The OpenAI Saga had people glued to X (formerly Twitter) over the weekend. News came in on Friday that Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI (makers of ChatGPT), was abruptly fired by the Board. The board cited lack of “candid communication” as the reason for Altman’s firing. Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s co-founder and president, was also asked to resign shortly. Mira Murati, the CTO was asked to take command. All this had people wondering what’s going on in OpenAI.
Conspiracy theories started doing rounds on what actually transpired. One of the stories going round was that Ilya, one of the board members, was involved in the sacking. The whole saga was happening live on Twitter as people started putting their information and insights. Silicon Valley based journalists like Alex Heath from Verge were posting live updates on the developing story. The story also drew attention of other prominent folks like Vinod Khosla and Elon Musk.
The story didn’t end there as Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft announced that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman would be leading a new AI research division at Microsoft and would be joined by many folks from OpenAI. News started pouring in that the employees had banded together and asked the board to reconsider their decision and step down. The letter going around on X had almost all of ~750 employees signing it. Surprisingly Ilya had also signed the letter. There were some deadlines which lapsed and it was unclear if Sam Altman is going back to OpenAI or continuing with Microsoft.
The story became interesting with cryptic tweets (or posts as X calls them now) from Sam Altman, Mira Murati, Ilya, etc. People started drawing conclusions and figuring out the hidden meaning. Hundreds of employees also posted
“OpenAI is nothing without its people”
as they threatened to resign and rally behind Sam Altman.
OpenAI’s board is different from other company boards in that it doesn’t reflect the shareholders’ stakes. There was uncanny silence from the board on the development. It also brought to attention the concerns other businesses and partners had on the future of OpenAI.
Many started to wonder what would happen to OpenAI as Sam Altman and Satya Nadella tried to dissuade any concerns by saying they will work to ensure that OpenAI continues to flourish.
Meanwhile, Emmett Shear, former CEO of Twitch was declared as the interim CEO by OpenAI’s board. However, a meeting called by Emmett was boycotted by the employees.
The saga continues and there is no clear ending. Only thing that can be said is that things won’t stay the same.
The saga also brings up several issues – communication, power, organisation and constituents, acqui-hiring, outside influence, stakeholders, shared assumptions. Let’s explore them.
Communication was cited as the reason behind Sam Altman’s sacking. Everyone knows the importance of communication. You need to communicate down the hierarchy, up the hierarchy and also communicate with your colleagues and external stakeholders. If you fail there, you leave others’ biases, understanding and perspective to fill in the gaps making things out of control.
Power is quite an important piece in the organisation structure. The tussle between board, management, partners, employees highlight the constant power struggle. A person hoping to do good professionally must understand the power dynamics even if s/he doesn’t participate in it actively. Time to revise Game Theory? Egos and selfish interests plague many organisations and politics is especially prominent at a senior managerial and leadership level.
What is an organisation? Prof. Saral Mukherjee in his book Elephants and Cheetahs define organisations as level 8 autopoietic systems which means they are complex and are greater than their constituents. But the question anyone would be pondering would be the Ship of Theseus. If all the logs of the original ship are replaced one by one, is the ship still the same ship?
In the knowledge economy, knowledge is power which drives businesses. Knowledge comes in the form of talent and organisations can’t ignore people. If almost all the people of OpenAI moved to some other firm together, what remains of OpenAI? What Microsoft CEO offered to Sam Altman and gang, was it acqui-hiring? Essentially getting OpenAI for peanuts? Should management and board have skin in the game? More promoter-led businesses?
The board, twitter and the external ecosystem also played an important role in shaping opinions and responses of stakeholders.
Can we really think of X as the public square Elon Musk claims to be?
Lastly, it calls upon the shared assumptions on business continuity and tells us that things are stable only till they are. One should realise that the higher speed of innovation also entails a higher pace of description and we as individuals and organisations should get better at change management whether the change is internal or external.
Let me know your thoughts on this.