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Between November 18-23, 2023, Sam Altman, the cofounder and CEO of OpenAI went through the most turbulent periods of his life as he was first fired from his position by the board of directors, and then later reinstated by the company following protests from the employees. The period also saw some of the existing board members leaving and new members joining. Microsoft also got a seat at the board table. but without any voting rights. But now that Altman is back, he has been attending conferences and making statements on artificial intelligence (AI) once again. Let us take a look at what Altman, the man behind ChatGPT, has been saying since then.
All the comments made by Sam Altman since being reinstated
1. On November 30, after officially assuming his position as the OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman posted his reaction on X expressing his views. He said, “I recognize that during this process some questions were raised about Adam’s potential conflict of interest running Quora and Poe while being on the OpenAI Board. For the record, I want to state that Adam has always been very clear with me and the Board about the potential conflict and doing whatever he needed to do (recusing himself when appropriate and even offering to leave the Board if we ever thought it was necessary) to appropriately manage this situation and to avoid conflicted decision-making. Quora is a large customer of OpenAI and we found it helpful to have customer representation on our Board. We expect that if OpenAI is as successful as we hope it will touch many parts of the economy and have complex relationships with many other entities in the world, resulting in various potential conflicts of interest. The way we plan to deal with this is with full disclosure and leaving decisions about how to manage situations like these up to the Board”.
2. He also spoke about his experience of the ordeal and the future of the company in a follow-up post. He said, “The best interests of the company and the mission always come first. It is clear that there were real misunderstandings between me and members of the board. For my part, it is incredibly important to learn from this experience and apply those learnings as we move forward as a company. I welcome the board’s independent review of all recent events. I am thankful to Helen and Tasha for their contributions to the strength of OpenAI”.
3. But this is not all he had to say. After he joined, OpenAI released an official statement from Altman where he thanked everyone involved in this saga for their love and support. He also gave a brief overview of what the company would focus on now that he was back. He explained, “Advancing our research plan and further investing in our full-stack safety efforts, which have always been critical to our work. Our research roadmap is clear; this was a wonderfully focusing time. I share the excitement you all feel; we will turn this crisis into an opportunity! I’ll work with Mira on this”.
He added, “Continuing to improve and deploy our products and serve our customers. It’s important that people get to experience the benefits and promise of AI, and have the opportunity to shape it. We continue to believe that great products are the best way to do this. I’ll work with Brad, Jason and Anna to ensure our unwavering commitment to users, customers, partners and governments around the world is clear”.
4. Altman has also restarted his AI conference tour, making public appearances to speak about AI, its regulation, and safety requirements. Speaking at a forum hosted by rights organization Operation Hope in Atlanta on Monday, December 11, he highlighted the dangers of rogue AI. “All those thoughts about the ways that this could go wrong, you don’t need much imagination because we grew up with that in the media. That’s why we work so hard on safety. But we also believe you cannot build this safely in a vacuum,” Bloomberg quoted him as saying.
5. He has empathized with people’s anxiety over this emerging technology and said, “People have a lot of anxiety, and I get that. They need a person to project that onto, and unfortunately for a while I’m going to be that person. And that’s all right”.
Interestingly, Altman refused to take any questions on his firing and rehiring and only explained that the company was conducting an internal investigation into the matter. In effect, OpenAI seems to have battened down the hatches, but only after the storm passed, and it is unlikely that the people concerned are going to wash their dirty linen in public anymore.
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