Kevin Scott, Microsoft’s chief technology officer, frankly diagnosed the reason. OpenAI‘s board has been fired Sam Altman November 2023: A chief scientist struggles with internal power struggles over GPUs and the promotion of a colleague. In an email sent to CEO Satya Nadella on Nov. 19, 2023, Scott explained the troubling reality behind his surprise firing. Board member Ilya Satskeva had become increasingly frustrated with Altman over two specific issues that were festering within OpenAI.The first was competition for computing resources. The explosive success of ChatGPT meant that GPUs were repurposed into APIs and consumer products. The research team felt hungry. They “can always use more GPUs because what they’re doing is literally insatiable,” Scott wrote. Researchers accused Applied AI of hogging resources. We believed that applied AI deserved priority. Neither side was seeing the big picture.
The promotion that changed everything
The second conflict was even more serious. Jakub Pachocki, who worked under Sutskever, began to make great progress in his research. Altman promoted him to lead OpenAI’s core model development. From the CEO’s perspective, this move was logical. For Sutskever, it hurt. His former subordinates were now arguably more important than him.“Elijah had a really, really hard time with this,” Scott explained. Change happened quickly, and Sutskever struggled to see people he had coached rise to leadership positions and tackle problems. “Ilya has been trying to resolve this for several years now with little to no progress.”
Board members are ‘sensitive’ to one-sided talk
Scott didn’t mince words about the board’s capabilities. He described some of the members as “talented, altruistic people” who want unlimited funding to build AGI “with no intention of doing anything but researching and pondering.”No one had enough business experience to understand that firing Mr. Altman would not resolve the concerns. It will make them even worse. They also botched the execution. No one asked for outside advice on managing CEO transition at “the world’s hottest company.”The timeline Scott provided showed confusion. Thursday night: Board warns Mira Murati. Friday noon: Altman fired, Greg Brockman fired, blog post published. By late Friday, researchers were flooded with messages pledging allegiance to Altman and threatening to quit. Paciocchi was the first to reach out.Within five days, nearly every OpenAI employee signed a letter demanding Altman’s reinstatement. Microsoft was flooded with job openings. The board is dented. Altman later told Bill Gates that the whole ordeal was “very painful” but ultimately strengthened the company. Scott’s email explained why it happened. Inexperienced directors were fooled by incomplete stories about resource conflicts and bruised egos.