When OpenAI’s CEO and co-founder, Sam Altman, was abruptly fired by the board last Saturday, something unexpected occurred at the business. They said he wasn’t communicating clearly, but they didn’t specify what he did incorrectly. There was an unsuccessful attempt to entice him back to the organization after his departure. Throughout it all, there was a lot of discussion about Ilya Sutskever, the lone remaining co-founder after Altman and Greg Brockman left the firm, and she is also a member of the board.
An India Today report claimed that Sutskever was a major factor in Altman’s dismissal; in fact, it was Sutskever who called Altman at a strange hour and told him he was being removed over Google Meet. This is due to the fact that, as renowned journalist Kara Swisher notes, there were several differences between Altman and Sutskever regarding how technology was developing.
Who is OpenAI’s Chief Scientist, Ilya Sutskever?
Sutskever is an Israeli-Canadian computer scientist with a background in machine learning who was born in Russia in the vicinity of 1985–1986. He plays a significant role in OpenAI, having co-founded the company.
Well-known for his contributions to deep learning, Sutskever is listed as a co-inventor of the neural network AlexNet, along with Alex Krizhevsky and Geoffrey Hinton. In addition, he co-wrote the AlphaGo paper with others.
In 2023, he revealed that he co-led OpenAI’s large-scale “Superalignment” project, which aims to address superintelligence alignment in a four-year timescale. He highlighted the possibility of superintelligence emerging in this decade.
As per media reports, Altman and other board members disagreed on how rapidly they should advance their technology and start turning a profit. On this point, Ilya Sutskever disagreed with Altman. Swisher emphasized that Sutskever and Altman were on opposing sides of this dispute.
Sources added that the staff was informed in a memo from OpenAI’s chief operating officer, Brad Lightcap, which was obtained by the news outlet Axios, that Altman and another co-founder’s departure was not related to any improper financial, business, safety, or private information handling practices. Rather, it stemmed from Altman’s poor communication skills with the board. Also, Sutskever did not seem to be fully pleased with how quickly AI technology was developing.
OpenAI’s board of directors consists of OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, independent directors Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo, technology entrepreneur Tasha McCauley, and Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology’s Helen Toner.
