Open AI Drama Continues: A letter about OpenAI was just sent to Elon Musk

Silicon Valley, CA - A group of former OpenAI employees has sent a letter to the board of directors of the AI research company, alleging that its leaders, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, have engaged in unethical and manipulative behaviour that has harmed the company’s mission and culture.

The letter, which was posted on GitHub on November 21, 2023 and has been sent to Elon Musk, claims that Altman and Brockman have systematically silenced dissent, pushed out employees, and exploited the company’s non-profit resources for their personal agendas. The letter also accuses them of deceiving the public and the board about the company’s transition to a for-profit entity, which was announced in February 2019.

The letter calls for an independent investigation into Altman and Brockman’s conduct, and urges the board to protect the identities of those who come forward. The letter also provides a contact email for former OpenAI employees who wish to share their experiences, and promises to update the public on the board.net website.

The letter is signed by “Concerned Former OpenAI Employees”, and does not reveal the names or the number of the signatories. However, the letter claims that OpenAI’s employee attrition rate between January 2018 and July 2020 was in the order of 50%, suggesting that many people have left the company due to dissatisfaction or mistreatment.

The letter also provides several examples of the alleged misconduct by Altman and Brockman, such as:

• Demanding researchers to delay reporting progress on secret research projects, and firing those who questioned this practice.

• Using discriminatory language against a gender-transitioning team member, and creating a hostile work environment for them.

• Directing IT and Operations staff to conduct investigations into employees, including Ilya Sutskever, one of the co-founders of OpenAI, without the knowledge or consent of management.

• Exploiting OpenAI’s non-profit resources to advance their personal goals, particularly motivated by Altman’s grudge against Elon Musk, another co-founder of OpenAI, who left the company in 2018.

• Promising inconsistent compute quotas to research projects, causing internal distrust and infighting.

• Failing to make public the documents detailing OpenAI’s capped-profit structure and the profit cap for each investor.

The letter also claims that many of the remaining employees at OpenAI are blindly loyal to Altman and Brockman, either out of fear of retribution or the allure of potential financial gains through OpenAI’s profit participation units.

The letter comes at a time when OpenAI is facing increasing scrutiny and criticism from the AI community and the public, especially after the release of its controversial language model, GPT-3, which has raised concerns about its social and ethical impacts.

OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a non-profit research company, with the stated goal of creating and ensuring the safe and beneficial use of artificial general intelligence (AGI), or human-level intelligence. The company was backed by prominent tech figures, such as Musk, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, and Altman, who was then the president of Y Combinator.

In 2019, OpenAI announced that it was creating a new for-profit entity, called OpenAI LP, to attract more funding and talent while maintaining its alignment with its original mission. The company claimed that it would operate as a “capped-profit” entity, meaning that any profits beyond a certain threshold would be returned to the non-profit parent company, OpenAI Inc.

However, the details of this structure, such as the exact profit cap and the governance mechanisms, have remained unclear and undisclosed. The company has also faced criticism for its lack of transparency and accountability, as well as its potential conflicts of interest with its investors and partners, such as Microsoft, which invested $1 billion in OpenAI in 2019.