OpenAI’s Sam Altman compares his ‘unbelievably painful’ firing to the sudden death of his dad as he reveals new details about the shock termination phone call he received while in a Las Vegas hotel room

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who was recently fired and then quickly rehired, has compared his “incredibly painful” resignation to the sudden death of his father.

Speaking of Trevor Noah's What now? PodcastAltman revealed how he was in a hotel room in Las Vegas before the Grand Prix when he got the call telling him he was fired.

'It felt like a dream. I was confused. It was chaotic. It didn't feel real. It was clearly… painful. But confusion was simply the dominant emotion at that moment. It was like I was just in a fog, in a haze.”

Altman said his firing came as a complete shock and that he did not understand what was happening.

He said he felt like his dismissal happened “in this unprecedented, crazy way in my opinion.”

Altman said the sudden nature of what happened was similar to his father's death.

“The only comparable life experience I had — and of course it was much worse — was when my father died,” Altman told the comedian, which he also said was “a very sudden event.”

“In that case, I felt like I had a little bit of time to really feel it all, but then there was so much to do, it was so unexpected that I had to pick up the pieces of his life for a while. .

“And it wasn't until a week after that that I actually had a moment to catch my breath and say, holy god, I can't believe this happened. So that was much worse, but there are echoes of the same thing here.'

Within half an hour of being told he had to leave the company, he received a flood of messages, so much so that his smartphone stopped working and froze.

Altman noted how “everyone” called, including Microsoft, who then took it away.

His brief departure sent shockwaves through the company, leading to 747 of its 770 employees threatening to quit and join Microsoft if Altman, 38, was not reinstated.

He heard from people that they wanted to continue working with him wherever he ended up.

At that stage rReturning to OpenAI wasn't an option, as he was still trying to go down a path of still supporting OpenAI while trying to figure out what was going on.

But just days later, he made a stunning return to OpenAI as CEO.

“I'm still a little bit in shock and just trying to pick up the pieces, you know. Now that I have time to process all of this, I will feel a lot more about it,” Altman told Noah.

OpenAI, founded by Altman and ten others in 2015, rolled out ChatGPT a year ago — and its ability to mimic human writing has since proven polarizing.

In addition to raising concerns among the public, this uncertainty was apparently also felt within OpenAI's six-member board.

Elon Musk founded OpenAI with Sam Altman, the company's CEO, but in 2018 the billionaire attempted to take control of the startup.

His request was denied, forcing him to leave OpenAI and move on to his other projects.

Musk has since attacked the company, saying the AI ​​is “woke” and deviating from OpenAI's original nonprofit mission.

'OpenAI was created as an open source (that's why I called it 'Open' AI), non-profit organization to serve as a counterbalance to Google, but now it has become a profit-maximizing closed source company effectively controlled by Microsoft Musk tweeted in February.

On Friday, the WashingtonPost reported how several senior leaders approached the OpenAI board and accused Altman of being psychologically abusive and creating chaos at the startup, citing two people familiar with the board's thinking.

Those complaints about Altman were a major factor in the board's decision to fire him on Nov. 17.

Initially, OpenAI's board said Altman was fired because “he was not consistently forthcoming in his communications with the board, which prevented the board from fulfilling its responsibilities.”

Later reporting suggested that the administration's coup stemmed from a clash over technological advances and a dispute between champions of rapid innovation and a faction more concerned about security.

“It is clear that there were real misunderstandings between me and the members of the board of directors,” Altman posted on X after he was brought back to lead the company.

“For me, it is incredibly important to learn from this experience and apply those lessons as we move forward as a company,” he added.

The new report is the first to suggest complaints from senior leaders about Altman, who reportedly enjoys fierce loyalty within the company's ranks.

According to the Post, employees complained that Altman had been “psychologically abusive,” including allegations that he had “pitted employees against each other in unhealthy ways.”

The outlet reported that the complaints resonated with board members who had their own problems with Altman, including some who believed he had lied to them as part of a campaign to remove Helen Toner from the board after she published an article in which she OpenAI criticized.

The board coup against Altman was led by OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, supported by the two independent directors: Toner and technology entrepreneur Tasha McCauley.

Altman's ally, OpenAI president Greg Brockman, was also removed from the board as part of the coup.

Faced with pressure from Microsoft and the prospect of massive staff cuts across the company, the board relented and was reconstituted.

The board now includes former Salesforce executive Bret Taylor as chairman, Lawrence Summers, and Adam D'Angelo, Quora's CEO and the only holdover from the previous board.

The new OpenAI board is actively looking for six new members with expertise in areas from technology to security and policy. OpenAI investors are unlikely to get a seat on the nonprofit's board, sources told Reuters.

Microsoft has committed to investing more than $10 billion in OpenAI and owns 49 percent of the company.