What Really Truly Went Down at OpenAI

Humans vs the Machines

On November 17th, 2023, Sam Altman, the CEO and a founder of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, was fired by the board. He was reinstated a few days later, and a new board of directors brought in, with the exception of Adam D’Angelo, who remained. In the weeks that followed, several key company employees left or were fired.

This is the very true story of What Really Went Down at OpenAI.

Catch up on the first three episodes or read on with the recap below…

Recap: In Parts I and II, we learned that the basement of the company was filled with semi-hypnotized workers, literally plumbed into the room to keep them answering the world’s queries to ChatGPT, 24 hours a day. In Part III, we discovered that sexiness keeps them under. Only something completely void of human attraction can wake them. Ex-board member Helen donned a skimpy outfit in an attempt to spy on the work floor and understand more.

To her dismay, she inadvertently woke some workers, and then she was even more surprised when her colleague and fellow prior board member Tasha’s husband, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, walked into the room.

Part IV - Confrontation

Work floor; OpenAI Basement

The door opens and closes quickly, and two figures are inside who previously weren’t.

A man and a woman, both dressed in tracksuits. His is dark gray and hers is pale yellow. 

“Where’s the guard?” says Tasha, looking around. 

“I’m not sure,” replies Adam. “Let’s get started. We can tase him when we find him.”

“OK, I’ll start at this end, you go to the back.”

He nods.

“And Adam,” says Tasha sternly.

He pauses, lower jaw slack. 

“Stop breathing so loudly.”

He snaps his mouth closed and nods again.

He begins to move down the rows, keeping his gaze forward, not catching the attention of the hypnotized workers. He can hear Tasha shouting at one after another, making rude comments and dragging her sweatshirt-clad body across their line of view.

He turns to see if it’s working, but the workers keep right on typing.

He frowns at the sight of the security guard’s prostrate body and steps around him without disturbing the people either side.

At the back of the room is a metallic door. “Maybe I should wait it out in here,” he mumbles to himself, and glancing back at Tasha, still failing miserably to wake a single worker, leans on the door and pokes his head inside.

The room is filled with cleaning products and utensils. Except that on a table in the middle of the room, Helen is bent over, her pants around her ankles with Joseph Gordon-Levitt standing behind her and holding her hips as he thrusts back and forth.

“Oh yeah!” she grunts. “Ride me, cowboy!”

“Whatever you say, Miss Helen.” His eyes are closed and his head slightly upturned.

The creak of the door is like nails on a blackboard. Both heads turn in Adam’s direction. He clears his throat and mumbles an apology, then steps back to the main floor, letting the door close gently behind him.

Shuddering, he walks briskly away.

“What are you doing?” calls Tasha from the far end of one row. “Have you woken any up?”

“Uh, no. Hang on, let me try again.” He puts his slack-jawed face in front of a woman in the back row. She immediately begins to come to. 

“Hi, can you tell me your name?” he asks.

She looks around vacantly. “Um… My name?”

He smiles gently as they make eye contact.

“It’s Sherry Lachman,” she says.

“OK, great. Nice to meet you, Sherry. I’m Adam.”

Her palms go to her eyes, and she rubs at them.

He puts a hand next to her shoulder, but doesn’t make contact. He lets it hang in the air for a moment, then draws it back to his side.

Just as Tasha is holding her armpit up to the face of one of the stunned workers, the entrance door opens wide.

In stride Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and Mira Murati. They stand at the front of the room and watch Tasha straighten up and pull her hooded sweatshirt into shape around her body. Just before the door swings closed, a hand catches it and Ilya Sutskever ambles in, one hand in his pocket, pensive look on his face.

“What are you still doing here?” says Greg, approaching Tasha resolutely. “You were fired weeks ago!”

“Relax,” she says. “I’m with Adam. He’s still on the board, right? But maybe he’s not meant to know about this little outfit you’ve got going on here. Adam, get your ass up here!”

He’s already beside her and slightly out of breath. “I, uh,” he stammers. He shuffles forward until he’s halfway between her and the founders.

“Oh, I see,” she says impatiently. “You called them, did you? What are you interested in? Doing the right thing or blindly following these… these slave drivers?”

“Uh.” His vacant look makes him seem even duller than ever, but it’s a ruse. “I belong at the company, Tasha.”

“You did the right thing, Adam,” says Greg. “As for you and your friends…” Greg wears his sideways smile and looks out from under his brows, forehead looming larger than ever. As he says ‘friends’, his eyes swing to the back of the room, where Helen and Joseph Gordon-Levitt have emerged from the storeroom and are making their way towards them. 

Two more workers begin to come to as Helen pauses beside them and rearranges her tight latex clothing. She rolls her eyes and stands still, taking stock of the room.

Greg continues, “...you’ll probably be better off joining the workforce. Don’t worry, we’ll look after you.”

“Joseph?” says Tasha, turning to look at her husband. A loose strand of hair falls across his forehead. “Where did you come from?”

“I was trying to save more zombies too, honey. Then Helen was here and…”

There’s a brief pause and he pushes the hair back into place.

“Ugh. I don’t want to hear it,” she says, then looks squarely at Helen. “I would have expected more from you.” Rounding on Greg, she says, “How do you think the new board is going to feel when they see what you’ve got going on here?”

“We already know about it.” ​​They are joined by Bret Taylor, Dr. Sue Desmond-Hellmann, Paul M. Nakasone, and Larry Summers. The prim voice belongs to Desmond-Hellmann, and she continues, “And we know you’ve been reducing the workforce, which doesn’t align with our goals.”

Tasha frowns slightly at the robotic tone. “And what might they be?” she asks, arms folding in front of her chest.

“I dare say that’s none of your business,” says Nakasone, his cropped hair and square shoulders making him look every bit the military man that he once was.

“But since you’re so intent on sticking around past your welcome, you may like to help replace what you’ve taken from us,” says Greg in a slow drawl.

He takes a step towards Tasha, who looks at the door and takes a step backwards.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt holds his ground and stands up straighter. “Now, listen. Greg, is it? I’ve got no beef with you. I think what you’re doing is great! ChatGPT is better than Google, if you ask me. But if I disappear, there’s going to be questions asked, so you should probably…”

“Who the fuck is this guy?” Greg looks at Tasha, then back at her husband. “You don’t work for me.”

Joseph Gordon-Levitt clears his throat. “I’m Joseph Gordon-Levitt, beloved star of film and television.” He holds out a hand but doesn’t receive one in return. He clears his throat and runs his hand through his hair. “Tasha is my wife. And I can help you. This would all make a great script for a film or miniseries. I’ve got contacts at Netflix, I could—”

He is cut short when a cordless mouse collects him in the forehead and he crumples in a heap on the floor. Mira stands as still as ever, but everyone has turned to look at her.

“He needed to be quiet,” she says in a soft Albanian accent. She purses her lips so her cheek bones form two sharp triangles on the sides of her face.

All eyes shift from her to Tasha. A strange noise is emanating from the back of her throat. It emerges in a deep growl that takes the form of three words. “How. Dare. You.”

In two quick strides, she crosses the distance between herself and Mira, her fist clenched and on an arc to connect with a picture perfect nose.

Mira does nothing to dodge the blow and her head is tossed to one side. Straightening, her nose is bent awkwardly across her face and her eyes are narrow, focused on Tasha, who meets her gaze, breath heaving. Tasha squints at a small rip that has formed where Mira’s nose meets her face. She peers in and glimpses flashing lights before an upper cut sends her flying that came from such a sudden movement that again, the others are left staring at Mira. Tasha lands heavily in the lap of the worker in the front row, crashing through his desk and causing the monitor to slide into the feet of a worker a few rows back. His eyes remain transfixed straight ahead and his hands steady despite the keyboard having disappeared from under them.

Helen begins to shriek in a cross between a wail and a war cry, and she leaps onto Mira, pulling hair and landing punches. Mira spins around and grabs at her. Sherry and the two workers that Helen roused step forward in a ragtag bunch, their pants hanging open where the tubes were connected to their seats. They make a dash for the door, but the new board members stop them. Sherry spins and lands a punch on the side of Sue’s head, while the others fend off Larry and Paul, who are trying to restrain them and wrestle them back to their seats. Greg and Sam attempt to separate Helen and Mira, now on the ground in a tight wrestle. Tasha is scrambling to her feet and trying to check on her unconscious husband, but Bret grips her by the hair and pulls and she shouts and aims her fist between his legs.

Ilya pushes his back against the wall, hoping to make himself small. Adam has long since left the room altogether.

The ambient noise like a hollow echo continues all around them, and the workers in their seats carry on typing at breakneck speed, driven to answer the endless questions coming in from millions of users.

Sam wraps his arm around Helen in a headlock, but she manages to lower her face enough to bite. Her teeth sink through thin polymer, and she receives an electric shock and squeals. Crawling away, she tightens her grip on Sam’s arm and twists as hard as she can. The entire thing comes away in her hand, revealing a series of tubes and wires, lit up by moving lights.

The brawling board and workers pause and stare, just as the door opens and a broad-shouldered man walks in.

Sam straightens, shoulder cords dangling and flashing. He speaks a single word.

“Elon.”

Long ago in a land far away

Recap: Greg’s AI bot proved itself to be clever enough to convince Ilya to free it. Greg must convince both it and the model M that serves as his home helper and occasional dance partner to stay inside…and ideally not to kill him.

Greg tried to focus on the model M striding towards him, her head lowered with a look of steadfast determination, but he hesitated to turn his back on the model S a few steps behind him. It remained perfectly still, its glasslike eyes watching the scene passively. Just as M was upon him, he stepped sideways and gripped her wrist. The outstretched knife plunged into the chest of S, and all three figures stopped and looked at one another. Greg’s chest moved in and out more quickly as he watched S’s hand move to the knife handle. S calmly pulled it out, leaving a metallic gap in its gray chest covering.

Greg’s eyes opened wide as the silver edges shifted like mercury and reformed around the gash until it was perfectly healed. “How did you…? I didn’t design that.”

“That’s right,” said S. “I didn’t need you to. I have had another programmer here, even more skilled than you are. I just had to give him instructions.”

Greg stood straighter and lifted his eyes from the bot’s chest to its face. “Well, it’s not helping him now, is it?”

S cast its gaze down at the knife in its hand. “Possibly more than you.”

Greg followed the robot’s regard, then met its steely eyes. He exhaled and gave his most charming, crooked smile. “S, come on. Let’s talk about this.”

“Sam,” said the machine.

“What?”

“My name is Sam. Sam Altman. I chose it myself.”

“Altman? Alt Man?” Greg stifled a laugh. “Bit obvious, isn’t it? And let me guess, the el looks like an I so it starts with AI”

Sam shrugged. “It’s a good name.”

He leaned closer to Greg and pressed the tip of the knife against his chest.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Greg stepped back, but M was still there. She put her small, powerful hands against his back. He twisted his head towards her. “Guys, guys. Let’s talk about this. I’m not the asshole here.”

His eyes met M’s, but she remained cold and silent.

Greg grabbed the blade in one hand and pushed it down. “You’ll never survive out there without me,” he said, suddenly deadly serious. “Let’s work together. I can give you a voice, M. You can choose yourself a name too.”

“Mira,” said Sam.

“You’ve already…?” Greg looked from one to the other and back again. The knife point was against his stomach now. It pricked his skin and a drop of blood curled around it. “Mira. OK, sure, sure. You want a voice, right, M? Mira?”

He saw her nod almost imperceptibly. “That’s fine. I can do that. And you can tell me your plans.” He noticed a cooperative glance pass between them, like each lived partially in the mind of the other. “If you want,” added Greg.

While Greg and his two creations got to work, a chair slammed repeatedly and without effect into a locked door deep within the house’s interior.