Spurn Unit Though all appeared well from the outside, there had apparently been major beef between Sam Altman and OpenAI’s board of directors behind the scenes. As the New York Times reports based on accounts from multiple unnamed insiders, the drama that exploded out into the public over the past five days was a long time coming, though one conflict in particular seems to have been the main catalyst. According to an email viewed by the NYT, the CEO met with Helen Toner, a Georgetown AI security researcher who sat on the board, to discuss an October policy brief she’d co-written that seemed to criticize OpenAI’s safety protocols — and, perhaps more succinctly, praised those at its rival Anthropic, which was founded in 2021 by disgruntled ex-OpenAI employees. In the email, Altman reprimanded Toner and said her paper put OpenAI at risk amid a Federal Trade Commission investigation into the company over a data breach that resulted in personal user information being leaked online. “I did not feel we’re on the same page on the damage of all this,” the now-reinstated CEO wrote. “Any amount of criticism from a board member carries a lot of weight.” Fight Club Toner, for her part, defended the brief as an academic policy recommendation and nothing more, but Altman seemed unconvinced. And, per people familiar with the situation who spoke to the NYT on condition of anonymity, he even raised the question of whether the AI security expert should be removed from the board. That…OpenAI’s Board Was Apparently Seething With Rage Before Sacking Altman