Around 500 OpenAI employees have reportedly signed a letter demanding that the company’s board of directors resign and reinstate fired CEO Sam Altman.
According cablingStaff at the artificial intelligence firm behind ChatGPT who signed the letter threatened to resign and join Altman in his new company at Microsoft unless he is allowed to return to the company.
The report says the letter claims the board’s decision to remove Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman has jeopardized the company’s work and accuses the board of lacking the competence to oversee the company.
He calls for the board to resign and be replaced by two new lead independent directors, adding that if their demands are not met, those who signed the letter may choose to resign from the company and join Altman and Brockman in their new role. Microsoft’s AI research team, which announced that Altman would join the company on Monday.
The letter has reportedly been signed by several senior members of OpenAI staff, including Ilya Sutskever, the company’s chief technology officer and one of the central board members in the decision to initially remove Altman.
Sutskever has since posted on X, formerly Twitter, that he “deeply regrets” his involvement in the board action and would “do everything he can to reunite the company.”
The staff demands continue an extraordinary few days for the company, which announced the shock decision to fire Altman on Friday, with the board of directors saying in a statement that it “no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI,” but did not disclose any specific reason for your dismissal.
Reports emerged over the weekend suggesting that Altman was in talks with OpenAI to quickly return as CEO, but these talks were said to have collapsed on Sunday, before Microsoft, OpenAI’s largest investor, announced that Altman would join a new advanced AI research team. at the company in a post Monday morning.
OpenAI has since offered the CEO role to former Twitch boss Emmett Shear, who said he had agreed to join the company.
Several OpenAI staff members took to social media on Monday to post the same message: “OpenAI is nothing without its people,” in a first sign of continued discontent within the company.
