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Doesn'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
by cowl 3y ago
Doesn'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.
- mcmcmc 3y agoWhy is OpenAI responsible for protecting Microsoft’s stock price?
- wordpad25 3y agoWell if for nothing else they are their biggest partner and investor
- mcmcmc 3y agoYeah and if antitrust regulators weren’t asleep at the wheel they’d be competitors
- conductr 3y agoEven Microsoft themselves shouldn’t care about the traders that react to this type of headline so quickly. This will end up being a blip that corrects once it’s actually digested. Although, the way this story is unfolding, it’s going to be hilarious if it ends up that the OpenAI board members had taken recent short positions in MSFT.
- cowl 3y agoit's not that OpenAI is reponsible, but those board members have burned a lot of bridges with investors with this behaviour. the investor world is not big so self-serving interest would dictate that you at least take their interest in consideration before acting especially with something like waiting 1 hour before press release. No Board would want them now because they are posined apple for the investors.
- swatcoder 3y agoAlternately, there may be mission-minded investors and philanthropists who were uncomfortable with Microsoft's sweetheart deals and feel more comfortable after the non-profit board asserted itself and booted the mission-defying VC. We won't know for a while, especially since the details of the internal dispute and the soundness of the allegations against Altman are still vague. Whether investors/donors-at-large are more or less comfortable now than they were before is up in the air. That said, startups and commercial partners that wanted to build on recent OpenAI, LLC products are right to grow skittish. Signs are strong that the remaining board won't support them the way Altman's org would have.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- hartator 3y agoMSFT is still up this week.
- matwood 3y ago> last minute timing Only feels last minute to those outside. I've seen some of these go down in smaller companies and it's a lot like bankruptcy - slowly, then all at once.
- johnwheeler 3y agoExactly. They call it: The shit hitting the fan.
- capableweb 3y agoEverything points towards this being last minute both for people outside and people inside. Microsoft caught with their pants down, announcement before markets closed rather than just waiting a bit, and so on.
- vikramkr 3y agoAnnouncing something huge like this before market close is not something that can be interpreted as anything other than either a huge timing mistake or a massive feeling of urgency
- Paul-Craft 3y agoI find it hard to believe that the board of OpenAI isn't smart, savvy and self-interested enough to know that not delaying the announcement by an hour or so is the wrong move. That leads me to believe that yes, this was something big and worthy enough of being announced with that timing, and that it was probably not a mistake.
- vikramkr 3y agoThey also said Greg was going to stay at the company and then he immediately quit. I find it very hard to believe that smart, savvy, and self interested are adjectives that apply to a board who doesn't know what their own chairman thinks.
- Paul-Craft 3y ago
- nostrademons 3y agoYeah, this is more abrupt and more direct than any CEO firing I've ever seen. For comparison, when Travis Kalanick was ousted from Uber in 2017, he "resigned" and then was able to stay on the board until 2019. When Equifax had their data breach, it took 4 days for the CEO to resign and then the board retroactively changed it to "fired for cause". With the Volkswagon emissions scandal, it took 20 days for the CEO to resign (again, not fired) despite the threat of criminal proceedings. You don't fire your CEO and call him a liar if you have any choice about it. That just invites a lawsuit, bad blood, and a poor reputation in the very small circles of corporate executives and board members. That makes me think that Sam did something on OpenAI's behalf that could be construed as criminal, and the board had to fire him immediately and disavow all knowledge ("not completely candid") so that they don't bear any legal liability. It also fits with the new CEO being the person previously in charge of safety, governance, ethics, etc. That Greg Brockman, Eric Schmidt, et al are defending Altman makes me think that this is in a legal grey area, something new, and it was on behalf of training better models. Something that an ends-justifies-the-means technologist could look at and think "Of course, why aren't we doing that?" while a layperson would be like "I can't believe you did that." It's probably not something mundane like copyright infringement or webscraping or even GDPR/CalOppa violations though - those are civil penalties, and wouldn't make the board panic as strongly as they did.
- wly_cdgr 3y agoHuman cloning
- koolba 3y agoActual humans or is this a metaphor for replicating the personas of humans via an LLM?
- jonas_kgomo 3y agowhat examples are you considering here, bioweapons?
- lucubratory 3y ago
- mandeepj 3y ago> . They didn't wait even 30 min for the market to close causing MSFT to drop billions in that time Ha! Tell me you don't know about markets without telling me! Stock can drop after hours too.
- gautamgxtv 3y agoNot as much tho right?
- mahkeiro 3y agoAfter market prices are just a potential trend as the volume traded is very small and easily manipulated.