The leadership crisis that engulfed OpenAI for nearly a week ended almost as abruptly as it began: With a terse, cryptic announcement by the company that would have enormous ramifications for its future.
In some ways, the outcome was a return to the status quo: Sam Altman would be restored as CEO, with the company’s deep and lucrative business partnership with Microsoft, which took a $13 billion stake in the company even as it ramps up its own AI research efforts, left intact.
But in other ways, the agreement is still a watershed moment for OpenAI and the artificial intelligence field writ large.
The tumultuous week seems to have resulted in a big victory for Altman personally; proponents of widespread AI adoption; and some of the country’s most established elites. And it came at the expense of AI skeptics who, by many accounts, bungled an attempt to make a principled stand for caution about the technology’s long-term risks.
Who came out on top
Sam Altman A clear winner in the whole debacle is, of course, Altman himself. Unceremoniously ejected from his post on Friday, Altman quickly rallied support from the vast majority of OpenAI’s staff, who signed what was essentially a loyalty pledge underscoring the deep rift between himself and the board. His return to OpenAI, in triumph over the board that summarily fired him, reflects a kind of personal vindication that’s only likely to bolster, for better or for worse, his carefully and intentionally constructed image as a charismatic visionary who is single-handedly unlocking the secrets of the universe.
Microsoft Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has sought to downplay the tech giant’s part in the crisis, insisting on Monday — before Altman’s reappointment — that whatever happens with OpenAI, “nothing changes.” Microsoft’s priority, Nadella said, was to ensure uninterrupted delivery of AI technology to its own customers, whether that meant Altman being hired by Microsoft or his reinstallation at OpenAI.
But Microsoft is hardly a disinterested party, having committed billions to OpenAI in a multi-year partnership that’s led to the tech giant integrating ChatGPT into Bing search and other Microsoft products. Now, Microsoft is poised to gain even more influence. Nadella hinted at this reality on Monday, signaling that if Altman were to return as OpenAI’s CEO, Microsoft would have a very strong opinion on how the AI startup is governed.
“One thing I’ll be very, very clear [about] is, we’re never going to get back into a situation where we get surprised like this ever again,” Nadella said. “If we go back to operating like on Friday, we will make sure we are very, very clear that the governance gets fixed in a way that we really have more surety and guarantee that we don’t have surprises.”
Whether that could mean having a board observer or a full-fledged seat on OpenAI’s board, he said, is a bridge “we’ll cross… if it happens.”
New board members In naming ex-Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers to OpenAI’s board, the agreement stands to align the company even more closely with the country’s wealthiest and most influential elite.
Taylor isn’t just a former CEO of one of the tech industry’s biggest companies. He’s a former chief technology officer of Facebook, and in 2022, as the chair of Twitter, successfully forced Elon Musk to follow through with his $44 billion acquisition of the social media company, in a momentous bit of corporate maneuvering.
Summers, meanwhile, is the former president of Harvard University who has attracted controversy for suggesting that “innate differences” are the reason for women’s underrepresentation in scientific professions. The remark was widely criticized as sexist and Summers subsequently apologized.
Who came out on bottom
The push to slow AI development In the same way that the deal breathes new life into Altman’s mythos, so does it give a tailwind to the ideology he represents: a belief in the rapid commercialization of generative AI. With some of the apparent architects of Altman’s ouster being pushed out themselves, a casualty of the affair may be the perspectives that those board members espoused. That seems to include a deep fear about the long-term, potentially even existential risks of AI.
In the letter signed by hundreds of OpenAI staffers threatening to quit, employees reported that board members claimed allowing the company to be destroyed “would be consistent with the mission” of OpenAI, which is to “ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.”
That OpenAI’s board apparently believed the company’s destruction would benefit society reflects the concerns of a vocal camp in the AI field that has called for pauses in AI development, more research to “align” AI with human-centered values, and concerns about the unchecked power of a truly sentient super-intelligence. Emmett Shear, whom the board named OpenAI’s interim CEO for all of two days, has also expressed similar worries. In the fallout of the leadership crisis, some have argued that the outcome is also a defeat for effective altruism, the movement with which some OpenAI board members are said to be affiliated.
OpenAI does not appear to be on the brink of an all-out AI sprint that disregards risk entirely. Summers has been vocal about AI’s near-term impacts on labor. And after having wowed US lawmakers by calling for AI regulation, Altman will likely continue to be a prominent figure in the global debate over rules for artificial intelligence.
Still, deserved or not, the dispute appears to have done long-term damage to the credibility of certain deep skeptics of AI, and lifted the fortunes of the Microsofts and Altmans of the world who are pushing to get artificial intelligence into the hands of the public. And that may have untold ripple effects for AI development for years to come.
