- Greg Brockman co-founded OpenAI with Sam Altman and Elon Musk in 2015.
- Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, was abruptly ousted from his role by the board on Friday.
- Hours later, Brockman posted on X that he was leaving the company, too.
OpenAI President and co-founder Greg Brockman announced on X Friday evening that he is stepping down from his post just hours after the company’s CEO Sam Altman was ousted by the board.
“I’m super proud of what we’ve all built together since starting in my apartment 8 years ago,” Brockman wrote, responding to a post from Altman that addressed his departure. “We’ve been through tough & great times together, accomplishing so much despite all the reasons it should have been possible. But based on today’s news, I quit. Genuinely wishing you all nothing but the best. I continue to believe in the mission of creating safe AGI that benefits all of humanity.”
Earlier on Friday, Open AI’s board announced that they no longer had “confidence” Altman’s ability to lead the company, saying that the companies CEO was “not consistently candid in his communications.”
“i loved my time at openai. it was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. most of all i loved working with such talented people,” Altman posted on X. “will have more to say about what’s next later.”
Brockman shared the timeline of events on Friday evening, writing that the pair were “shocked and saddened” by the board’s decision. According to Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s chief scientist and board member, texted Altman on Thursday, asking to speak on Friday at noon. When Altman joined the meeting, Sutskever “told Sam he was being fired,” Brockman said in his tweet, and later informed Brockman that he would no longer be on the board of directors.
“As far as we know, the management team was made aware of this shortly after, other than Mira who found out the night prior,” Brockman wrote.
According to tech journalist Kara Swisher, the chaotic departures at OpenAI are related to growing tensions between the nonprofit and profit arms of Open AI. Per Swisher, the nonprofit side of the company became increasingly concerned with the “speed of development,” which they believed was at odds with the mission of caution and safety in developing the AI.
Swisher added a caveat that while this could be true, the “tech community is also rife with rumors of all kinds.”
Brockman became a founding executive of OpenAI in 2015, along with Elon Musk and Altman, after leaving payment platform Stripe.
Shortly after joining the team, he told Business Insider that he believed OpenAI had the ability to “unlock the next generation of breakthroughs.”
While at OpenAI, he helped lead projects like Dota 2, a complicated game of strategy that became popular in the e-sports world.
Brockman became president of OpenAI in May of 2022, the company announced.
Over the past year, Brockman has spent much of his time addressing criticisms about ChatGPT, the company’s popular AI chatbot. Brockman said in March that he believed that the company made a mistake with the bot, conceding to Musk’s argument that ChatGPT was too “woke.”
“We made a mistake: The system we implemented did not reflect the values we intended to be in there,” Brockman, who serves as OpenAI’s president, told The Information at the time. “And I think we were not fast enough to address that. And so I think that’s a legitimate criticism of us.”
In 2020, Brockman and Altman faced criticism after MIT Technology Review published an investigation into the company, claiming OpenAI fostered a culture of secrecy and hid its research from the general public and competitors.
Brockman was listed as one of the top 100 most influential people in AI by Time Magazine in September.
Neither Brockman himself nor OpenAI responded to Business Insider’s request for comment.
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