Sam Altman Finally Speaks About The Whirlwind OpenAI Board Saga: Here’s What He Said

Sam Altman is back heading OpenAI and managed to get new people to join its board. However, Altman has gone through a lot in these past few months, and it’s not just the knuckle fight going on between him and Elon Musk.

As you might recall, Altman was fired from his position by OpenAI, which made Microsoft’s Satya Nadella to hire him, and lead a new AI research team at the company. However, things didn’t end there. Altman somehow managed to find love from his co-workers at OpenAI, who sent a written warning to the company, saying, either Altman comes back, or they join him at Microsoft.

In the end, Altman did make his way back to OpenAI, where he is now planning for the next phase of the AI revolution at the company. But what did the OpenAI face and go through a whirlwind 48 hours that culminated into the OpenAI saga? The CEO of OpenAI has been candid about that journey in a podcast recently, which he termed as, “definitely the most painful professional experience,” of his life.

Altman was thankful to the people who supported him during the period, including the co-workers, who were ready to quit their job and join forces with him at Microsoft. More importantly, his experience with the OpenAI board situation made him feel down, really painful and hard.

It is interesting to hear Altman talk about his feelings and also the positive learnings that he can take from the whole episode. He is now more confident and learned about the need of a board at OpenAI and what kind of people should be on it.

After what he had to go through last time with the board members, we’re hardly surprised to hear this from him. He is also aware that the board needs members who can offer a diverse range of expertise, something he feels the previous board group was not able to provide to the company.

Microsoft’s Nadella has also been speaking highly of Altman recently, and shared his opinion and idea behind working with Altman and Co. “I met folks at OpenAI – Sam (Altman) and Greg (Brockman) – [and of the things they had] was that they have a different approach to things and we wanted to partner,” Nadella was quoted saying in a podcast.