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“Some people are saying that YC fired Sam Altman, but that’s not true,” Graham said. I have written On X (formerly Twitter).
Graham said Altman’s departure was due to the company’s need for someone to run Y Combinator full-time.
“He ran both YC and OpenAI for a few years, but when OpenAI announced it was launching a for-profit subsidiary and Sam would become CEO, we (particularly Jessica) told him that if he was going to work full-time at OpenAI, he should find someone else to run YC, and he agreed,” Graham said, referring to his co-founder and wife, Jessica Livingston.
Altman stepped down as president of Y Combinator on March 8, 2019, just three days before OpenAI announced it would be abandoning its traditional nonprofit status.
In a blog post on March 11, 2019, the developers of ChatGPT said that the company is a “profit-capped” company with a for-profit division run by a non-profit organization.
“If he had said he was going to find someone else to be the CEO of OpenAI so he could focus 100% on YC, we would have been OK with that,” Graham added. “We didn’t want him to have to choose a side and leave.”
Graham’s remarks contradicted previous media reports, including: The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post Both outlets reported that Altman was asked to leave Y Combinator because he put his own interests above those of the organization.
Altman and representatives for Y Combinator did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent by BI outside of regular business hours.
News of Altman’s Y Combinator involvement comes amid growing interest in his leadership at OpenAI, where Altman said the company’s board of directors “Not always forthright in communication“And also.
Former OpenAI board member Helen Toner said:TED AI Show“This week, Altman was a deceitful individual who lied to the board “multiple times.”
“For years, Sam concealed information, misrepresented what was going on at the company and, in some cases, outright lied to the board, making it extremely difficult for the board to actually do its job,” Toner said.
Toner made similar accusations. Editorial She co-wrote the article with another former board member, Tasha McCauley, and published by The Economist on Sunday, saying they were not convinced OpenAI would be able to govern itself with Altman at the helm.
On Thursday, current OpenAI board members Bret Taylor and Larry Summers said: Rebuttal The paper, by Toner and McCauley, was also published in The Economist.
“We do not accept the allegations made by Tonner and McCauley about events at OpenAI,” Taylor and Summers wrote.
“That said, we agree with Toner and McCauley, and the company and Altman have repeatedly argued that advances in AI are a major advancement in human history,” they added. “Accountability of government and government regulation is essential in a democratic society.”