CTO's feedback and ousted CEO: NYT examines the OpenAI drama.

OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman got fired and rehired in a week last year. But the drama isn’t over yet. The New York Times is now digging up stuff and claiming that Mira Murati had some questions about Sam’s management style before he got ousted.

What going on here?

Mira and Ilya had raised red flags about OpenAI’s CEO work style.

What does that mean?

The New York Times claim that Mira Murati raised concerns about Sam Altman’s management style—both to him directly and to the OpenAI board. These concerns were supposedly about Sam’s manipulative behaviour and power to shut out executives when they didn’t agree with him. Mira wasn't alone, NYT adds that co-founder Ilya Sutskever also chimed in. (btw, where’s Ilya?)

Mira’s internal communications after this article went live confirmed bits and pieces while refusing any indication that she wanted Sam out. Here are snippets from Mira’s message to the team (again, as reported by NYT).

• We have a strong and productive partnership and I have not been shy about sharing feedback with him directly.

• When individual board members reached out directly to me for feedback about Sam, I provided it—all feedback Sam already knew.

• That did not mean she was “responsible for or supported the old board’s actions.”

Why should I care?

Irrespective of what you believe, OpenAI is one of the most important AI companies right now (if not the most important). And it’s being overseen by a de-facto board for 3+ months now.

With more GPT-4 level models coming out, talent moves (Karpathy left OAI last month), Elon and NYT’s lawsuits and now, more drama, OpenAI has a hard couple of months ahead of it.