• Sam Altman spoke about a technical advancement at OpenAI the day before he was fired.
  • Sources told Reuters that staff wrote to the board warning of a breakthrough that could harm humanity.
  • A project named Q* had staff researchers optimistic about achieving AGI, a source told Reuters.

Before Sam Altman was fired, some OpenAI researchers wrote a letter to the board warning of a breakthrough that could harm humanity, sources told Reuters.

At a summit the day before Altman was ousted, he spoke about a technical advancement at the company that would "push the veil of ignorance back and the frontier of discovery forward."

Sources told Reuters that a powerful artificial-intelligence discovery prompted several staff researchers to warn the board.

Reuters said it hadn't reviewed a copy of the letter, and one person told The Verge that the board hadn't received such a letter.

But one source told Reuters that after it contacted OpenAI, the company internally acknowledged the existence of a letter to the board and a project named Q*. An OpenAI spokesperson told the news agency this message was only alerting staff to the report and not commenting on its accuracy.

The Information also reported details about the project.

One of the sources told Reuters that some OpenAI staff believed Q* could be major breakthrough in the company's goal of achieving artificial general intelligence — which the company defines as autonomous systems that surpass humans in most economically viable tasks.

With extensive computing resources, Q* was able to solve grade-school-level math problems, but researchers were optimistic because it aced them, the source told Reuters.

Reuters' two sources said Q* and the letter were among the factors that prompted the board to oust Altman last Friday.

Following his termination, more than 700 of OpenAI's 770 staff signed a letter on Monday threatening to leave for Microsoft if he wasn't reinstated.

Altman was brought back on Tuesday night.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, sent outside US working hours.