On the first anniversary of the official release of ChatGPT, OpenAI, a well-known AI company and the parent company of ChatGPT, finally put an end to the farce of "firing the CEO" that happened to it. On November 30, OpenAI issued an announcement officially announcing the company’s latest personnel structure. At this time, 12 days have passed since the farce happened.

The source of this famous farce was on November 18, when the company's chief scientist Ilya Sutskever organized a board meeting and announced the dismissal of former CEO Sam Altman at the meeting. After the meeting, company president Greg Brockman also publicly announced his resignation.

The three protagonists of the story are not only board members of OpenAI, but also former core managers of the company. The exit of Sam and Greg heralded the disintegration of the OpenAI management team that once had a tacit understanding, and made people worry that the OpenAIAGI (general artificial intelligence) business, which was in a period of rapid development, might be pressed on the pause button, shocking the global technology community.

However, in the next 12 days, bizarre plots about this company took turns: three CEOs were changed in three days, conflicts between several board members and Sam surfaced, Sam and Greg switched to the major shareholder Microsoft, more than 90% of employees signed a petition calling for Sam's return, and it was rumored that the ongoing new project "Q*" may have AI security issues...

In the end, multiple forces, including employees and major shareholder Microsoft, facilitated the return of Sam and Greg and put the company back on a relatively more certain development path.

OpenAI’s latest announcement not only reiterates that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman have returned to the company to resume their original positions, but also officially announces the latest board members: Bret Taylor, chairman of the board of directors and former CEO of FTSE, Larry Summers, independent director and American economist, and Adam D’Angelo, independent director, Facebook’s first CTO, and Quora founder.

It can be seen that although Sam and Greg failed to return to the board of directors, Ilya, the core figure who first initiated this "removal", has withdrawn from the board of directors.

Not only that, only Adam remains on the old board of directors. Almost at the same time as OpenAI’s announcement, Helen Toner, the original independent director of OpenAI, also tweeted, publicly stating that she officially resigned from the OpenAI board of directors that day.


▲(Comparison of before and after board structure)

In fact, it is no secret that OpenAI’s board of directors has undergone major changes. As early as November 22, OpenAI confirmed that Bret Taylor, Larry Summers, and Adam D'Angelo will each occupy a seat in the new board of directors.

However, considering that before the crisis, there were as many as six OpenAI board members, whether there will be new board members in the future has become the focus of attention from the outside world.

Previously, it was reported on the Internet that because Microsoft played an important role in bridging the contradiction between the OpenAI board of directors and management, the former is expected to occupy a formal seat on the OpenAI board of directors. According to the OpenAI announcement, a number of Microsoft executives will serve as non-voting observer seats on OpenAI's latest board of directors.

These include Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella, CTO Kevin Scott, CFOAmyHood, and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith.

In the announcement, the latest board of directors announced that after its formation, it will have three core tasks:

Create a qualified and diverse board of directors; further stabilize OpenAI, including forming an independent committee to oversee the review of recent turmoil; strengthen OpenAI’s governance structure.

The hidden dangers have not been completely eliminated

OpenAI’s latest announcement posted open letters from CEO Sam and new board chairman Bret. Among them, neither of them directly mentioned a farce in the past.

In Sam's open letter, there is quite a feeling of "meeting and letting go of grudges with a smile". The word "love" appears five times in the whole text. In addition to expressing his gratitude and love to the employees and Microsoft who expressed support for him as CEO, he also expressed his appreciation for Ilya, the initiator of his expulsion from the board of directors:

"I love and respect Ilya, I think he is a guiding light in this field and a treasure of humanity. I have no ill will towards him."

As for Ilya’s future, he wrote: “While Ilya will no longer serve as a board member, we hope to continue our working relationship and are discussing how he can continue his work at OpenAI in the future.”

Regarding Adam, Tasha, and Helen, the three directors on the old board who voted him out, his attitude was: "Thanks to them for working with us to find the solution that best fits this mission. I am very happy to continue working with Adam, and sincerely thank Tasha and Helen for their great efforts in this process."

It is worth noting that there are many opinions in the market that Adam is the "mastermind" who expelled Sam from the show. Adam is the founder and CEO of Quora, the American version of Zhihu. Quora has launched a self-developed large model Poe, which competes with OpenAI's ChatGPT, GPT-4 and other products. This is regarded as its biggest motivation to hinder the development of OpenAI.

Now, however, Sam seems to have formed a new alliance with Adam. There was an episode: On November 24, Sam also tweeted that he spent Thanksgiving with Adam.

In the latest open letter, Sam emphasized that after this farce, "we have not lost any employees."

It seems that after nearly two weeks of high-frequency turmoil, OpenAI has ushered in a family-friendly ending. However, there are actually many challenges faced by OpenAI internally.


▲(OpenAICEOSamAltman)

On the one hand, in the latest structure, Adam has become the only remaining member of the board of directors, which also shows that there will still be conflicts of interest, and perhaps estrangements and differences within OpenAI's high-level structure in the future.

On the other hand, how to prevent the "CEO suddenly being fired" plot will also be another core proposition faced by Sam.

In the open letter, Sam also mentioned that he may optimize the governance structure and "strengthen" his role as a partner in the company. He wrote: "Greg and I are partners in this company. We have never quite figured out how to communicate this on the organizational chart, but we will figure it out."

The ownership structure of OpenAI is a non-profit organization holding a limited profit subsidiary, and the company's management does not hold shares. Therefore, technically speaking, it is not easy for Sam to keep control of the company in his own hands.

In addition, Sam also needs to deal with internal and external investigations into the reasons for his sudden dismissal. In a recent interview with technology media The Verge, Sam also avoided this issue.

When asked "Why do you think the (old) board said they lost trust in you?"

Sam replied: "It's up to them to answer that question."