{"id":260043,"date":"2025-11-04T01:49:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T01:49:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/260043\/"},"modified":"2025-11-04T01:49:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T01:49:11","slug":"former-openai-exec-explains-why-he-tried-to-do-a-coup-against-sam-altman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/260043\/","title":{"rendered":"Former OpenAI Exec Explains Why He Tried to Do a Coup Against Sam Altman"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been nearly two years since OpenAI\u2019s board of directors (very briefly) fired Sam Altman over a lack of confidence in his abilities at the helm of the company. Thanks to the ongoing feud<\/a> between Altman, who got his CEO seat back within a matter of days, and OpenAI co-founder Elon Musk, we now have some more insight into what led to that short-lived coup attempt. Ilya Sutskever, the former chief scientist of OpenAI, was recently deposed<\/a> as part of Musk\u2019s lawsuit against Altman and revealed why he and other members of the board plotted to push out their CEO.<\/p>\n

According to the deposition, Sutskever spent more than a year considering the possibility of ousting Altman from his leadership role. That desire eventually manifested in a 52-page memo that Sutskever submitted to independent members of the OpenAI board, in which he described Altman as exhibiting \u201ca consistent pattern of lying, undermining his execs, and pitting his execs against one another.\u201d The former chief scientist who founded the company with Altman also said that, at the time, he believed the appropriate action for the board to take was to terminate Altman.<\/p>\n

According to Sutskever, things within OpenAI were growing contentious. By his account, Altman had been undermining Mira Murati, the chief technology officer at the time, and pitted Sutskever against OpenAI\u2019s then-research director and current chief scientist, Jakub Pachocki, by telling them \u201cconflicting things about the way the company would be run.\u201d That seemed to be part of a broader pattern of behavior for Altman, who allegedly was pushed out of startup accelerator Y Combinator for similar reasons\u2014starting lots of projects without direction and providing different stories to different people, who were made to feel like they were competing with each other.<\/p>\n

For those reasons, among others, Sutskever said he wanted Altman out, and he waited until board dynamics \u201cwould allow for Altman to be replaced as the CEO.\u201d Once the conditions seemed right, he pounced, sending out the memo. He got his wish, and the board fired Altman<\/a> on November 17, 2023\u2014nearly one year after ChatGPT was first made public.<\/p>\n

Sutskever said he expected OpenAI employees to be indifferent about the leadership change, but was surprised to learn that many were upset. Several high-ranking employees walked immediately, and 738 employees signed a petition<\/a> promising to leave the company if Altman wasn\u2019t reinstated as CEO. Altman\u2019s exit from the company lasted about as long as a holiday weekend, and he returned to OpenAI on November 21, 2023.<\/p>\n

During his brief time out of the leader\u2019s seat, Sutskever revealed that OpenAI and Anthropic had conversations about a potential merger that would have placed Anthropic\u2019s leadership at the head of OpenAI. That conversation seemed serious, as Sutskever stated that he remembered members of OpenAI\u2019s board being largely supportive of such a merger. But it fizzled as the company experienced widespread mutiny and brought Altman back. In turn, the board members who ousted Altman and backed an Anthropic merger stepped away<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Obviously, Altman held onto power, as he\u2019s still running the company, has successfully re-shaped itself into a for-profit corporation<\/a>, and is reportedly preparing for an IPO<\/a> in the near future. Who knows how much of that would have happened if Sutskever\u2019s wish to push him out had held for more than a few days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s been nearly two years since OpenAI\u2019s board of directors (very briefly) fired Sam Altman over a lack…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260044,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,1930,2139,276,277,49,48,250,4120,120579,278,2747,61],"class_list":{"0":"post-260043","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-anthropic","10":"tag-artificial-intellience","11":"tag-artificial-intelligence","12":"tag-artificialintelligence","13":"tag-ca","14":"tag-canada","15":"tag-elon-musk","16":"tag-emerging-technologies","17":"tag-ilya-sutskever","18":"tag-openai","19":"tag-sam-altman","20":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}