Original article - Sam Altman
Compiled - Odaily Azuma
This morning, OpenAI officially announced the return of Sam Altman.
In the return announcement, Sam Altman shared an open letter, in which Sam mentioned some important changes in OpenAIs management and expressed his gratitude to the employees and partners who have actively maintained OpenAI during the turmoil in the past half month. And revealed the focus of OpenAIs work in the future.
The following is the new full text of Sam Altmans return, compiled by Odaily.
I will return to OpenAI as CEO, and Mira will return as CTO. The new initial board of directors will consist of Bret Taylor (Chairman), Larry Summers and Adam DAngelo.
Odaily Note: Mira was the CTO of OpenAI before the incident, and briefly served as interim CEO after the incident. Among the board members, only Adam DAngelo is the original board member. Bret Taylor and Larry are both new board members. Bret Taylor served as the former co-CEO of Salesforce, and Larry Summers is the former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury.
Ive never been more excited about the future. Im extremely grateful for everyones hard work during an unprecedented and extremely uncertain situation, and I believe our resilience and spirit will make OpenAI stand out in the industry. I believe we can accomplish our mission.
Before I talk about what comes next, I want to share some gratitude with you.
I love and respect Ilya, I consider him a guiding light in this field and a human treasure. I have no ill will toward him. While Ilya will no longer be a member of the Board of Directors, we would like to continue our working relationship and are discussing ways for him to continue working at OpenAI.
Odaily Note: Ilya served as the chief scientist of OpenAI before the incident, and he is also widely regarded as the core figure of the previous incident.
Im so grateful to Adam, Tasha, and Helen for working so hard with us to arrive at this solution that best fits our mission. Im excited to continue working with Adam and would like to express my sincere gratitude to Tasha and Helen for all their input into this process.
Odaily note: Adam DAngelo, Tasha McCauley, and Helen Toner are all original board members of OpenAI. Today, only Adam remains on the board.
Thanks also to Emmett, who played a key and constructive role in helping us achieve the final outcome. Emmett’s dedication to AI safety and the balance of interests is impressive.
Odaily note: Emmett Shear is the co-founder of Twitch, and he briefly served as OpenAI CEO after the incident.
Mira performed extremely well throughout the entire incident, selflessly serving the mission, team, and company from start to finish. She is an excellent leader, and without her there would be no OpenAI. Thank you Mira.
The entire leadership team (Mira, Brad, Jason, Che, Hannah, Diane, Anna, Bob, Srinivas, Matt, Lilian, Miles, Jan, Wojciech, John, Jonathan, Pat and many more) has clearly done a great job Prepare to continue running the company without me. Someone once said that one of the best ways to evaluate a CEO is how you select and develop potential successors, and I seem to be doing a lot better than I thought at this point. It seems to me that the company has been placed in great hands, and I hope thats clear to everyone. thank you all.
Jakub, Szymon, and Aleksander are all outstanding talents, and I am very happy that they can join OpenAI again to push our research forward. thank you all.
Odaily Note: Jakub, Szymon, and Aleksander are all senior researchers at OpenAI. The three of them followed Sam and left OpenAI after the incident.
Hats off to all of you. I believe a book will be written about this story, and I hope the first sentence in the book is how amazing the team was. We went through it all without losing a single employee. You firmly support each other, the company, and the mission of AI. The most important aspect for the team building AGI safely was the ability to handle stress and uncertainty and maintain good judgment throughout the process, and you received top marks. thank you all.
Satya, Kevin, Amy, and Brad have been incredible as partners throughout this whole thing. They have always insisted on the right approach and have always had our backs, always welcoming all of us if we fail to achieve our main goal (return). Clearly, we made the right choice to partner with Microsoft, and I am pleased that they will join our new board of directors as a non-voting observer.
Odaily Note: Satya Nadella is Microsoft CEO, Kevin Scott is Microsoft CTO, Amy Hood is Microsoft CFO, and Brad Lightcap is OpenAI COO.
To our partners and users, thank you for your continued support. We truly feel the support and love from everyone, which is helping us get through this. The fact that we havent lost a single customer will also motivate us to work even harder and we are all excited to get back to work.
Will Hurd, Brian Chesky, Bret Taylor, and Larry Summers dropped everything and made incredible contributions to support the mission. I dont know how they do it so well, but they do. Thanks.
Odaily Note: Will Hurd was an early board member of OpenAI, but had previously withdrawn due to running for US President. Brian Chesky is the co-founder and CEO of Airbnb and an early investor in OpenAI.
Ollie also dropped everything and did whatever he could to help the entire time, offering unconditional love and support. Thanks and I love you Ollie.
Odaily Note: Oliver Mulherin is a software engineer and Sams boyfriend. Ollie is Sams nickname for him.
So what’s next? We will have three priorities to address.
The first is to advance our research plan and further invest in full-stack security work, which has always been the key to our work. Our research roadmap is clear and I can feel the excitement from all of you now that we are in the spotlight and we will turn this crisis into an opportunity. I will work with Mira to advance this work.
The second is to continue to improve and deploy our products and provide services to our customers, giving people the opportunity to experience the advantages and prospects of artificial intelligence, and the opportunity to proactively shape artificial intelligence. We continue to believe that great products are the best way to achieve this goal. I will work with Brad, Jason, and Anna to ensure that our commitment to our users, customers, partners, and governments around the world remains unwavering.
Bret, Larry and Adam will work to build a board of directors with diverse perspectives, improve our governance structure and oversee an independent review of recent events. I look forward to working closely with them to ensure everyone sees the stability of OpenAI. I very much look forward to working with you on the mission of building beneficial AGI - with the best teams in the world, on the worlds greatest mission. Love you all.
Sam Altman
