Sam Altman may control our future – can he be trusted

OpenAI started out as a nonprofit organization that put the safety of humanity first, but it is now facing criticism that its founding spirit is fading as it rapidly transforms into a profit-driven corporate structure.

The Sam Altman firing incident that occurred in November 2023 went beyond a simple leadership dispute, revealing fundamental doubts about Altman's trustworthiness and transparency. At the time, Ilya Sutskever wrote a confidential memo stating that Altman had distorted facts to the board and executives and deceived them about internal safety protocols. However, amid employee support and investor pressure, Altman returned within 5 days, and subsequently ousted the directors who had fired him and restructured the governance.

Altman's leadership has been controversial since his Y Combinator days due to exaggerated statements and conflicts of interest. This is also connected to the background of how key OpenAI personnel, including Dario Amodei, criticized the weakening of safety principles and money-driven operations and went on to found Anthropic.

OpenAI is currently preparing for a $1 trillion IPO, focusing on expanding AI infrastructure and securing government contracts. In this process, AI safety research teams have been disbanded one after another, and as a culture prioritizing profit and product launches takes hold, there are pointed criticisms that the existential safety framework OpenAI once promised is becoming increasingly distant.