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Sam Altman and Greg Brockman Joint Statement
- minimaxir 3y agoIt appears the reporting was accurate: Ilya staged a coup. Notably, Sam/Greg do not guess or insinuate why he did a coup.
- adamdegas 3y agoApparently due to Sam's ego and wanting to use OpenAI to achieve a Musk-like cult status: https://old.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/comments/17xoact/sam_altman_is_leaving_openai/k9pq6wm/ https://old.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/comments/17xoact/sam_altman_...
- lannisterstark 3y agoSource: trust me bro, I'm a random reddit user.
- throwaxcvxvzxcv 3y agoIt's harder to tell now, but from a timeline of events, that supposed OpenAI insider on Reddit had key details of the 'palace coup' that reputable journalists like Kara Swisher (and now a primary source of Greg Brockman) have largely confirmed. I think the Reddit user is legitimate.
- random_cynic 3y agoNo that's horseshit since it does not constitute a valid legal reason for his removal nor it's inline with their blog post. They would get sued out of their a* if they acted based on this.
- s1artibartfast 3y agounfortunately, that is also how reddit roleplay works too.
- himaraya 3y agofront-running scoops from journalists?
- s1artibartfast 3y agoyeah, often times that is the case. Because reddit is antonymous and free, people can and do make all kinds of claims, some of which come true. If you have 500 people making up different claims, it is likely that one of them will come true, even if that person was guessing/lying. Im not saying that real leaks dont happen, but that pre-running the news is really weak evidence the on reddit, unless the claims are incredibly specific. I dont think there was anything they said on reddit that was very specific, and several posters in the HN thread speculating the same thing, just without claiming to be "in the room". It is kind of like publishing multiple weather predictions, and then claiming credit for the one that is correct.
- himaraya 3y agoThe consistent detail about the store breaking the camel's back sounds rather specific. I guess time will tell whether more claims by this user hold up.
- s1artibartfast 3y ago>I guess time will tell whether more claims by this user hold up. Thats the point, it doesnt matter if they do or dont. If you read through their post history, they have a comment or sentence for almost every possible reason: Difference in vision forcing development to fast Didn't listen to safety concerns Lying about finances Making deals without the board Hiding financial matters. It is like someone is rattling off the top 10 guesses for the reason from HN or predication markets. Now if they said something like Ilya Sutskever called Sam at 1215 on hangouts to tell him, That would be a be pretty solid proof.
- 0xChain 3y agoI mean Ilya said it himself in a roundabout way https://twitter.com/ilyasut/status/1707752576077176907 https://twitter.com/ilyasut/status/1707752576077176907
- BryantD 3y agoThis is too incomplete to reach any conclusions. The board made claims about a specific class of activity. They may or may not have been more specific in their conversations with Sam and Greg. Either way the credibility accusation needs more than just a timeline to refute it. Maybe it was a coup as per some reporting; maybe it wasn’t. I’m reluctant to make a decision here based on who got to the reporters first. There is some asymmetry in media savvy between Sam and the board.
- trogdor 3y agoI’m with you on this. OpenAI’s board publicly stated that Sam Altman had lied to them, and that they no longer have confidence in his ability to continue leading the company. I find it really hard to believe they just made that up. They could have just said that they lost confidence in Sam’s leadership. But they also said he had lied to them. And that’s a big deal. This just happened. We don’t have all the facts.
- BryantD 3y agoYes. It’s also true that the board made decisions I would not expect from a competent board, like not giving any investors a heads up about this. One thing we’ll know by tomorrow morning: was Swisher right when she said there’d be more top level resignations? That will tell us a certain amount about her credibility/sources. (Also, obviously, my opinion about any of this is worth what you pay for it.)
- trogdor 3y agoApparently, an internal memo at OpenAI states that Sam was not fired for malfeasance. Unbelievable. See https://www.axios.com/2023/11/18/openai-memo-altman-firing-malfeasance-communications-breakdown https://www.axios.com/2023/11/18/openai-memo-altman-firing-m...
- 7e 3y agoYou’re taking the word of the fired verbatim on Twitter? There are multiple sides to every story. For legal reasons, the board may never give exact details.
- lannisterstark 3y ago... If this was supposed to clear things up, it didn't. I'm even more confused now.
- gzer0 3y agoI find this absolutely baffling to have occurred. Even more so now than ever, I don't think this corporate structure will survive.
- acjohnson55 3y agoI think we just experienced an all-time moment in corporate politics. It's kind of like Steve Jobs being fired, but if it happened immediately after the Apple II. It feels like OpenAI has already cemented its place in history, whether or not it becomes a titan for the long run.
- nostrademons 3y agoIt's very, very common. Remember when Jack Dorsey was ousted from Twitter and replaced by Evan Williams, who was himself ousted and replaced by Dick Costolo, who was replaced when Dorsey came back? Or the drama around Yishan Wong's sudden resignation as Reddit CEO, to be replaced by Ellen Pao, to be replaced as the founder Steve Huffman came back? The Flexport drama last month where the hired CEO was replaced by the founder? The movie "The Social Network"? Going back a bit, Sandy Lerner and Leonard Bosack's ouster from Cisco, or Diane Green and Mendel Rosenblum's ouster from VMWare? Build something successful and there will be a lot of infighting about who gets to control it.
- acjohnson55 3y agoI don't know much about the Cisco or VMWare examples. I recall the Twitter and Reddit situations as being more like the products having reached a plateau where people generally knew what it was and how it fit into the world. What feels remarkable to me is where OpenAI is in its potential trajectory as leader of a possible revolution in IT. But I guess the amount of contingency in how all this might play out may well be the reason for the ouster.
- notatoad 3y ago>Or the drama around Yishan Wong's sudden resignation as Reddit CEO, to be replaced by Ellen Pao you're missing one noteworthy name who was CEO between those two people :)
- wyy1995 3y agoMaybe after Sam Altman and Greg Brockman leave, people will realize how important they are to OpenAI.
- gzer0 3y agoPossibility of @karpathy leaving and joining them to form a viable competitor?
- yunichel 3y agoMeh, I think Ilya and John Schulman (TRPO, PPO, RLHF) are way more important. There are many others of course
- wyy1995 3y agoThat's just a technical perspective, but when it comes to developing advanced artificial intelligence industries, technology doesn't determine everything.
- strikelaserclaw 3y agoI'm sure they can get funding at this point if needed.
- wyy1995 3y agoEven an investor with deep pockets like Microsoft would be shocked by such a sudden action by the board of directors,and Microsoft will treat its money more carefully.I don't think Microsoft can pretend nothing happened.
- strikelaserclaw 3y agoif they don't screw up again, it will eventually be forgotten as all things are and business as usual.
- RobertDeNiro 3y ago
- yunichel 3y agoIlya is an idealist. I respect it
- drcode 3y agowe don't know anything right now
- solardev 3y agoThey found the shift key!!
- minimaxir 3y agoMore accurately, their lawyers did.
- cryptoz 3y ago"more to say about what's next" in Sam's tweet earlier, and now, "greater things are coming" huh, do they already have a plan or is this just generic optimism?
- dougmwne 3y agoClearly they will have a new AI startup by Monday.
- s1artibartfast 3y agoProbably generic optimism backed by realistic track records. If you spend 20 years founding and running companies, it stands to think there will be another one.
- rvz 3y agoCaesar stabbed right in the back and the coup had been made clear by their closest founders. Jealously and greed strikes once again, someone was more greedier than the rest. Also why are all the links and sources from Twitter / X? We were told repeatedly it was dead? It seems that this drama suggests that it isn't.
- strikelaserclaw 3y agoCaesar was a total asshole
- EE84M3i 3y agoThere was a quotation from The Books of Bokonon on the page before me. Those words leapt from the page and into my mind, and they were welcomed there. The words were a paraphrase of the suggestion by Jesus: “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s.” Bokonon’s paraphrase was this: “Pay no attention to Caesar. Caesar doesn’t have the slightest idea what’s really going on.”
- aidaman 3y ago1) What
- convexstrictly 3y agoThe whole sequence of events sounds amateurish and extremely unprofessional!
- hakdbha 3y ago[dead]
- woeirua 3y agoIf this was a palace coup based on a disagreement on direction, then OpenAI is done. Microsoft won’t be able to trust the board going forward, and so the money will dry up. Most of the talent will follow Sam/Greg. OpenAI will wither on the vine. That said, I feel like more is to come out still. The board made serious accusations.
- mxwsn 3y agoI agree this is likely disastrous for OpenAI's current corporate structure, and Microsoft will be very unhappy. But as an ML researcher, I suspect lots of researchers are going to continue to follow Ilya, unless his reputation has significantly changed (he does seem a lot more doomer-y recently ...)
- minimaxir 3y agoMicrosoft won't trust the board regardless because they weren't in-the-loop for a material event which tanked their stock.
- okdood64 3y agoDown 2% is tanking a stock?
- dougmwne 3y agoIlya just self-immolated the hottest company of the decade with an 80 billion dollar valuation, all to make a point that he thinks AGI is too close and that safety needs to come first before all else. That’s quite the statement!
- m_ke 3y agoSounds to me like it wasn't just Ilya, but the whole research and engineering team that was tired of his shit. See: https://www.reddit.com/user/Anxious_Bandicoot126 https://www.reddit.com/user/Anxious_Bandicoot126
- woeirua 3y agoYeah… I don’t know. A lot of engineers miss the forest for the trees when it comes to business demands. Very possible that a return to a “safety oriented” culture means that OpenAI fades slowly into obscurity.
- m_ke 3y agoA lot of engineers are interested in working on important things, not growing at all cost in hope of a large exit.
- disgruntledphd2 3y agoFundamentally, if revenue is not more than expenses, then the organisation won't last long, relying as it does on the kindness of strangers.
- dougmwne 3y agoYeah I read that and it really came off like a salty engineer who was tired of being pushed by the exec team to crank out more business value. Sounds like this person’s position is that OpenAI should have been a cozy little research lab where the scientists got to play with their cool toys, not ruthlessly execute on a product vision. Billion dollar business are built out of ego. If you want to work in a lab that can’t ship, head over to Deep Mind (that’s a joke, even Deep Mind needs to ship now).
- numair 3y agoThis reminds me of the time at Facebook when one of OpenAI’s current board members was upset that the Director of Facebook Platform was getting more praise and attention than he was, in his role as Co-Founder and CTO (or whatever). That caused a lot of problems, from which the Facebook Platform never recovered. People who start out petty usually remain that way. There’s a lot of people in this world whose happiness depends on others doing just a little bit worse-off than them. If I was a developer building on OpenAI’s platform today, I would begin putting my contingency plans into place.
- safaa1993 3y ago[flagged]
- elfbargpt 3y agoSomething to consider: the post announcing his firing is now the 7th most upvoted post on hacker news and climbing. Does Sam Altman really deserve that much attention for his role in OpenAI, and is the fact that it's getting this much attention part of the reason he was kicked? Zuckerberg started Fb in his dorm and Steve Jobs left his mark on every inch of their flagship products. Altman was positioned to be the next "Jobs / Zuckerberg" but I can't say I know he really deserved it as much as people seem to think. Obviously open to completely changing my mind.
- minimaxir 3y agoThe news is getting extra attention because it's bizarre, unexpected, and could possibly take down a multi-billion dollar company.
- solardev 3y agoIt's probably more the tone of the firing letter, with the accusation about some scandal that we've yet to hear about, from a company that from the outside seemed to be at the top of its game. It's a lot more popcorn than we usually get from corporate announcements.
- evilduck 3y agoI don't particularly care about Sam Altman but seeing turbulence at OpenAI is interesting news.
- whatusername 3y agoThis is hacker news. Sam was the founder of a startup in the very first round of YC. He then later became president of YC. I expect news of him to resonate more around here. And OpenAI have been the most exciting tech company of the last 12 months.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- impulser_ 3y agoWhy is everyone talking about Sam like he's the scientist and engineer behind OpenAI? I seen people compare him to Oppenheimer lol. Did he actually build anything at OpenAI or did he just manage it?
- Imnimo 3y agoWhat I still don't get about all this is if this is just a case of Ilya deciding to play board room Game of Thrones because he has a different vision for OpenAI than Sam and Greg, why throw Sam under the bus with this line in the announcement: "Mr. Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities." This really reads like Sam did something wrong and had it coming. But Greg and Sam's statement make it sound like Ilya just wanted to go another direction and got the votes. Why make Sam out to be the bad guy if there was no wrongdoing?
- TillE 3y agoThis statement makes it sound like they're confused about why Sam was fired, but Sam's original tweet does not convey any hint of that. Compare: https://twitter.com/sama/status/1725631621511184771 https://twitter.com/sama/status/1725631621511184771
- woeirua 3y agoThis is why I think there are more shoes to drop still. That language is exceptionally specific and harsh.
- davorak 3y agoOr the board is not entrenched in typical corporate cultural/lingo and did not know how their language would stand out.
- ssnistfajen 3y agoThe joint statement was still intentionally refraining from the details, merely revealing the manner the firing decision was delivered. Ilya & rest of the board had a reason to do this and that reason isn't being disclosed by any involved party yet.
- ssnistfajen 3y agoSounds exactly like a coup despite Ilya claiming it wasn't one. But other than that, the details are still pretty lacking. The drama is only getting started and whatever comes next from both sides will be even more interesting.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y agoThese people in the Twitter thread are distracted by use of Google Meet. Have they never compared it to Micrsoft Teams. Or Zoom. All these are painful to use, if for nothing else besides the companies behind them, but there's quite a difference between Meet and the others.