Everyone from tech industry insiders to average bystanders marveled over the past week at how some of the brightest minds in Silicon Valley managed to briefly turn the world’s leading AI company into a laughing stock.
The drama that unfolded at OpenAI nearly a year to the day after the institute first captured people’s imagination with the release of ChatGPT is now over—or at least paused—with co-founder Sam Altman reinstated as CEO.
But experts now believe OpenAI crossed the Rubicon and there is no going back to the way things were, even if Altman’s in-house rivals, among them Ilya Sutskever, wish for nothing more.
A brain drain now threatens to derail OpenAI, warns Georgetown University assistant professor Jason Schloetzer. As the erstwhile non-profit establishes itself first and foremost as a commercial entity under the de-facto control of Microsoft, its talent faces a fateful choice.
“This could be the time you have to pick one side or the other,” says Schloetzer, whose focuses are corporate governance and artificial intelligence. “If you believe that having all of the OpenAI talent together in the same spot has tremendous value, then splitting them up reduces the pace of innovation.”
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The problem is the organization has been diminished after five dizzying days during which the board first sacked Altman with barely any explanation, only to hire him back after an equally abrupt change of heart.
Sutskever, an OpenAI board director and its chief scientist, even turned on the very plotters he had first sided with and expressed deep regret for his actions, saying: “I will do everything I can to reunite the company.”
The drama became so gripping, it was compared to Game of Thrones, the HBO fantasy drama best known for its perpetual palace intrigue and backstabbing. According to Vinod Khosla, the first VC investor to put money into OpenAI, the ensuing damage reflected poorly on the entire field and “set back the promise of artificial intelligence”.
It was ultimately the threat of a brain drain that brought the coup to an end. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella shrewdly forced the board’s hand by giving a blanket job guarantee to anyone who wanted to leave.
He wasn’t the only one interested in poaching OpenAI’s talent, either.
Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff wasted no time in appealing personally to prospective deserters, making a standing offer to match the full cash and salary benefits of any OpenAI staffer on the spot.
“Sent me your CV directly to CEO@salesforce.com,” he offered.
OpenAI couldn’t afford that kind of exodus, bringing the brief revolt against Altman to a close.
Sutskever along with two independent directors, researchers Helen Toner and Tasha McCauley, were replaced with ex-Twitter chairman Bret Taylor and economist Lawrence Summers, both considered more investor-friendly.
Each employee will now have to question whether they support “a lot of people getting rich”—as Altman phrased it earlier this year—or OpenAI’s original mission, which foresees ensuring everyone benefits from their work, and not just a few.
In a worst-case scenario, some of their best staff could follow the lead of Dario and Daniela Amodei, a brother and sister team at OpenAI who left in December 2020 to form their own AI startup, Anthropic.
Veteran venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya has even wondered whether OpenAI will still exist.