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Edit: I called it https://twitter.com/karaswisher/status/1725682088639119857 https://twitter.com/karaswisher/status/1725682088639119857 nothing to do with dis
by johnwheeler 3y ago
Edit: I called it
https://twitter.com/karaswisher/status/1725682088639119857 https://twitter.com/karaswisher/status/1725682088639119857
nothing to do with dishonesty. That’s just the official reason.
———-
I haven’t heard anyone commenting about this, but the two main figures here-consider: This MUST come down to a disagreement between Altman and Sutskever.
Also interesting that Sutskever tweeted a month and a half ago
https://twitter.com/ilyasut/status/1707752576077176907 https://twitter.com/ilyasut/status/1707752576077176907
The press release about candid talk with the board… It’s probably just cover up for some deep seated philosophical disagreement. They found a reason to fire him that not necessarily reflects why they are firing him. He and Ilya no longer saw eye to eye and it reached its fever pitch with gpt 4 turbo.
Ultimately, it’s been surmised that Sutskever had all the leverage because of his technical ability. Sam being the consummate businessperson, they probably got in some final disagreement and Sutskever reached his tipping point and decided to use said leverage.
I’ve been in tech too long and have seen this play out. Don’t piss off an irreplaceable engineer or they’ll fire you. not taking any sides here.
PS most engineers, like myself, are replaceable. Ilya is probably not.
- jeron 3y agothe theory that Altman did something in bad faith means that it might not be a disagreement but it's something that forced Sutskever to vote against Sam
- duringmath 3y agoThe theory is Altman gave his eye scanning crypto company early access to openAI tech without telling anyone and what ensued is just FAFO in action.
- woeirua 3y agoThat’s not big enough to immediately terminate him.
- dragonwriter 3y agoSelf-dealing like that really is, not saying I see any reason to suspect its that and not something else, but, yeah, doing that and cocncealing it absolutely would be a reason for both firing him and making the statement made. Unless Brockman was involved, though, firing Brockman doesn't really make sense.
- fragmede 3y agoYeah, looking at the self-dealing going on with WeWork and Adam Neumann, it's not that.
- lmm 3y agoThe board knew and agreed to it in that case.
- ssnistfajen 3y agoNot sure what you mean here. They tried to IPO in 2019 and all the dirty laundry came out, scuttled the IPO and Neumann got ousted.
- fragmede 3y agoOusted to the tune of millions and millions of dollars tho. Yeah he didn't get an IPO pop, but he's still worth more than you or I could make in several lifetime.
- dragonwriter 3y agoThere's a difference between self-dealing you sell the board on and self-dealing you conceal from the board (also, different where its a pure for-profit where the self-dealing happens and where there is a non-profit involved, because the latter not only raises issues of conflict of interest with the firm, but also potential violations of the rules governing non-profits.)
- nothrowaways 3y agoNo way, no Sam - crypto scandal again.
- moralestapia 3y agoI'm also inclined to believe something like this happened.
- lenerdenator 3y agoI think that if there were a lack of truth to him being less-than-candid with the board, they would have left that part out. You don’t basically say that an employee (particularly a c-suiter with lots of money for lawyers) lied unless you think that you could reasonably defend that statement in court. Otherwise, it’s defamation.
- johnwheeler 3y agoI’m not saying there is lack of truth. I’m saying that’s not the real reason. It could be there’s a scandal to be found, but my guess is the hostility from OpenAI is just preemptive. There’s really no nice way to tell someone to fuck off from the biggest thing. Ever.
- lenerdenator 3y agoI mean I'm not a lawyer (of the big city or simple country varieties, or any other variety) but if you talk to most HR people they'll tell you that if they ever get a phone call from a prospective employer to confirm details about someone having worked there previously, the three things they'll typically say are: 1) a confirmation of the dates of employment 2) a confirmation of the role/title during employment 3) whether or not they would rehire that person ... and that's it. The last one is a legally-sound way of saying that their time at the company left something to be desired, up to and including the point of them being terminated. It doesn't give them exposure under defamation because it's completely true, as the company is fully in-charge of that decision and can thus set the reality surrounding it. That's for a regular employee who is having their information confirmed by some hiring manager in a phone or email conversation. This is a press release for a company connected to several very high-profile corporations in a very well-connected business community. Arguably it's the biggest tech exec news of the year. If there's ulterior or additional motive as you suggest, there's a possibility Sam goes and hires the biggest son-of-a-bitch attorney in California to convince a jury that the ulterior or additional motive was _the only_ motive, and that calling Sam a liar in a press release was defamation. As a result, OpenAI/the foundation, would probably be paying him _at least_ several million dollars (probably a lot more) for making him hard to hire on at other companies. Either he simply lied to the board and that's it, or OpenAI's counsel didn't do their job and put their foot down over the language used in the press release.
- cowl 3y agoDoesn't justify the hostile language and the urgent last minute timing. (partners were notified just minutes before press release). They didn't wait even 30 min for the market to close causing MSFT to drop billions in that time. A mere direction disagrement would have been handled with "Sam is retiring after 3 months to spend more time with his Family, We thank him for all his work". And surely would be taken months in advance of being announced.
- mark_l_watson 3y agoGreat point. It was rude to drop a bombshell during trading hours. That said, the chunk of value Microsoft dropped today may be made back tomorrow, but maybe not: if OpenAI is going to slow down and concentrate on safe/aligned AI then that is not quite as good for Microsoft.
- dclowd9901 3y agoIt only dropped 2% and it’s already half back in after hours. I don’t think the market thinks it’s Altman who’s the golden boy here.
- Sebb767 3y agoIt's still a completely unnecessary disturbance of the market. You also don't want to bite the hand that feeds you. This would be taking a personal disagreement to Musk-levels of market impact.
- lotsofpulp 3y agoWhat is all this nonsense about MSFT stock price? Nothing material has happened to it. https://www.google.com/finance/quote/MSFT:NASDAQ https://www.google.com/finance/quote/MSFT:NASDAQ
- jrockway 3y agoPeople zooming in too far. If you look at the 1d chart, yeah, something happened at 3:30. If you look at the 1m chart, today is irrelevant.
- cowl 3y agoWhat is confusing here is Why would Greg have agreed to the language in the press release (that he would be staying in the company and report to the CEO) only to resign 1 hour later. Surely the press release would not have contained that information without the his agreement that he would be staying.
- tsunamifury 3y agoHa Most people don’t know how slipshod these things go. Succession had it right when people were always fighting over the PR release trying to change each others statements.
- mrandish 3y ago> Why would Greg have agreed to the language in the press release We have no evidence he agreed or didn't agree to the wording. A quorum of the board met, probably without the chairman, and voted the CEO of the company and the chairman of the board out. The chairman also happens to have a job as the President of the company. The President role reports to the CEO, not the board. Typically, a BOD would not fire a President, the CEO would. The board's statement said the President would continue reporting to the CEO (now a different person) - clarifying that the dismissal as board chairman was separate from his role as a company employee. Based on the careful wording of the board's statement as well as Greg's tweet, I suspect he wasn't present at the vote nor would he be eligible to vote regarding his own position as chairman. Following this, the remaining board members convened with their newly appointed CEO and drafted a public statement from the company and board.
- dekhn 3y agoHe didn't. Greg was informed after Sam (I'm assuming the various bits being flung about by Swisher are true; she gets a free pass on things like this), so I think the sequence was: a subset of the board meets, forms quorum, votes to terminate Sam and remove Greg as chair (without telling him). Then they write the PR, and around the same time, let Sam and then Greg know. If OpenAI were a government, this would be called a coup.
- brohee 3y ago
- AmericanOP 3y agoSo I should cancel any plans to build on the GPT platform? Because it doesn't align with the values of Ilya and Helen? Open AI- we need clarity on your new direction.
- jay_kyburz 3y agoDo you really want to build a business on a platform with 100% lock in. It not like to can just move to another AI company if you don't like their terms.
- RetpolineDrama 3y agoMy Open AI bill was (opens dashboard...), $43,xxx last month. First thing tomorrow I'm kicking off another round of searching for alternatives.
- 7thaccount 3y agoJust out of curiosity, what are you using it for that makes it that valuable?
- nurettin 3y agoIt's probably the gpt cost of a metered product.
- RetpolineDrama 3y agoI have basically shipped gpt-4-32k to a few million boomers. Hard to say more without doxxing myself.
- razodactyl 3y agoI understand the meaning of this statement but please reconsider the way you view your customer base - it's not a good grounding for the success of your business to think this way. Great work with what you've built so far!
- wslh 3y agoAnd there is: https://twitter.com/anothercohen/status/1725631445941563671 https://twitter.com/anothercohen/status/1725631445941563671
- broken_clock 3y agoThat's a parody account
- brap 3y agoWait, this guy really landed an AI lead job in a few hours? Edit: Ok seems to be a joke account. I guess I’m getting old.
- cjbgkagh 3y agoThat may be the case, but I have a feeling that it will end up being presented as a alignment and ethics versus all in on AGI consequences be damned. I'm sure OpenAI has gotten a lot of external pressure to focus more on alignment and ethics and this coup is signalling that OpenAI will yield to that pressure.
- aliston 3y agoIf it was really just about seeing eye to eye, why would the press release say anything about Sam being "consistently candid in his communications?" That seems pretty unnecessary if it were fundamentally a philosophical disagreement. Why not instead say something about differences in forward looking vision?
- notahacker 3y agoWhich they can do in a super polite "wish him all the best" way or an "it was necessary to remove Sam's vision to save the world from unfriendly AI" way as they see fit. Unlike an accusation of lying, this isn't something that you can be sued for, and provided you're clear about what your boardroom battle-winning vision is it probably spooks stakeholders less than an insinuation that Sam might have been covering up something really bad with no further context.
- eslaught 3y agoThis doesn't make any sense. If it was a disagreement, they could have gone the "quiet" route and just made no substantive comment in the press release. But they made accusations that are specific enough to be legally enforceable if they're wrong, and in an official statement no less. If their case isn't 100% rock solid, they just handed Sam a lawsuit that he's virtually guaranteed to win.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Paul-Craft 3y agoI agree. None of this adds up. The only thing that makes any sense, given OpenAI has any sense and self interest at all, is that the reason they let Altman go may have even been bigger than even what they were saying, and that there was some lack of candor in his communications with the board. Otherwise, you don't make an announcement like that 30 minutes before markets close on a Friday.
- foobiekr 3y agoI think you're completely backward. A board doesn't do that unless they absolutely have to. Think back in history. For example, consider the absolutely massive issues at Uber that had to go public before the board did anything. There is no way this is over some disagreement, there has to be serious financial, ethical or social wrongdoing for the board to rush job it and put a company worth tens of billions of dollars at risk.
- apstls 3y agoThe board, like any, is a small group of people, and in this case a small group of people divided into two sides defined by conflicting ideological perspectives. In this case, I imagine the board members have much broader and longer-term perspectives and considerations factoring into their decision making than the significant, significant majority of other companies/boards. Generalizing doesn’t seem particularly helpful.
- foobiekr 3y agoGeneralizing is how we reason, and having been on boards and worked with them closely, I can straight up tell you that's not how it works. In general, everyone is professional unless there's something really bad. This was quite unprofessionally handled, and so we draw the obvious conclusion.
- apstls 3y agoI am also not a stranger to board positions. However, I have never been on the board of a non-profit that is developing technology with genuinely deep, and as-of-now unknown, implications for the status quo of the global economy and - at least as the OpenAI board clearly believes - the literal future and safety of humanity. I haven’t been on a board where a semi-idealist engineer board member has played a (if not _the_) pivotal role in arguably the most significant technical development in recent decades, and who maintains ideals and opinions completely orthogonal to the CEO’s. Yes, generalizing is how we reason, because it lets us strip away information that is not relevant in most scenarios and reduces complexity and depth without losing much in most cases. My point is, this is not a scenario that fits in the set of “most cases.” This is actually probably one of the most unique and corner-casey example of board dynamics in tech. Adherence to generalizations without considering applicability and corner cases doesn’t make sense.
- johnwheeler 3y agohttps://twitter.com/karaswisher/status/1725702501435941294 https://twitter.com/karaswisher/status/1725702501435941294
- concurrentsquar 3y agoMore new information from Swisher: > "More scoopage: sources tell me chief scientist Ilya Sutskever was at the center of this. Increasing tensions with Sam Altman and Greg Brockman over role and influence and he got the board on his side." > "The developer day and how the store was introduced was in inflection moment of Altman pushing too far, too fast. My bet: He’ll have a new company up by Monday." [source: https://twitter.com/karaswisher/status/1725702501435941294 https://twitter.com/karaswisher/status/1725702501435941294] Sounds like you exactly predicted it.
- mirekrusin 3y agoClosedAI? > My bet: He’ll have a new company up by Monday.
- m463 3y agoApart from some piddly tech, silicon valley startups primarily sell stock. And a monday company will be free to capitalize on the hype and sell stock that won't have its shoelaces tied like a non profit.
- refurb 3y agoNo doubt Sam will have another AI company up in no time. Which is good!
- mirekrusin 3y agoIt's very good, competition is all you need.
- moralestapia 3y ago>https://twitter.com/ilyasut/status/1707752576077176907 https://twitter.com/ilyasut/status/1707752576077176907 Dang! He left @elonmusk on read. Now that's some ego at play.
- icy_deadposts 3y ago[flagged]
- ramraj07 3y agoSo, in this round, Woz won?
- yellow_postit 3y ago[flagged]
- VerminOctopus1 3y ago…”Woke”? What does that have to do with anything?
- yellow_postit 3y agoThe AI doomerism that seems to underly the boards decision is just a non serious endeavor that is more virtue signaling than of substance. The leap I’m making, but seems plausible given their chief scientist, is that the area of more research they want to focus on, rather than being a business, is on the super alignment theme.
- karmasimida 3y agoWithout Sam running the company, OpenAI can’t get what it is today. And this time around he would have the sympathies from the crowd. Regardless this is very detrimental to OpenAI brand, Ilya might be the genius behind ChatGPT, he couldn’t do it just himself. The war between OpenAI and Sam AI is just the beginning
- arthurcolle 3y agoAlec Radford always left out in these convos, curious
- siva7 3y agoAh, the old myth about the irreplaceable engineer and the dumb suit. Ask Wozniak about that. I don't think he believes Apple would be without Steve Jobs.
- leptons 3y agoSteve Jobs would be nothing without Wozniak to design something people wanted.
- siva7 3y agovice versa ;)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- smoldesu 3y agoIf Steve Jobs couldn't claim Wozniak's work as his own, he wouldn't have landed "his" Atari contract. Who knows where things would have gone after that, but I have a hard time tracing Apple's history of success without, say, the Apple II.
- fsloth 3y agoThe milieu in which Apple came to fruitition was full of young small microcomputer shops. So it's not like Woz invented the microcomputer for the masses - his contribution was critical for early Apple for sure, but the market had tons of alternatives as well. Without Apple II it's hard to say were Jobs and Wozniak would have turned out. Jobs is such a unique, driven figure that I'm fairly sure he would have created a lasting impression on the market even without Woz. This is not to say Woz was insighnificant - but rather the 1970's Silicon Valley had tons of people with Woz's acumen (not to disparage their achievements) but only few tech luminaries who obviously were not one trick ponies but managed to build their industrial legacy over decades.
- pfannkuchen 3y agoOr there was a disagreement about whether the dishonesty was over the line? Dishonesty happens all the time and people have different perspectives on what constitutes being dishonest and on whether a specific action was dishonest or not. The existence of a disagreement does not mean that it has nothing to do with dishonesty.
- jstummbillig 3y ago> Ilya is probably not. If he is, at this point, so much so not replaceable that he has enough leverage to strong-arm the board into firing the CEO over disagreeing with the CEO, then that would for sure be the biggest problem OpenAI has.
- PeterStuer 3y agoFeels like Griffindor beheaded Slytherin right before Voldemort could make them his own. Hogwarts will be in turmoil but that price was unavoidable given the existential threath?
- bitcharmer 3y agoPurging an non-profit organization from a greedy MBA aggressively focused on sales and nothing else is always a good riddance in my book.
- croes 3y ago>nothing to do with dishonest Who knows, maybe they settled a difference of opinion and Altman went ahead with his plans anyway.
- blazespin 3y agoYou don't call someone a liar because you have philosophical differences.