OpenAI cofounder Reid Hoffman says the company is better off with Sam Altman restored as CEO, and he was shocked that board members he used to serve alongside would think otherwise. Hoffman, who left OpenAI’s board in March after cofounding the competitor Inflection AI, offered his first comments on the recent chaos at OpenAI on stage at WIRED’s LiveWIRED 30th anniversary event in San Francisco on Tuesday.
“Surprise would be an understatement,” he said about his reaction to learning of Altman’s firing. After employees and investors revolted, Altman got his job back days later. “We are in a much better place for the world to have Sam as CEO. He’s very competent in that,” said Hoffman, who with Elon Musk and other wealthy tech luminaries formed the earliest vision for OpenAI when it was founded in 2015.
“I don’t think I have ever seen in all of corporation history where a board fires a CEO and something that rounds to 100 percent of the employees sign a letter saying, ‘Reinstate the CEO or we’re out of here,’” Hoffman said. “That’s history-making.”
Hoffman spoke during a panel dubbed the “AI Optimist Club” on Tuesday. On a separate panel at LiveWIRED, computer scientist Joy Buolamwini said that while Altman presents like many tech leaders with a sense “privileged optimism about what AI can do and how AI can be beneficial,” she’s welcomed finding common ground with him on issues such as the need for government regulation of AI.
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