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In a rare show of unity among staff, more than 500 employees at OpenAI, a research laboratory founded by billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, have signed a letter demanding the company’s board resign and threatening to walk out in protest after the board fired its president, Sam Altman.
The employees took action after learning about Altman’s departure via an internal email from OpenAI CEO Greg Brockman over the weekend. In the email, Brockman said Altman was replaced by the new head of the organization, Ilya Sutskever, with Chief Operating Officer Amir Dehdashti also taking on a more prominent role.
The employee letter noted, “many of us had seen CEO Greg Brockman break corporate governance rules before, discounting Sam’s opinions and surprises us with decisions that the Board should have the be consulted on and behaving in a secretive manner.”
The employee letter went on to note that it appeared that the decision to fire Altman had been taken unilaterally by Brockman, without consulting the Board or the wider company.
The letter further states that the board “should have been actively involved in this decision,” and unless the board resigns, the staff will walk out in protest.
The move could be a sign of a larger unrest within OpenAI, where many employees have felt that the company’s overall ethos and direction have been changed too rapidly and without enough staff input.
Altman had served as president at the company since its launch in late 2015, and was seen as a strong leader who could bring innovative ideas to the table. With his firing, many have voiced their disagreement with the change in leadership at OpenAI, and the subsequent lack of input from the company’s board and wider staff.
This is not the first time OpenAI employees have expressed their dissatisfaction with management decisions. The company had previously faced criticism over allowing for the use of its technology in surveillance and other controversial projects.
OpenAI has yet to respond to the employee letter, and it remains to be seen if their demands will be met. It will be interesting to see how this situation plays out in the coming days, as OpenAI’s staff is clearly dissatisfied with the lack of input into major decisions at the company.