“Today I Got a Call Inviting Me to Consider a Once-In-A-Lifetime Opportunity: to Become the Interim CEO of OpenAI”, 2023-11-20 ():
…I took this job because I believe that OpenAI is one of the most important companies currently in existence. When the board shared the situation and asked me to take the role, I did not make the decision lightly. Ultimately I felt that I had a duty to help if I could.
…Our partnership with Microsoft remains strong, and my priority in the coming weeks will be to make sure we continue to serve all our customers well. OpenAI employees are extremely impressive, as you might have guessed, and mission-driven in the extreme. And it’s clear that the process and communications around Sam’s removal has been handled very badly, which has seriously damaged our trust.
I have a 3 point plan for the next 30 days:
Hire an independent investigator to dig into the entire process leading up to this point and generate a full report. [Shear stepped down, having negotiated 3 relatively-independent new directors plus this investigation]
Continue to speak to as many of our employees, partners, investors, and customers as possible, take good notes, and share the key takeaways.
Reform the management and leadership team in light of recent departures into an effective force to drive results for our customers.
Depending on the results everything we learn from these, I will drive changes in the organization—up to and including pushing strongly for substantial governance changes if necessary.
…Before I took the job, I checked on the reasoning behind the change. The board did not remove Sam over any specific disagreement on safety, their reasoning was completely different from that. I’m not crazy enough to take this job without board support for commercializing our awesome models.
[Note the careful wording: “over any [single] specific disagreement”.]