On November 17th, Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever joined forces with three independent directors, Adam D'Angelo, Tasha McCauley, and Helen Toner, to dismiss OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, with Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati serving as interim CEO. Afterwards, Greg Brockman announced his resignation as chairman of the board of directors. On the same day, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella issued a statement emphasizing that the partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI will not be affected.
2) From November 18th to 19th, under pressure from investors such as Microsoft and Thrive tiger, as well as continuous support from internal employees and threats of resignation, OpenAI intended to invite Altman to re serve as CEO. However, Altman proposed to dissolve the existing board of directors as a condition for his return. On the evening of the 19th, Ilya Sutskever announced that negotiations had broken down, and Twitch's co founder Emmett Shear would take over as interim CEO.
3) On November 20th, Microsoft CEO announced that Altman and Brockman would both join Microsoft's new advanced artificial intelligence research team, with Altman serving as CEO. Over 95% of OpenAI employees threaten the board with resignation, and Ilya signs the joint letter submitted by the employees to the board.
4) On November 21st, Altman was not confirmed to join Microsoft. Microsoft CEO Nadella expressed an open attitude towards Altman's choice to join Microsoft or return to OpenAI in an interview. Sam Altman's return negotiations with OpenAI are still ongoing. Altman and Brockman are still willing to return to OpenAI and are looking for a dignified way to leave the board members who caused Altman's dismissal.
Possible reasons: 1) The split between conservatives and radicals: Altman's enthusiasm for AGI and the radical pace of promoting commercialization have caused dissatisfaction. Conservatives believe that all levels of society need more time to adapt to the rapid development of AI technology, including legal, data security, ethical and other issues related to generative AI;
2) Cost issue: On November 15th, ChatGPT collapsed and suspended the registration of GPT-4. The board of directors accused Altman of being "not frank enough" and pointing to potential cost concealment issues. AI was unable to bear a large amount of computing power consumption in the immature stage of commercialization, which was contrary to the original intention of OpenAI non-profit organization;
3) Security issue: Data leakage issues are frequent, and on November 9th, Microsoft laid off several OpenAI security officers.
Subsequent impact: Altman and some OpenAI employees joined Microsoft to contribute to its continued promotion of AIGC layout and commercialization.
1) On the one hand, Microsoft's aggressive approach to the commercialization of AIGC coincides with Altman's, and Altman and others joining Microsoft also prevented OpenAI's advanced technology and experience from being mastered by other competitors;
2) On the other hand, Microsoft's AIGC strategy tends to introduce a "co pilot" to assist users in their work and life, while the layout of AGI and Agent is not proactive, which may not fully align with Altman's vision. In the future, Microsoft also needs to maintain close cooperation with OpenAI to promote cost reduction and performance improvement of large models, in order to launch more mature AIGC products and commercial models.
For the AIGC industry, Altman's departure may slow down OpenAI's exploration of cutting-edge technologies in large models.
1) In the short term, the AIGC application industry chain may bear certain risks. The companies currently developing AIGC applications bear high computing costs, and the product form is difficult to break through the bottleneck of chat robots, and users' willingness to pay is not enough to match the high computing costs. Therefore, the entire AIGC industry urgently needs breakthroughs in the forefront of big models;
2) In the medium to long term, Altman's resignation is conducive to the dissemination of technology and the elimination of OpenAI's technical barriers. Analogous to the "Eight Traitors" in Silicon Valley, Noyce and eight other core technical personnel left Shockley's company, the father of transistors, to establish Fairchild Semiconductor Company, which made significant contributions to the birth of the global semiconductor industry. The industrial opportunities brought by generative AI are not just a matter of time, and the productization and commercialization of cutting-edge large model technologies still require time. On a longer time scale, the technological advantages of OpenAI are not unshakable, and the dissemination of technology is also conducive to the healthy development of the entire AI industry.