"The fate of civilization is at stake"
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Sam Altman texts Elon Musk
February 18, 2023
Sam Altman
i remember seeing you in a tv interview a long time ago (maybe 60 minutes?) where you being attacked by some guys, and you said they were heroes of yours and it was really tough.
well, you’re my hero and that’s what it feels like when you attack openai. totally get we have some screwed some stuff up, but we have worked incredibly hard to do the right thing, and i think we have ensured that neither google nor anyone else is on a path to have unilateral control over AGI, which i believe we both think is critical.
i am tremendously thankful for everything you’ve done to help—i dont think openai would have happened without you—and it really fucking hurts when you publicly attack openai.
Elon Musk
I hear you and it is certainly not my intention to be hurtful, for which I apologize, but the fate of civilization is at stake.
Sam Altman
i agree with that, and i would really love to hear the things you think we should be doing differently/better.
it’s also not clear to me how the attacks on twitter help the fate of civilization, but that’s less important to me that getting to the right substance.
also, i checked with our team on recruiting from tesla. we really are doing very little relative to the size of the company, but i will make sure we don’t hurt tesla, i obviously think it’s a super important company.
[This document is from Musk v. Altman (2026).]
Previously: Sam Altman: “BTW, good idea for me to tweet something nice about Elon?” (February 9, 2023)
Microsoft CTO: Why the OpenAI board really fired Sam Altman
From: Kevin Scott
Sent: Sunday, November 19, 2023 7:31 AM
To: Frank X. Shaw, Satya Nadella, Brad Smith, Amy Hood, Caitlin McCabe
Frank,
I can help you with the timeline and with our best understanding of what was going on. I think the reality was that a member of the board, Ilya Sutskever, had been increasingly at odds with his boss, Sam, over a variety of issues.
One of those issues is that there is a perfectly natural tension inside of the company between Research and Applied over resource allocations. The success of Applied has meant that headcount and GPUs got allocated to things like the API and ChatGPT. Research, which is responsible for training new models, could always use more GPUs because what they’re doing is literally insatiable, and it’s easy for them to look at the success of Applied and believe that in a zero sum game they are responsible for them waiting for GPUs to become available to do their work. I could tell you stories like this from every place I’ve ever worked, and it boils down to, even if you have two important, super successful things you’re trying to work on simultaneously, folks rarely think about the global optima. They believe that their thing is more important, and that to the extent that things are zero sum, that the other thing is a cause of their woes. It’s why Sam has pushed us so hard on capacity: he’s the one thing about the global optima and trying to make things non-zero sum. The researchers at OAI do not appreciate that they would not have anywhere remotely as many GPUs as they do have if there were no Applied at all, and that Applied has a momentum all its own that must be fed. So the only reasonable thing to do is what Sam has been doing: figure out how to get more compute.
The second of the issues, and one that’s deeply personal to Ilya, is that Jakub moreso than Ilya has been making the research breakthroughs that are driving things forward, to the point that Sam promoted Jakub, and put him charge of the major model research directions. After he did that, Jakub’s work accelerated, and he’s made some truly stunning progress that has accelerated in the past few weeks. I think that Ilya has had a very, very hard time with this, with this person that used to work for him suddenly becoming the leader, and perhaps more importantly, for solving the problem that Ilya has been trying to solve the past few years with little or no progress. Sam made the right choice as CEO here by promoting Jakub.
Now, in a normal company, if you don’t like these two things, you’d appeal to your boss, and if he/she tells you that they’ve made their decision and that it’s final, your recourse is accept the decision or quit. Here, and this is the piece that everyone should have been thinking harder about, the employee was also a founder and board member, and the board constitution was such that they were highly susceptible to a pitch by Ilya that portrays the decisions that Sam was making as bad. I think the things that made them susceptible, is that two of the board members were effective altruism folks who all things equal would like to have an infinite bag of money to build AGI-like things, just to study and ponder, but not to do anything with. None of them were experienced enough with running things, or understood the dynamic at OAI well enough to understand that firing Sam not only would not solve any of the concerns they had, but would make them worse. And none of them had experience, and didn’t seek experience out, in how to handle something like a CEO transition, certainly not for the hottest company in the world.
The actual timeline of events through Friday afternoon as I understand them:
Thursday late night, the board let’s Mira know what they’re going to do. By board, it’s Ilya, Tash, Helen, and Adam.
Mira calls me and Satya about 10-15 minutes before the board talks to Sam. This is the first either of us had heard of any of this. Mira sounded like she had been run over by a truck as she tells me.
OAI Board notifies Sam at noon on Friday that he’s out, and that Greg is off the board, and immediately does a blog post.
OAI all hands at 2P to rattled staff.
Greg resigns. He was blindsided and hadn’t been in the board deliberations, and hadn’t agreed to stay.
Jakub and a whole horde of researchers reach out to Sam and Greg trying to understand what happened, expressing loyalty to them, and saying they will resign.
Friday night Jakub and a handful of others resign.
…
[This document is from Musk v. Altman (2026).]
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-Internal Tech Emails
Sent from my iPad
Sam Altman texts Satya Nadella and Bret Taylor
November 19, 2023
7:25 a.m. – 8:53 a.m.
Bret Taylor
I pinged Adam again this morning and have not heard anything. I am awake and available and standing by.
Satya Nadella
[Liked “I pinged Adam again this morning and have not hear…”]
Sam Altman
i haven’t heard anything at all
Sam Altman
i’m gonna talk to a few key team members and then propose a plan b to you guys
Bret Taylor
Just called Adam and no response 🤬
Satya Nadella
No response on my side either
11:09 a.m.
Sam Altman
are you guys free? new idea
Satya Nadella
Yes
Bret Taylor
Yes
11:20 a.m. – 11:27 a.m.
Sam Altman
adam thinks it might work with the 3 member board
Bret Taylor
[Emphasized “adam thinks it might work with the 3 member board”]
Sam Altman
they have some legal call now
Satya Nadella
That will be great.
Satya Nadella
Can we put Amy as observer? May help you all
Satya Nadella
Or we can do next step
Sam Altman
id be fine either way
Bret Taylor
If this all plays out, it is important to me we stabilize and include her in that capacity, so either will work, ie, we will make it happen after if not now
Satya Nadella
I will text Adam on the thread we have
11:49 a.m. – 12:03 p.m.
Sam Altman
ok i think we get ready to go on the plan of mira rehiring me and greg while we work on the injunction. the board just won’t give any timeline. this will stabilize things in the short term and everyone can come to work monday morning. ok with you?
Sam Altman
if that blows up we can go on to the subsidiary
Bret Taylor
I don’t have a specific short term role in this path — but supportive personally because I want OpenAI to exist on Monday!
Satya Nadella
This sounds good to me. I will call Brad just to talk through the injunction and have him call Jason.
Sam Altman
adam called. they commit to answer by 5 pm. just trying to get clear on their legal risk. we do the above plan if not.
12:09 p.m. – 12:40 p.m.
Satya Nadella
Great
Bret Taylor
FYI, if the board comes back with anything other than this simple structure, eg, representations of some kind, I am not comfortable proceeding personally. I just wanted to make sure to say it so you two know as you map the path forward and get their response.
My high level requirements:
- Interim (six months)
- Sam is back as CEO and on the board
- Stabilize the org
- Mandate to appoint the full time board address the governance issues
- No additional complexity, eg, requirements from the outgoing board
I doubt they would add conditions or representations but wanted to be explicit
12:45 p.m. – 2:31 p.m.
Sam Altman
yes for sure, i said the same
Sam Altman
bret are you still good to be chair?
Bret Taylor
Yes
Satya Nadella
Thanks much Bret for doing this. Really grateful that you are willing to do this.
Sam Altman
[Loved “Thanks much Bret for doing this. Really grateful t…”]
Sam Altman
still silence from them; i’ve texted for an update a couple of times and not even read
3:24 p.m. – 3:32 p.m.
Sam Altman
still nothing from them
Sam Altman
we have heard from other people they are trying to find a backup ceo if this doesn’t resolve, but are still saying they think it can resolve peacefully
Satya Nadella
I guess we wait till 5 and get on a call
5:11 p.m. – 6:05 p.m.
Sam Altman
satya just talked to adam and thinks something is up
Sam Altman
we are going to publish the statement saying mira has re hired us
Bret Taylor
[Liked “we are going to publish the statement saying mira …”]
Sam Altman
board said they will call mira shortly to talk about the statement
Sam Altman
they still haven’t. they have asked to speak to her alone.
Sam Altman
mira still on with the board
6:45 p.m. – 7:20 p.m.
Sam Altman
hannah just knocked on the door. mira said she will wrap up soon and told the board we have to say something.
Sam Altman
mira still on with them, said it’s not going well
[This document is from Musk v. Altman (2026).]
Thanks for reading!
-Internal Tech Emails
Sent from my iPad
Just so epic.