오픈AI의 샘 올트먼 해고 사태

패권: 누가 AI 전쟁의 승자가 될 것인가 제 15장 “Checkmate”에서 요약/발췌.

Chapter 15. Checkmate

점점 더 상업화를 추구하는 올트먼:

Sam Altman took OpenAI in an even more commercial direction. In mid-November 2023, Altman confirmed that OpenAI was working on GPT-5 and also raising more money.

Ilya Sutskever를 주축으로 한 쿠데타:

Then in November 2023, he got a text from Ilya Sutskever that would send his world crashing. … When Altman joined the Google Meet video call, the entire board was peering back at him, except for Brockman, who was board chairman. Without any detailed explanation, Sutskever told Altman he was being fired and that the news would go out soon. …

Brockman was being removed as chairman, but the board wanted him to stay with the company. They gave Microsoft a quick heads-up about what had just happened and, within minutes, published a blog post announcing Altman’s dismissal. Brockman immediately quit. So did three of OpenAI’s top researchers. …

The board was cryptic in its own explanation, saying only that Altman “was not consistently candid in his communications.”

마이크로소프트의 반응:

Nadella didn’t care either way. He was furious. He’d committed $13 billion to OpenAI in large part because of Altman’s visionary leadership and talent-attracting abilities, and that partnership had been on track to send Microsoft’s profits soaring. …

He knew that if Altman started a new firm, there’d be a flood of investors banging on his door and no guarantee that Microsoft would get the biggest foothold with Altman the second time around.

원인 중 하나는 내부에서 쌓여왔던 샘 올트먼과 일리야 서츠케버 사이의 불화:

Inside OpenAI, a cultural rift had grown between Altman and Sutskever over how quickly OpenAI was commercializing its technology. …

McCauley and Toner, two of the three independent board members, were sympathetic to Sutskever’s worries and had ties to effective altruism organizations.

OpenAI 직원들의 반응:

As the weekend drew on, a mass revolt was brewing among OpenAI staff. Altman tweeted, “i love openai employees so much” in his usual lowercase style, and dozens of employees retweeted it with heart emojis. Microsoft saw the rebellion as a point of leverage for getting Altman back. It also threatened OpenAI’s board with pulling its all-important cloud credits.

유리해진 올트먼:

Altman had his own conditions for returning: OpenAI would need to change the way it was governed, starting with the resignation of its existing board, and he’d need to be absolved of any wrongdoing.

일리야 서츠케버의 후회:

Sutskever was also starting to have doubts. Over the weekend he’d held several intense conversations with OpenAI leaders and, at one point, an emotional one with Brockman’s wife. Sutskever had been the officiant at the couple’s civil ceremony at OpenAI’s offices four years earlier, and according to the Wall Street Journal, Anna Brockman was now crying and pleading with Sutskever in the OpenAI office to change his mind about firing Altman.

마이크로소프트의 백업 플랜:

Nadella was meanwhile pushing hard on his own backup plan. If Altman couldn’t grab back the reins of OpenAI, Microsoft needed to bring him fully into the corporate fold and do so before Monday morning. He pulled it off just in time. Early Monday morning, Nadella tweeted that Altman, Brockman, and any OpenAI staff who wanted to would become part of a new advanced AI research team at Microsoft. The company’s shares ticked up in response. But this was just a backstop. Nadella still wanted Altman back leading OpenAI.

샘 올트먼을 지지하는 직원들:

Now everyone was pushing OpenAI’s safety-obssessed board members to resign, and by late Monday, nearly all of OpenAI’s 770 staff had signed a letter threaetening to join Microsoft with Altman, unless the board members stepped down. “Microsoft has assured us there are positions for all,” the letter said.

It was a huge bluff. Hardly any OpenAI staff wanted to work for Microsoft, a stodgy old company where people worked for decades and wore khaki pants.

서츠케버의 변심:

Sutskever by now had flipped and was among the signees. “I never intended to harm OpenAI,” he posted on Twitter that day, shocking the technology press in what had become a head-spinning weekend. “I will do everything I can to reunite the company,” he said, adding that he “deeply regretted” his actions. Altman retweeted the post with three heart emojis.

의사회 교체:

Five days after Altman’s ousting, OpenAI announced it was forming a new board. It would be chaired by Larry Summers, the former US treasury secretary, and Bret Taylor, a former head of the business software company Salesforce who also happened to be the most levelheaded voice on Twitter’s board when Elon Musk bought the company. They knew how to serve the needs of investors like Microsoft. Helen Toner and Tasha McCauley, the two women who appeared to have made the biggest fuss about Altman, were forced to step down. Microsoft got an observer seat on the board, which meant Nadella wouldn’t get blindsided again. He had turned lemons into lemonade.

교훈? 올트먼의 주장과 달리 아무도 올트먼을 막을 수 없다:

But the dramatic events of November 2023 also destroyed the mirage of accountability that Altman claimed to have hanging over him. He had publicly lauded the fact that a board could fire him, but in reality, it couldn’t. The two female directors who stood up to Altman, Toner and McCauley, were the ones who ended up being forced to leave.