The OpenAI Board learned about the launch of ChatGPT from a post on Twitter
Former OpenAI board member Helen Toner said that the board of directors learned about the launch of ChatGPT in 2022 from Twitter, as Bloomberg reports.
In a podcast of The TED AI Show, Toner explained why the OpenAI board of directors decided to fire CEO Sam Altman last year.
“When ChatGPT came out in November 2022, the board was not informed in advance about that,” Toner said on the podcast. “We learned about ChatGPT on Twitter.”
ChatGPT’s launch was relatively quiet: the company released a chatbot and called it an artificial intelligence model that “interacts in a conversational mode.” And then the users themselves and word of mouth did the rest.
Toner notes that Sam Altman did not disclose his participation in the OpenAI startup fund. Board members realized that Altman was telling them false information or hiding it.
“On multiple occasions, he gave us inaccurate information about the formal safety processes that the company did have in place,” she said, “meaning that it was basically impossible for the board to know how well those safety processes were working or what might need to change.”
After Altman’s dismissal, more than 95% of the employees began to ask for his reinstatement and threatened to leave the company. So Altman was reinstated, and Helen Toner and other directors resigned from the board.
OpenAI’s current chairman of the board, Bret Taylor, responded to the podcast and said that the company is disappointed that Toner is still revisiting the issue.
Taylor notes that an independent review was conducted on the matter, which showed that the previous board’s decision was not based on concerns about product security, development pace, OpenAI’s finances, or its statements to investors, customers, or business partners.