Providing insights with twists and turns that lead to OpenAI board briefly firing CEO Sam Altman in 2023, an excerpt has been released from the most-awaited book

“The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future”.

Keach Hagey, the Wall Street Journal reporter has written this book claiming that Sam Altman was fired due to his toxic behavior and embezzlement in OpenAI Startup Fund that was personally owned by the CEO. This book covers the power struggle within the company, lobby culture, and the employees behavior toward their CEO. It also includes the backstory that led to Altman’s famous interview line to Bloomberg TV “The board can fire me. That’s important.”

Altman’s Firing Episode 

One of the dramatic episodes was Altman’s alleged claim that the company’s legal department suggested GPT-4 Turbo didn’t require a joint safety board review. However, the company’s apex lawyer denied such claims. 

Co-founder IIya Sutskever and CTO Mira Murati were found providing evidence to OpenAI’s board against Altman. Considering this evidence, including screenshots from Murati’s Slack channel, Altman was fired, and Murati was appointed interim CEO. This dramatic episode took a surprising turn when OpenAI employees, including Sutskever and Murati, demanded that Sam Altman return to his position. 

This book seems promising for its readers to provide insights about the causes that led to the eventual benefit of Sutskever and Murati from the company, launching their startup. The excerpt launched is conversational, providing dialogues between Altman and OpenAI’s other employees. It also tells the thrilling story of the OpenAI launch and how it surprised the tech world. 

The excerpt begins with Altman’s conversation over getting rid of Elon Musk from the company “Well, it was kind of true of Elon, but we got rid of Elon,” Altman responded at the dinner, referring to the messy 2018 split with his co-founder, Elon Musk, who once referred to the attempt to create artificial intelligence as “summoning the demon.” The complete book is still awaiting its launch, but readers’ overenthusiastic response to the exception indicates that this book will be a big hit.