Why did OpenAI fire CEO Sam Altman? Is profit and safety the issue

On Saturday, the tech world was shocked after OpenAI's board of directors fired the company's CEO, Sam Altman. The measure was unexpected and sudden. Altman, whose profile rose to that of industry visionaries and geniuses after the success of ChatGPT, was in some ways OpenAI. He was the face of the company, and, by his position, he was considered the best man in the world of AI.

So why would OpenAI fire someone like him? Well, there are public reasons and there are behind-the-scenes reasons. The public reasons are laid out in the blog that Open AI published, the same blog in which the company also named Open AI's chief technology officer, Mira Murati, an Albanian, as its interim CEO. Open AI said:

"Mr Altman's departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities. The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI."

As far as corporate announcements go, this one was brutal, hinting that something unpleasant has happened to OpenAI. Either Altman did something that the OpenAI board considers indefensible, or there has been a clash of ideologies between him and the board.

Although no one knows, Altman is at OpenAI, and so is co-founder Greg Brockman, who backed Altman.

Beyond the facts, there are rumours. It suggests that Open AI's board of directors has fired Altman due to a disagreement on two issues: security and profits (or rather, his insistence on profits).

Kara Swisher, the well-informed Silicon Valley journalist, tweeted the same thing. She said: "As I understand it, it was a “misalignment” of the profit versus nonprofit adherents at the company. The developer day was an issue."

Other people have hinted at the same thing. The issue is the values on which OpenAI was founded and what it has become in the ChatGPT era. When it was founded, OpenAI was supposed to be a nonprofit organization. Elon Musk, one of the original co-founders, has recently criticized the company for straying from its nonprofit mission and turning to a for-profit model. Of course, Musk had abandoned Open AI a few years ago over a disagreement about the company's direction.

Sam Altman is believed to have been a for-profit CEO. He thought that Open AI must have a viable business model and drive the creation of products and services that allow it to become a technology giant.

Then there is the security part. Social media chatter from people familiar with the Silicon Valley ecosystem suggests that Altman was pushing OpenAI too quickly and aggressively and undermining the security aspect of ChatGPT and other services.

A few days ago, on Developer Day, OpenAI introduced plugins allowing people to create their own custom AI system. The rush for this feature was tremendous and apparently broke something within the company's systems. ChatGPT went down for hours and then ran into problems, prompting Altman to tweet that "we are pausing new ChatGPT Plus sign-ups for a bit :( the surge in usage post devday has exceeded our capacity and we want to make sure everyone has a great experience. you can still sign-up to be notified within the app when subs reopen.

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