Sam Altman reflects on his tumultuous journey as OpenAI’s CEO.
After being reinstated as CEO of OpenAI following his unexpected dismissal, Sam Altman describes what it was like to be fired by the old board of directors of the artificial intelligence business he co-founded.
Sam Altman of OpenAI Discusses Shock Firing
When the host of Trevor Noah’s “What Now?” podcast asked Altman where he was and what he was going through on a personal level when he discovered he was dismissed, the AI guru opened up about the experience.
Altman, according to Fox Business, claimed that when he received the news that he had been let go by OpenAI on Nov. 17, he was in a hotel room in Las Vegas for the Formula 1 Grand Prix. But he didn’t watch any races that weekend.
“It felt like a dream. I was confused. It was chaotic. It did not feel real. It was obviously…painful. But confusion was just the dominant emotion at that point. It was like I was just in a fog, in a haze,” Altman told Noah.
Altman claimed he didn’t understand what was going on and that the firing was done in “this unprecedentedly, in my opinion, crazy way.”
He added that within a half-hour of receiving the call, he received so many messages that the constant notifications rendered his smartphone unusable, and it froze and stopped working for a while. He claimed that “everyone” had called, including Microsoft.
Altman claimed he eventually composed himself and told himself he could move on and work on AGI (advanced general intelligence) in some way. Then he started getting messages from people saying they want to work with him wherever he goes, but returning to OpenAI was not on his radar at the time. He stated that he was still trying to be supportive of OpenAI while attempting to figure out what was going on.
Altman stated that he then flew back to California to meet with certain folks and that he was really keen on going forward at the time. He couldn’t sleep the first night, and it was “a crazy weekend from there.”
Noah noticed that Altman made no derogatory remarks about OpenAI after being fired, and that the dismissal appeared to have taken its toll on him. “I don’t think it’s anything I won’t bounce back from, but I think it’d be impossible to go through this and not have it take a toll on you. That’d be really…really strange,” Altman retorted.
The now-reinstated CEO, whose business created ChatGPT, stated that while AGI and his family are his primary concerns, he also cares deeply about OpenAI and its personnel, users, stockholders, and everything it has achieved. He described his firing as “unbelievably painful.”
“The only comparable set of life experience I had – and that one was of course much worse – was when my dad died. In that case, I felt like I had a little bit of time to just really feel it all, but then there was so much to do, it was so unexpected that I had to pick up the pieces of his life for a little while. And it wasn’t until like a week after that, that I really got a moment to just catch my breath and be like, holy s—, I can’t believe this happened,” he recalled. “So that was much worse, but there’s echoes of that same thing here,” Altman said.
As for how he is feeling right now, Altman told Noah, “I’m still a little bit in shock and a little bit just trying to pick up the pieces, you know. As I have time to sit and process this all, I’ll have a lot more feelings about it.”
Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt Compares OpenAI’s Sam Altman to Apple’s Steve Jobs
Meanwhile, former Google CEO and Chairman Eric Schmidt lavished praise on OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, comparing the pioneering artificial intelligence company’s leader to the late Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs, per another Fox Business report.
Schmidt made the comparison during a conversation at the Axios AI+ Summit, after Axios co-founder Mike Allen asked him about the recent drama at OpenAI, which saw Altman fired by the previous board only to be reinstated days later and the board largely replaced after nearly every OpenAI employee threatened to quit.
“It’s pretty simple. The board tries to fire Sam. Sam fires the board. Don’t fire a Steve Jobs,” he continued. “I mean, c’mon guys, you work it out,” Schmidt told the moderator at the time.
“Here’s a guy, young man who worked very, very hard to build this industry. And he managed to create through his team who are so loyal to him that even after the board fired him again on the Sunday, the employees revolted and said the company or the board, right? How much more feedback do you need in your 360 about the CEO?” Schmidt said of Altman.
Schmidt has already made public statements supporting the CEO of ChatGPT creator OpenAI, which Google rival Microsoft sponsors. Schmidt moved to X, the social media network formerly known as Twitter, to defend Altman after his dismissal on November 17.
“Sam Altman is a hero of mine. He built a company from nothing to $90 Billion in value, and changed our collective world forever. I can’t wait to see what he does next. I, and billions of people, will benefit from his future work- it’s going to be simply incredible. Thank you @sama for all you have done for all of us,” Schmidt wrote in the post that is still pinned to the top of the former Google boss’s feed.
Schmidt, the co-founder of Schmidt Futures, is an AI expert who previously chaired the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence. In 2021, he co-wrote “The Age of AI” with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and MIT computer scientist Dan Huttenlocher, which examined advances in AI technology and how they will impact human society.
