OpenAI staff threaten mass walkout unless Sam Altman is reinstated

Chaos has engulfed the company behind ChatGPT after hundreds of OpenAI staff members threatened to quit en masse unless the board overseeing the business reinstates its ousted chief executive Sam Altman and step down.

In an open letter, 550 of OpenAI’s 700 employees demanded the resignation of the board and said they might walk out if Altman is not brought back.

Altman was fired on Friday in a move that shocked Silicon Valley, riled the company’s employees and put rival tech firms on alert for a talent exodus.

The letter to OpenAI’s four remaining board directors said: “Your actions have made it obvious that you are incapable of overseeing OpenAI. We are unable to work for or with people that lack competence, judgment and care for our mission and employees.”

It adds that the signatories could join Altman and OpenAI’s former president Greg Brockman at Microsoft after the US tech company announced on Monday it had hired the duo to head a new AI research unit. Microsoft is OpenAI’s biggest shareholder.

“We, the undersigned, may choose to resign from OpenAI and join the newly announced Microsoft subsidiary run by Sam Altman and Greg Brockman,” the employees wrote. “We will take this step imminently, unless all current board members resign … and reinstates Sam Altman and Greg Brockman.” The letter was first reported by tech magazine Wired and journalist Kara Swisher.

OpenAI was founded as a non-profit entity. It controls a commercial subsidiary that, until Friday, was run by Altman. The 38-year-old has become a globally renowned executive off the back of the success of ChatGPT, the AI text-generating sensation that raced to 100 million users soon after its launch in November last year.

The non-profit board now consists of four members: OpenAI’s chief scientist Ilya Sutskever; Adam D’Angelo, the founder of question-and-answer website Quora; Tasha McCauley, a tech entrepreneur; and Helen Toner, a director at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology.

In a surprising development, Sutskever appeared to back his own removal from the board, as one of the 550 signatories of the open letter.

Other signatories included Mira Murati, OpenAI’s chief technology officer who was appointed interim CEO for a brief period after Altman’s departure but was then replaced on Sunday by Emmett Shear, the co-founder of video game streaming platform Twitch.

Shear denied in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that Altman’s departure was linked to concerns over safety at the company. ChatGPT’s success has stoked fears among some experts, politicians and tech professionals that AI firms are locked in an arms race that could produce systems capable of evading human control.

The OpenAI board said in its surprise statement on Friday that Altman had been fired for failing to be “consistently candid in his communications” but did not elaborate further.

Sutskever added his signature to the letter as he wrote on Monday that he regretted his role in Altman’s departure. In a post on X, he wrote: “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.”

Altman’s hiring also pulls into focus Microsoft’s relationship with OpenAI, in which it owns a 49% stake and has backed with a multi-billion dollar investment. Dan Ives, analyst at US financial services firm Wedbush Securities, said Altman was still in control of OpenAI.

“Altman will essentially now call the shots at OpenAI from Microsoft’s perch despite the clown show board move over the weekend,” he said.