Three senior researchers have quit the artificial-intelligence firm OpenAI following the dismissal of its CEO, Sam Altman, The Information reported, citing multiple people familiar with the situation.
The company's board informed Altman, who cofounded OpenAI in 2015, that he was fired during a video call Friday.
In a statement announcing the decision, OpenAI said it no longer had "confidence" in Altman's ability to lead the company, adding that he was "not consistently candid in his communications."
The Information reported that, following the news, Jakub Pachocki, the director of research at OpenAI; Aleksander Madry, the head of a team that analyzes AI risks; and Szymon Sidor, a researcher who had been at the firm for seven years, told associates at OpenAI that they had quit.
Earlier this year, Altman credited Pachocki for his contribution to the creation of GPT-4, writing in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, that "the overall leadership and technical vision of Jakub Pachocki for the pretraining effort was remarkable and we wouldn't be here without it."
GPT-4 was truly a team effort from our entire company, but the overall leadership and technical vision of Jakub Pachocki for the pretraining effort was remarkable and we wouldn’t be here without it
— Sam Altman (@sama) March 14, 2023
GPT-4 was truly a team effort from our entire company, but the overall leadership and technical vision of Jakub Pachocki for the pretraining effort was remarkable and we wouldn’t be here without it
— Sam Altman (@sama) March 14, 2023
Greg Brockman, a cofounder and the president of OpenAI, also said he was stepping down from the company following the announcement.
Brockman said in a post on X that he was "super proud of what we've all built together since starting in my apartment 8 years ago," but adding that "based on today's news, I quit."
Brockman later shared a brief timeline of events on X, outlining how Altman's dismissal played out and the role of Ilya Sutskever, one of the company's cofounders and its chief scientist.
"Last night, Sam got a text from Ilya asking to talk at noon Friday. Sam joined a Google Meet and the whole board, except Greg, was there. Ilya told Sam he was being fired and that the news was going out very soon," he wrote.
In the wake of the chaotic shake-up, Sutskever has reportedly attempted to reassure staff.
At an all-hands meeting held following Altman's departure, Sutskever fielded questions from employees over whether the firing amounted to a "coup," according to a transcript of the meeting seen by The Information.
"I can understand why you chose this word, but I disagree with this. This was the board doing its duty to the mission of the nonprofit, which is to make sure that OpenAI builds AGI that benefits all of humanity," Sutskever said.
Another employee questioned whether one of the world's most important companies should be governed through "backroom removals," which Sutskever agreed was "not ideal."
Under Altman's tenure, OpenAI launched the pioneering AI chatbot ChatGPT and secured $10 billion in investment from Microsoft.
Last week, the company announced its most up-to-date version of ChatGPT at its first developer conference.
