Almost the entire company was threatening to quit.
If it was possible to simply replace all of openAI, then you could just do that now, as an outside party.
So the boards choice was to either bring back Sam or watch the entire company go under.
This is the part that perplexes me. A CEO being fired is not an unusual occurrence. What about Sam Altman led such a huge number of employees to threaten to follow him out the door? Was it that the board's actions were viewed as internally unjust? Was it Altman's power of persuasion? Was/is Altman viewed by the staff as bringing something irreplaceable to the table in terms of talent, skill or ability?
Summarizing, essentially the employees were under the impression either Sama comes back OR OpenAI dissolves and they lose their job.
My understanding is that a fair amount of it was essentially peer pressure. If you're an employee whose CEO has just been fired for unclear reasons, and someone hands you a chain letter saying "restate him or everyone will quit" and you're told everyone's signing that letter and there's already someone who promised to hire everyone who quits into their current role at equal pay, would you sign it?
Scenario A, Sam Altman continues as CEO and the for profit arm of OpenAI continues to call the shots, growth and market share continue to be priority number one.
Scenario B, Sam Altman is fired, OpenAI non-profit board (re?)-asserts more control. Safety, alignment and other things like that take priority over growth and market share.
x% of Employees are Sam believers, and when the remaining x% of ambiguous/non-Sam believers realize the first x% might leave, their PSUs would be worth significantly less, so they sign the letter as well. There is also the peer pressure / fear of retribution factor as well once it becomes likely there is even a chance of Sam being reinstated.
Many employees choose scenario A because it is likely their "profit sharing units" will be worth more than with scenario B. There's a non-zero chance that OpenAI (the for profit arm) eventually joins the ranks of the "FAANG" companies. Those PSUs might be worth millions today, but in the future could be worth "fuck you" levels of money.
That would shutdown the entire company.
And I would hope that wasn't their goal.
> So then why did the board re-hire Sam Altman?
Presumably so that the entire company wouldn't be shutdown.
Yeah... and? OpenAI is pretty much a for-profit company now. Why shouldn't a non-profit board pull the plug on a non-profit turned for-profit? Isn't that a part of their job?
And then it can't use that money on its mission because it shut down.
> Isn't that a part of their job?
No, it isn't. Their job would be to use the income that they received from that part of the business and spend it on their mission.
There are all sorts of non profits that operate in a similar way.
In fact acting sustainably is generally a positive for non-profits because it means that you can be more effective for longer without having to rely on donations.
The ChatGPT release is what made the AI movement go mainstream. It is why OpenAI is worth ~80 billion dollars.
By Gods am I glad that the board wasn't able to stop ChatGPT from being released.
Worth to who?
It is "worth" what someone else is willing to pay for it.
I seem to recall that the release in late November 2022 was only intended to be a way for volunteers on the Internet to experiment with it and provide feedback.