“OpenAI Investors Keep Pushing for Sam Altman’s Return”, Deepa Seetharaman2023-11-21 (OA; backlinks)⁠:

…One surprise signee was Ilya Sutskever, the company’s chief scientist and one of the members of the 4-person board that voted to oust Sam Altman. On Monday morning, Sutskever said he deeply regretted his participation in the board’s action. “I will do everything I can to reunite the company”, he posted on Twitter:

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.

[In addition to everything said at Sutskever on the OA Slack] Sutskever flipped his position following intense deliberations with OpenAI employees as well as an emotionally charged conversation with Greg Brockman’s wife, Anna Brockman [who does not work at OpenAI], at the company’s offices, during which she cried and pleaded with him to change his mind, according to people familiar with the matter. [Confirmed by NYT, among others. An OAer told me: “I saw some of this. It seemed emotionally harrowing beyond comprehension to Ilya. He become mute and immobile.”]

Sutskever arrived at OpenAI’s headquarters Sunday night with Emmett Shear, the former Twitch chief executive handpicked by the board to be interim CEO of OpenAI, people familiar with the matter said. Shear was there to meet employees who were gathered there Sunday night but few people showed up, the people said.

It isn’t clear what else influenced Sutskever’s decision to reverse course. Sutskever was the officiant at the Brockmans’ wedding in 2019.

[Sutskever followup tweet: “There exists no sentence in any language that conveys how happy I am:” at Altman’s return]

…One factor driving the board’s decision last week was the members’ lack of clarity around Altman’s pursuits outside of OpenAI, the people said. The trust between Altman and the board had eroded so much that there were mounting concerns that OpenAI’s intellectual property or technology could be used in ways that made the board uncomfortable, the people said. Further details couldn’t be learned.

…In a message to employees Sunday night, the board reaffirmed its decision; it provided few new details. It said the decision was “not about product safety or security, the pace of development or OpenAI’s finances. This was not about any singular incident”, according to the message, which was viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

…This also isn’t the first time Altman has been asked to depart a company. A few years ago, senior leaders at Y Combinator, the venture firm Altman used to run, also asked Altman to leave his role as president following mounting concerns about the time he was spending on other business endeavors, including at OpenAI, according to investors briefed by the venture firm’s executives. [cf. New Yorker on the concerns during his tenure, then Newcomer]

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