OpenAI employees: "We are finally back." Later, the official OpenAI account also forwarded this photo, accompanied by the company's most classic sentence in this crisis: "OpenAI is nothing without employees."
Source:X
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who once offered an "olive branch" to Altman and Brockman, did not repost OpenAI's announcement. Instead, he retweeted Altman's tweet, saying he was satisfied with the result: "We are excited about the changes in the OpenAI board of directors. We believe this is a step toward greater success. A critical step for stable, insightful and efficient management. Sam, Greg and I have discussed and agreed that they have important positions on the OpenAI leadership team to ensure that OpenAI continues to prosper and carry forward its mission. We look forward to building on this strong cooperation to deliver the next generation of AI value to our customers and partners."
Previously, Nadella has publicly expressed his support for Altman no matter where he ends up choosing. Some analysts have said that the turmoil in OpenAI will definitely have a negative impact on Microsoft, as the largest shareholder and partner, and after that, Microsoft is likely to take the opportunity to fight for a board seat.
Source:X
The two interim CEOs who were successively promoted by the board of directors in the past five days also responded positively to the matter.
Among them, Mira Murati, the first interim CEO and chief technology officer, quickly forwarded OpenAI’s announcement and attached a blue heart symbol.
Previously, it was reported that Mulati had been working hard to bring Altman and Brockman back to the company during his tenure as interim CEO. After Nadella invited Altman and others to join Microsoft on November 20, she, like many other executives who supported Altman, tweeted that "OpenAI is nothing without employees." Some analysts also said that if Altman and Brockman join Microsoft, Mulati is likely to follow them to change jobs.
Regardless of his true inner feelings, Emmett Shear, the second interim CEO to be brought on board by the board of directors and the former CEO of Twitch, an Amazon-owned game live streaming platform, also expressed satisfaction with the results: "When I joined OpenAI, I was not sure what the right path was. This path will maximize safety while also being responsible to all stakeholders. I am very happy to be part of the solution."
In the comment area, some netizens complained that "your meeting should have been broadcast live on Twitch a long time ago", and some netizens "comforted" him: "You can write that you were the CEO of OpenAI on your resume in the future."
A person familiar with the matter revealed to foreign media that Schell’s joining was a turning point in OpenAI’s negotiations.
Source:X
After the dust settled, the happiest people were naturally the OpenAI employees and external investors who supported Ultraman's return. They could finally spend the next Thanksgiving holiday without any burden.
Venture capital firm Thrive Capital said Ultraman's return "is the best outcome for the company, its employees, those building on their technology and the world at large."
On the other hand, for the four board members who dismissed Altman at the time, this result must not have been what they were happy to see.
Ilya Sutskever, the chief scientist of OpenAI who had "rebelled" to Ultraman's side during the process, only forwarded some relevant content on X and did not express his position. Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo, who will be “retained”, only forwarded the announcement, and the content of technology entrepreneur Tasha McCauley’s X account is not disclosed to the public.
In addition, Helen Toner, who is suspected by some analysts to be a key figure in the operation to remove Ultraman, only wrote one sentence when forwarding OpenAI's announcement: "Now, we can all get some sleep."
Source:X
For competitors of OpenAI and Microsoft, as well as other "melon-eating" people, everyone feels reassured and exhausted by this reversal of the ending, and they are also more curious about how OpenAI, whose reputation has been damaged, will develop next.
Elon Musk, who has always been "venomous", naturally did not give up the opportunity to comment. Ten minutes after the announcement of OpenAI, he wrote on X: "What a complicated web we have woven."
This sentence is most likely a quote from the poem "Marmion" by Scottish novelist and poet Sir Walter Scott, which reads: "Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when we begin to deceive."
Later, Musk responded with laughing and crying emoticons to comments from netizens complaining that OpenAI was "still a terrible board of directors" and "can't wait to watch the second season." Under the comment of a netizen who said, "This is like telling you at the end of the movie that everything was just a dream," Musk wrote: "Compared with merging with Microsoft, it should be better for the world if OpenAI can maintain (semi-)autonomy. Power is decentralized."
Source:X
It is worth noting that OpenAI’s controversy was almost entirely broadcast live on Musk’s X platform, and all participants regarded it as an important public expression platform. Perhaps this is also the best “free advertisement” for the X platform.