Former OpenAI board member Helen Toner, who helped oust CEO Sam Altman in November, broke her silence this week, speaking on a podcast about the events that led to Altman’s death An internal company incident that resulted in a dismissal.
An example she shared is: When OpenAI released ChatGPT in November 2022, the board of directors was not notified in advance but found out on Twitter. Toner also said that Altman did not tell the board that he had OpenAI startup funds.
Altman was renamed CEO less than a week after he was fired, but Toner’s comments provide the first insight into the decision.
“The Board of Directors is a not-for-profit board of directors established for the express purpose of ensuring that the company’s public interest mission is primary and takes precedence over profits, investor interests and other matters,” Toner said in “TED Artificial Intelligence Show” podcast released on Tuesday.
“But over the years, Sam made it very difficult for the board to actually do its job by withholding information, misrepresenting what was happening at the company, and in some cases outright lying to the board,” she said.
Toner said Altman repeatedly provided the board with “inaccurate information about the few formal security procedures the company did have in place.”
“For any given case, Sam would always come up with some sort of innocuous-sounding explanation for why it wasn’t a big deal or was misunderstood or whatever,” Toner said. “But the end result is, years and years after this happened, the four of us who fired him all came to the conclusion that we simply couldn’t believe what Sam was telling us and that it was a completely unworkable place to be as a board. —Especially a board that should provide independent oversight of the company, not just help the CEO raise more money.
Toner explained that the board has worked to improve matters. In October, a month before the ouster, the board spoke with two executives who relayed stories about their experiences with Altman that they had previously been unwilling to share, including screenshots and documents of questionable interactions and lies, she said. .
“Both of them suddenly started telling us … how they couldn’t trust him, about the toxic atmosphere he had created,” Toner said. “They used the term ‘psychological abuse,’ told us they didn’t think he was the right person to lead the company toward AGI, and told us they didn’t believe he could or would change.”
Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is a broad term that refers to artificial intelligence that outperforms human capabilities on a variety of cognitive tasks.
An OpenAI spokesperson could not immediately be reached for comment.
Earlier this month, OpenAI disbanded a team focused on the long-term risks of artificial intelligence, a year after the company was announced. A few days ago, OpenAI co-founders Ilya Sutskever and Jan Leike, two team leaders, announced their departure from the Microsoft-backed startup. Leike, who later announced he was joining AI rival Anthropic, wrote on Friday that OpenAI’s “safety culture and processes have given way to a shiny product.”
Toner’s comments and high-profile departure follow a leadership crisis last year.
OpenAI’s board of directors ousted Altman in November, saying it had conducted a “thoughtful review process” and that Altman “has been consistently dishonest in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to carry out his duties.”
“The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI,” the statement read.
wall street journal and other media reports that while Suzkweil is focused on ensuring that artificial intelligence does not harm humans, others, including Ultraman, are more eager to push the development of new technologies.
Altman’s removal prompted resignations and threats to resign, an open letter signed by nearly all OpenAI employees, and an outcry from investors including Microsoft. Within a week, Altman was back, and board members Toner and Tasha McCauley, who voted to oust Altman, were off the board. Sutskever gave up his seat on the board and remained on the board until announcing his departure on May 14.
In March, OpenAI announced the formation of a new board of directors that included Altman and concluded an internal investigation by law firm WilmerHale into the events that led to Altman’s ouster.
OpenAI did not publish the WilmerHale investigation report, but summarized its findings.
“The review concluded that there was a serious breakdown of trust between the former board and Sam and Greg,” OpenAI board chairman Bret Taylor said at the time, referring to president and co-founder Greg Brockman. Taylor added that the review also “concluded that the board acted in good faith… (and) did not foresee some of the instability that ensued”.
About The Author
