The staff of OpenAI were on revolt on Monday with more than 730 employees signing an open letter threatening to quit unless the board resigned and reinstated Sam Altman as CEO, along with cofounder and former president Greg Brockman.
“The process through which you terminated Sam Altman and removed Greg Brockman from the board has jeopardized all of this work and undermined our mission and company,” the open letter reads. “Your conduct has made it clear you did not have the competence to oversee OpenAI.”
By 5:10pm EST on Monday, around 738 out of 770 employees of OpenAI, making up about 95% of the company, signed the letter. Extraordinarily, this included the company’s chief scientist and important board member, Ilya Sutskever, who was blamed for coordinating the coup against Altman in the first place. In fact, shortly before the open letter was released, Sutskever took to X (formerly Twitter) to apologize for his role:
I deeply regret my participation in the board’s actions. I never intended to harm OpenAI. I love everything we’ve built together and I will do everything I can to reunite the company.
— Ilya Sutskever (@ilyasut) November 20, 2023
Sam Altman’s sacking has plunged OpenAI into a profound and bewildering crisis with no obvious resolution. After weekend-long negotiations and deliberations to reinstate Altman, it was announced that he would not be rehired. OpenAI’s interim CEO Mira Murati also lost her job and was replaced by the former CEO of Twitch, Emmett Shear, while Altman and Brockman were then hired by Microsoft.
The standoff between OpenAI’s staff and board is still ongoing.
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