Sam Altman's Open Letter on Returning to OpenAI: Embarking on a New Journey Toward Building Beneficial AGI
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Sam Altman's Open Letter on Returning to OpenAI: Embarking on a New Journey Toward Building Beneficial AGI
Excited for the future, and grateful for the support from the team and partners.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Sam Altman
Translation: TechFlow
I will return to OpenAI as CEO, and Mira will resume her role as Chief Technology Officer. In addition, I’m pleased to announce that the new interim board will be chaired by Bret Taylor, with Larry Summers and Adam D’Angelo joining as members.
I’ve never been more excited about the future. I’m deeply grateful to everyone for their hard work during an uncertain and unprecedented time. I believe our resilience and determination give us a unique advantage in the industry, and I’m extremely optimistic about our chances of successfully fulfilling our mission.
Before turning to future plans, I want to express some gratitude.
I love and respect Ilya; I consider him a guiding light in this field and an invaluable talent. I hold no ill will toward him. Although Ilya will no longer serve on the board, we hope to continue working together, and we’re discussing possibilities for how he might continue contributing at OpenAI.
I’m grateful to Adam, Tasha, and Helen for collaborating with us to find the solution most aligned with our mission. I’m thrilled to continue working with Adam, and I sincerely thank Helen and Tasha for their tremendous efforts throughout this process.
Special thanks to Emmett, who played a key and constructive role in helping us reach this outcome. Emmett’s commitment to AI safety and thoughtful consideration of trade-offs has been evident.
Throughout this period, Mira performed exceptionally, selflessly serving the mission, the team, and the company. She is an extraordinary leader, and OpenAI would not be OpenAI without her. Thank you.
Greg and I are partners in this company. While we’ve never quite figured out how to represent this on the org chart, we will. For now, I just want to make it clear. Thank you for everything you’ve done since the beginning, and for how you handled things both when all this started and over the past week.
The leadership team—Mira, Brad, Jason, Che, Hannah, Diane, Anna, Bob, Srinivas, Matt, Lilian, Miles, Jan, Wojciech, John, Jonathan, Pat, and many others—has clearly demonstrated they can run the company without me. One way to evaluate a CEO is by how well you identify and develop potential successors. By that measure, I realize I’ve done better than I knew. To me, the company is clearly well-managed, and I hope that’s obvious to everyone. Thank you all.
Jakub, Szymon, and Aleksander are exceptional talents, and I’m delighted they’ve rejoined us to push forward our work and research. Thank you.
To all our team members, there will certainly be books written about this period, and I hope the first thing they say is how outstanding the entire team was. Now that we’ve come through this, we haven’t lost a single employee. Your unwavering commitment to one another, to this company, and to our mission is one of the most important qualities of a team building safe AGI—being able to handle high-stress, uncertain situations while maintaining sound judgment throughout. You’ve earned the highest praise. Thank you all.
Throughout this process, Satya, Kevin, Amy, and Brad have been incredible partners, consistently maintaining the right priorities. They supported us throughout, and were ready to welcome us if we couldn’t achieve our primary goal. Our choice to partner with Microsoft was clearly the right one, and I’m glad our new board will include them as a non-voting observer. Thank you.
To our partners and users, thank you for standing by us. We truly felt an outpouring of support and care, which helped carry us through. The fact that we didn’t lose a single customer will motivate us to work even harder for you all—we’re eager to get back to work.
Will Hurd, Brian Chesky, Bret Taylor, and Larry Summers put their lives on hold to make incredible contributions in support of our mission. I don’t know how they did it—but they really did. Thank you.
Ollie put his life on hold throughout this entire time, doing everything he could to help us, while providing his usual unconditional love and support. Thank you, I love you.
So what’s next?
We have three immediate priorities.
First, advancing our research agenda and further investing in our full-stack safety efforts, which have always been central to our work. Our research roadmap is clear, and this is a moment of intense focus. I share your excitement, and we will turn this crisis into an opportunity! I’ll be working closely with Mira to achieve this.
Second, continuing to improve and deploy our products to serve customers. It’s essential that people experience the benefits and promise of AI, and have the opportunity to shape it. We still believe great products are the best way to accomplish this. I’ll be working with Brad, Jason, and Anna to ensure our unwavering commitment to users, customers, partners, and governments around the world remains clear.
Regarding board formation, Bret, Larry, and Adam will work to build a board with diverse perspectives, improve our governance structure, and oversee an independent review of recent events. I look forward to working closely with them to ensure everyone has confidence in OpenAI’s stability.
I’m very much looking forward to working with all of you to complete the work of building beneficial AGI—the best team in the world, pursuing the greatest mission. Thank you all.
Love
Sam
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