Sam Altman's ouster as OpenAI CEO was reportedly a cocktail of deception and toxicity, with Microsoft at the center of it all

Towards the end of 2023, Sam Altman was abruptly yanked from the top seat at OpenAI by the board of directors over not being “consistently candid” with his leadership, operations, and efforts.

While he was reinstated as CEO following an outcry by a vast majority of the ChatGPT maker's employees chanting "OpenAI is nothing without its people," we never had a full account of events leading up to Altman's temporary firing as OpenAI CEO.

However, a recent exclusive report by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) seemingly sheds more light on the situation. As you might have guessed, Microsoft's multi-billion-dollar partnership with OpenAI was apparently involved.

According to the report, Microsoft released a test of OpenAI's unreleased GPT-4 model in India. This was viewed as a major breach of confidence as the tech giant had unveiled the model to the world without proper approval from the joint safety board.

WSJ explains that the information never reached the board's desk, further revealing that an independent member only learned about the situation from an employee after a board meeting. Interestingly, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was in attendance but still didn't share the information.

The report further highlighted a claim by an OpenAI board member, who indicated that OpenAI's Startup Fund, launched in 2021 to invest in AI startups, wasn't sharing profits and returns with investors.

The initial assumption was that the Startup Fund was managed by OpenAI, but as WSJ reports, it was owned by Sam Altman.

Elsewhere, OpenAI's co-founder Ilya Sutskever and CTO Mira Murati were reportedly collecting evidence highlighting toxic behavior from Sam Altman at the company.

In one of the screenshots, purportedly from Murati's Slack channel, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman reportedly indicated that the company's legal team had indicated that GPT-4 Turbo didn't need to be reviewed by the joint safety board. However, OpenAI's lead counsel refuted the allegations.

This report reveals new details that could have possibly contributed to Altman's sudden removal from OpenAI as CEO. The company has lost high-profile executives over the past few years, with some citing concerns that "shiny products" get precedence while safety processes take a back seat.

While Murati and Sutskever rallied behind their counterparts for Altman's reinstatement, they have since left the firm and founded separate AI entities with a mission to build "safe" superintelligence.