11 ms·

From NYT article [1] and Greg's tweet [2] "In a post to X Friday evening, Mr. Brockman said that he and Mr. Altman had no warning of the board’s decision. “Sam

From NYT article [1] and Greg's tweet [2] "In a post to X Friday evening, Mr. Brockman said that he and Mr. Altman had no warning of the board’s decision. “Sam and I are shocked and saddened by what the board did today,” he wrote. “We too are still trying to figure out exactly what happened.” Mr. Altman was asked to join a video meeting with the board at noon on Friday and was immediately fired, according to Mr. Brockman. Mr. Brockman said that even though he was the chairman of the board, he was not part of this board meeting. He said that the board informed him of Mr. Altman’s ouster minutes later. Around the same time, the board published a blog post." [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/17/technology/openai-sam-altman-ousted.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/17/technology/openai-sam-alt... [2] https://twitter.com/gdb/status/1725736242137182594 https://twitter.com/gdb/status/1725736242137182594

cedws 3y ago
So they didn't even give Altman a chance to defend himself for supposedly lying (inconsistent candour as they put it.) Wow.
- somenameforme 3y ago
  Another source [1] claims: "A knowledgeable source said the board struggle reflected a cultural clash at the organization, with Altman and Brockman focused on commercialization and Sutskever and his allies focused on the original non-profit mission of OpenAI." [1] - https://sfstandard.com/2023/11/17/openai-sam-altman-firing-board-members/ https://sfstandard.com/2023/11/17/openai-sam-altman-firing-b...
  - szundi 3y ago
    Why can’t some use money from profit to do nonprofit again when others caught up. Only moat seems to be the research time invested.
    - ben_w 3y ago
      Many believe that race dynamics are bad, so have the goal of going as slowly and carefully as possible. The split between e/acc (gotta go fast) and friendly AI/Coherent Extrapolated Volition (slow and cautious) is the first time in my life I've come down on the (small-c) conservative side of a split. I don't know if that's because I'm just getting older and more risk adverse.
  - jacooper 3y ago
    Yeah I though that was the most probable reason, especially since these people don't have any equity, so they have no interest in the commercial growth of the org. Apparently Microsoft was also blindsided by this. https://www.axios.com/2023/11/17/microsoft-openai-sam-altman-ouster https://www.axios.com/2023/11/17/microsoft-openai-sam-altman...
  - 101011 3y ago
    TY for sharing. I found this to be very enlightening, especially when reading more about the board members that were part of the oust. One of the board of directors that fired him co-signed these AI principles (https://futureoflife.org/open-letter/ai-principles/ https://futureoflife.org/open-letter/ai-principles/) that are very much in line with safeguarding general intelligence Another of them wrote this article (https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/illusion-chinas-ai-prowess-regulation https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/illusion-chinas-ai-prow...) in June of this year that opens by quoting Sam Altman saying US regulation will "slow down American industry in such a way that China or somebody else makes faster progress” and basically debunks that stance...and quite well, I might add.
    - larrydag 3y ago
      This seems to make more sense. Perhaps it has to do with OpenAI is not "open" anymore. Not supporting and getting rid of the OpenAI Gym was certainly a big change in direction of the company.
    - dmix 3y ago
      So the argument against AI regulations crippling R&D is that China is currently far behind and also faces their own weird gov pressures? That's a big gamble, applying very-long term regulations (as they always are long term) to a short term window betting on predictions of a non-technical board member. There's far more to the world than China on top of that and importantly developments happen both inside and outside of the scope of regulatory oversight (usually only heavily commercialized products face scrutiny) and China itself will eventually catch up to the average - progress is rarely a non-stop hockey stick, it plateaus. LLMs might already be hitting a wall https://twitter.com/HamelHusain/status/1725655686913392933 https://twitter.com/HamelHusain/status/1725655686913392933) The Chinese are experts at copying and stealing Western tech. They don't have to be on the frontier to catch up to a crippled US and then continue development at a faster pace, and as we've seen repeatedly in history regulations stick around for decades after their utility has long past. They are not levers that go up and down, they go in one direction and maybe after many many years of damage they might be adjusted, but usually after 10 starts/stops and half-baked non-solutions papered on as real solutions - if at all.
  - krzyk 3y ago
    So it looks like they did something good.
    - konschubert 3y ago
      If you want AI to fail, then yes.
      - uoaei 3y ago
        Melodrama has no place in the AI utopia.
        mcpackieh 3y ago
        The only thing utopian ideologies are good for is finding 'justifications' for murder. The "AI utopia" will be no different. De-radicalize yourself while you still can.
        passwordoops 3y ago
        Utopian ideologies are also useful when raising funds from SoftBank and ARK
        concordDance 3y ago
        > The only thing utopian ideologies are good for is finding 'justifications' for murder. This seems more like your personal definition of "utopian ideology" than an actual observation of the world we live in.
        ddj231 3y ago
        It seems like an observation to me. Let’s take the Marxist utopian ideology. It led to 40 - 60 million dead in the Soviet Union (Gulag Archipelago is an eye opening read). And 40 - 80 million dead in Mao Zedong’s China. It’s hard to even wrap my mind around that amount of people dead. Then a smaller example in Matthia’s cult in the “Kingdom Of Matthias” book. Started around the same time as Mormonism. Which led to a murder. Or the Peoples Temple cult with 909 dead in mass suicide. The communal aspects of these give away their “utopian ideology” I’d like to hear where you’re coming from. I have a Christian worldview, so when I look at these movements it seems they have an obvious presupposition on human nature (that with the right systems in place people will act perfectly — so it is the systems that are flawed not the people themselves). Utopia is inherently religious, and I’d say it is the human desire to have heaven on earth — but gone about in the wrong ways. Because humans are flawed, no economic system or communal living in itself can bring about the utopian ideal.
  - sekai 3y ago
    Microsoft won't be happy about this
    - belter 3y ago
      What is bad for Microsoft is good for the world.
  - alvis 3y ago
    it's hardly believed that Alman was fired by his stand on commercialisation
    - iLoveOncall 3y ago
      The fact that the press release is 50% dedicated to repeating that OpenAI is supposed to be a non-profit and help all of humanity isn't enough for you to believe this is the reason?
      - ps256 3y ago
        The abruptness of the firing and the fact that they give his lying to the board as the reason is why I don't believe that this is over a general disagreement on direction.
        jjallen 3y ago
        They have to say the reason is a fireable offense or he can sue them. Or will be more likely to win if he does.
        ps256 3y ago
        It's exactly the other way around - if they dismiss him for a vague general reason, they're much less exposed to litigation than they would be if they falsely accused him of lying.
        ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
        You are 100% correct here, which is how we can reasonably conclude that the accusations were not false.
        ps256 3y ago
        If the accusations by the board are true, that doesn't explain why Brockman and a few of the senior researchers quit as a response to all of this.
  - lrvick 3y ago
    If true, this gives me hope the Open can return to OpenAI.
    - layer8 3y ago
      Given the board members’ focus on safety, maybe not that likely.
      - devilsAdv0cate 3y ago
        [dead]
      - lrvick 3y ago
        Open source is the only path to broad public accountability, which is a prerequisite for safety.
  - wheelerof4te 3y ago
    I'm confused. It's usually the other way around; the good guy is ousted because he is hindering the company's pursuit of profit.
    - airstrike 3y ago
      In this case, the company is a non-profit, so it is indeed the other way around
      - colonelsherburn 3y ago
        OpenAI has been for profit since 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI#2019:_Transition_from_non-profit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI#2019:_Transition_from_n...
        cthalupa 3y ago
        It is not that simple. https://openai.com/our-structure https://openai.com/our-structure The board is for the non-profit that ultimately owns and totally controls the for-profit company. Everyone that works for or invests in the for-profit company has to sign an operating agreement that states the for-profit actually does not have any responsibility to generate profit and that it's primary duty is to fulfill the charter and mission of the non-profit.
        andai 3y ago
        Then what's the point of the for-profit?
        chimeracoder 3y ago
        > Then what's the point of the for-profit? To allow OpenAI to raise venture capital, which allows them to exchange equity for money (ie, distribute [future] rights to profit to shareholders)
        Cacti 3y ago
  - carlossouza 3y ago
    This is not a story about AI. It's a story about greed, vanity, and envy. Impossible to be more human than that.
  - epolanski 3y ago
    The commercial shift has started quite some time ago, what's the point of firing them now? And why such a controversial wording around Altman? Why fire Brockman too?
    - ayoubd 3y ago
      Brockman quit, he wasn’t fired.
      - vertis 3y ago
        He was removed from one of his roles (chairman) and quit the other (president) if I understand correctly.
  - jdthedisciple 3y ago
    What a hypocritical board, firing them after massive commercial success! Classic virtue signalling for the sake of personal power gains as so often.
    - CPLX 3y ago
      What’s hypocritical about a non-profit firing a leader who wanted lots of profits.
      - jdthedisciple 3y ago
        Didn't think I'd need to explain this: The hypocritical part is doing so right AFTER beginning to take off commercially. An honorable board with backbone would have done so at the first inkling of commercialization instead (which would have been 1-2 years ago). Maybe you can find a better word for me but the point should be easily gotten ...
        layer8 3y ago
        Three other board members stepped down this year. It might not have been possible before.
        jdthedisciple 3y ago
        Ofc it's "not possible" in that it may incur personal costs. But it's the honorable thing to do if you truly believe in something. Otherwise it's just virtue signalling.
        jprete 3y ago
        No, they may literally have not had the votes.
        diognesofsinope 3y ago
        Almost more of a "takeover" by the board after it's successful lol
  - ChatGTP 3y ago
    Sutskever and his allies focused on the original non-profit mission of OpenAI." Seems reasonable, I mean that's why Sutskever joined in the first place ?
    - ignoramous 3y ago
      Not just Sustkever, but other top researchers joined the then nascent OpenAI team for the same reason. Most of them on-record indicating they turned down much bigger paychecks. The problem I see is, astronomical costs of training and inference warrants a for-profit structure like the one Sam put up. It was a nice compromise, I thought; but of course, Sustkever thinks otherwise.
      - ChatGTP 3y ago
        Maybe Sutskever is finished with his LLM experiments and now has other interests and ideas to pursue meanwhile Sam was keen to make money and stay on the same trajectory. Microsoft also felt the same way. Could see this
- belter 3y ago
  I am going to go on a limb here, and speculate...This was because of the surprise party crashing of the Microsoft CEO, at OpenAI first Developer Conference...
  - renegade-otter 3y ago
    Kara Swisher was told the dev conference was "an inflection point", so it's not that speculative.
- layer8 3y ago
  He may have had ample chance before.
- hef19898 3y ago
  Why would employees be consulted begore being fired?
  - joshlegs 3y ago
    would be hilarious if Altman was directly hired by Microsoft to head their AI teams now.
  - crazygringo 3y ago
    Because board members are not employees, or not just employees. They're part of the democratic governance of an organization. The same way there's a big difference between firing a government employee and expulsion of a member of Congress.
    - hef19898 3y ago
      Wow, that is actually the first time I hear someone use democracy and corporation unironically together... In a semse board memebers have even less protection than rank and file. So no, nothing special happening at OpenAI other than a founder CEO being squezzed out, not the first nor the last one. And personal feeling never factored into that kind of decision.
      - crazygringo 3y ago
        Ha, true. Well, I did say "democratic governance", not "democracy" itself. Substitute "rules of order" or "parliamentary procedure" if you like. At the end of the day, it's majority vote by a tiny number of representatives. Whether political or corporate.
      - drexlspivey 3y ago
        Is that news to you? Corporate governance is structure pretty much the same as parliamental democracies. The C-suite is the cabinet, the board of directors is the parliament/house of representatives and the shareholders are the public/voters.
- zer0c00ler 3y ago
  I doubt this was a surprise to them, I’m sure Sam was well aware of the concerns and repeatedly ignored them, and even doubled down. Putting OpenAI’s mission in jeopardy. Many politically aligned folks will leave, and OAI will go back and focus on mission. New company will emerge and focus on profits. Overall probably good for everyone.
jojobas 3y ago
[dead]
andrewstuart 3y ago
[dead]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
tchalla 3y ago
[flagged]
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  What should they use? Self hosted Jitsi?
  - gundmc 3y ago
    I mean, presumably Teams?
    - bryanrasmussen 3y ago
      Haven't these people suffered enough!?
      - Bobaso 3y ago
        I can relate
      - yankput 3y ago
        In my experience Teams is great for calls (both audio and video), horrible for chat. I guess because it's built on top of Skype codebase? (just a guess) But it's out of the scope for this discussion.
        Shadowmist 3y ago
        [flagged]
        Lio 3y ago
        The chat portion of Teams is so very poorly designed compared to other corporate chat systems I've used. I mean even copy and paste doesn't work correctly. You highlight text, copy it and Teams inserts its own extra content in there. That's basic functionality and it's broken. Or you get tagged into conversations and with no way to mute them. For a busy chat that alert notification can be going off continuously. Of course the alert pop up has been handily placed to cover the unmute icon in calls, so when someone asks you a question you can't answer them. Teams feels like a desperate corporate reaction to Slack with features added as a tickbox exercise but no thought given to actual usability. I never thought that Slack or the whatever Google's chat system is currently called was in any way outstanding until I was made to use the dumpster fire that is Teams. It's a classic example of where the customers, corporate CTOs, are not the end users of a product.
waihtis 3y ago
power hijack by the doomers. too bad the cat is out of the bag already
- fsloth 3y ago
  Quite possible actually, this seems to become a really hot political potato with at least 3 types of ambition running it 1. Business 2. Regulatory 3. ’Religious/Academic’. By latter I mean the divide between ai doomerists and others is caused by insubstantiable dogma (doom/nirvana).
  - waihtis 3y ago
    this is why you don't bring NGO types into your board, and you especially don't give them power to oust you.
    - mrmanner 3y ago
      > this is why you don't bring NGO types into your board OpenAI is an NGO…?
      - glompers 3y ago
        That is neither stated nor implied, unless you’re simply making the objection, “But OpenAI _is_ nongovernmental.” Most readers are aware they were a research and advocacy organization that became (in the sense that public benefit tax-free nonprofit groups and charitable foundations normally have no possibility of granting anyone equity ownership nor exclusive rights to their production) a corporation by creating one; but some of the board members are implied by the parent comment to be from NGO-type backgrounds.
        emn13 3y ago
        I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. Perhaps you could point out where your perspective differs from mine? So, as I see it: Open AI _is_ a non-profit, though it has an LLC it wholly controls that doesn't have non-profit status. It never "became" for-profit (IANAL, but is that even possible? It seems like that should not be possible), the only thing that happened is that the LLC was allowed to collect some "profit" - but that in turn would go to its owners, primarily the non-profit. As far as I'm aware the board in question that went through this purge _was_ the non-profit's board (does the LLC have a board?) From the non-profit's perspective, it sounds pretty reasonable to self-police and ensure there aren't any rogue parts of the organization that are going off and working at odds with the overall non-profit's formal aims. It's always been weird that the Open-AI LLC seemed to be so commercially focused even when that might conflict with it's sole controller's interests; notably the LLC very explicitly warned investors that the NGO's mission took precedence over profit.
__jambo 3y ago
Sam's sad face in the NYT article is pretty priceless.

cedws 3y ago

So they didn't even give Altman a chance to defend himself for supposedly lying (inconsistent candour as they put it.) Wow.

somenameforme 3y ago
Another source [1] claims: "A knowledgeable source said the board struggle reflected a cultural clash at the organization, with Altman and Brockman focused on commercialization and Sutskever and his allies focused on the original non-profit mission of OpenAI." [1] - https://sfstandard.com/2023/11/17/openai-sam-altman-firing-board-members/ https://sfstandard.com/2023/11/17/openai-sam-altman-firing-b...
- szundi 3y ago
  Why can’t some use money from profit to do nonprofit again when others caught up. Only moat seems to be the research time invested.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    Many believe that race dynamics are bad, so have the goal of going as slowly and carefully as possible. The split between e/acc (gotta go fast) and friendly AI/Coherent Extrapolated Volition (slow and cautious) is the first time in my life I've come down on the (small-c) conservative side of a split. I don't know if that's because I'm just getting older and more risk adverse.
- jacooper 3y ago
  Yeah I though that was the most probable reason, especially since these people don't have any equity, so they have no interest in the commercial growth of the org. Apparently Microsoft was also blindsided by this. https://www.axios.com/2023/11/17/microsoft-openai-sam-altman-ouster https://www.axios.com/2023/11/17/microsoft-openai-sam-altman...
- 101011 3y ago
  TY for sharing. I found this to be very enlightening, especially when reading more about the board members that were part of the oust. One of the board of directors that fired him co-signed these AI principles (https://futureoflife.org/open-letter/ai-principles/ https://futureoflife.org/open-letter/ai-principles/) that are very much in line with safeguarding general intelligence Another of them wrote this article (https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/illusion-chinas-ai-prowess-regulation https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/illusion-chinas-ai-prow...) in June of this year that opens by quoting Sam Altman saying US regulation will "slow down American industry in such a way that China or somebody else makes faster progress” and basically debunks that stance...and quite well, I might add.
  - larrydag 3y ago
    This seems to make more sense. Perhaps it has to do with OpenAI is not "open" anymore. Not supporting and getting rid of the OpenAI Gym was certainly a big change in direction of the company.
  - dmix 3y ago
    So the argument against AI regulations crippling R&D is that China is currently far behind and also faces their own weird gov pressures? That's a big gamble, applying very-long term regulations (as they always are long term) to a short term window betting on predictions of a non-technical board member. There's far more to the world than China on top of that and importantly developments happen both inside and outside of the scope of regulatory oversight (usually only heavily commercialized products face scrutiny) and China itself will eventually catch up to the average - progress is rarely a non-stop hockey stick, it plateaus. LLMs might already be hitting a wall https://twitter.com/HamelHusain/status/1725655686913392933 https://twitter.com/HamelHusain/status/1725655686913392933) The Chinese are experts at copying and stealing Western tech. They don't have to be on the frontier to catch up to a crippled US and then continue development at a faster pace, and as we've seen repeatedly in history regulations stick around for decades after their utility has long past. They are not levers that go up and down, they go in one direction and maybe after many many years of damage they might be adjusted, but usually after 10 starts/stops and half-baked non-solutions papered on as real solutions - if at all.
- krzyk 3y ago
  So it looks like they did something good.
  - konschubert 3y ago
    If you want AI to fail, then yes.
    - uoaei 3y ago
      Melodrama has no place in the AI utopia.
      - mcpackieh 3y ago
        The only thing utopian ideologies are good for is finding 'justifications' for murder. The "AI utopia" will be no different. De-radicalize yourself while you still can.
        passwordoops 3y ago
        Utopian ideologies are also useful when raising funds from SoftBank and ARK
        concordDance 3y ago
        > The only thing utopian ideologies are good for is finding 'justifications' for murder. This seems more like your personal definition of "utopian ideology" than an actual observation of the world we live in.
        ddj231 3y ago
        It seems like an observation to me. Let’s take the Marxist utopian ideology. It led to 40 - 60 million dead in the Soviet Union (Gulag Archipelago is an eye opening read). And 40 - 80 million dead in Mao Zedong’s China. It’s hard to even wrap my mind around that amount of people dead. Then a smaller example in Matthia’s cult in the “Kingdom Of Matthias” book. Started around the same time as Mormonism. Which led to a murder. Or the Peoples Temple cult with 909 dead in mass suicide. The communal aspects of these give away their “utopian ideology” I’d like to hear where you’re coming from. I have a Christian worldview, so when I look at these movements it seems they have an obvious presupposition on human nature (that with the right systems in place people will act perfectly — so it is the systems that are flawed not the people themselves). Utopia is inherently religious, and I’d say it is the human desire to have heaven on earth — but gone about in the wrong ways. Because humans are flawed, no economic system or communal living in itself can bring about the utopian ideal.
- sekai 3y ago
  Microsoft won't be happy about this
  - belter 3y ago
    What is bad for Microsoft is good for the world.
- alvis 3y ago
  it's hardly believed that Alman was fired by his stand on commercialisation
  - iLoveOncall 3y ago
    The fact that the press release is 50% dedicated to repeating that OpenAI is supposed to be a non-profit and help all of humanity isn't enough for you to believe this is the reason?
    - ps256 3y ago
      The abruptness of the firing and the fact that they give his lying to the board as the reason is why I don't believe that this is over a general disagreement on direction.
      - jjallen 3y ago
        They have to say the reason is a fireable offense or he can sue them. Or will be more likely to win if he does.
        ps256 3y ago
        It's exactly the other way around - if they dismiss him for a vague general reason, they're much less exposed to litigation than they would be if they falsely accused him of lying.
        ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
        You are 100% correct here, which is how we can reasonably conclude that the accusations were not false.
        ps256 3y ago
        If the accusations by the board are true, that doesn't explain why Brockman and a few of the senior researchers quit as a response to all of this.
- lrvick 3y ago
  If true, this gives me hope the Open can return to OpenAI.
  - layer8 3y ago
    Given the board members’ focus on safety, maybe not that likely.
    - devilsAdv0cate 3y ago
      [dead]
    - lrvick 3y ago
      Open source is the only path to broad public accountability, which is a prerequisite for safety.
- wheelerof4te 3y ago
  I'm confused. It's usually the other way around; the good guy is ousted because he is hindering the company's pursuit of profit.
  - airstrike 3y ago
    In this case, the company is a non-profit, so it is indeed the other way around
    - colonelsherburn 3y ago
      OpenAI has been for profit since 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI#2019:_Transition_from_non-profit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI#2019:_Transition_from_n...
      - cthalupa 3y ago
        It is not that simple. https://openai.com/our-structure https://openai.com/our-structure The board is for the non-profit that ultimately owns and totally controls the for-profit company. Everyone that works for or invests in the for-profit company has to sign an operating agreement that states the for-profit actually does not have any responsibility to generate profit and that it's primary duty is to fulfill the charter and mission of the non-profit.
        andai 3y ago
        Then what's the point of the for-profit?
        chimeracoder 3y ago
        > Then what's the point of the for-profit? To allow OpenAI to raise venture capital, which allows them to exchange equity for money (ie, distribute [future] rights to profit to shareholders)
      - Cacti 3y ago
- carlossouza 3y ago
  This is not a story about AI. It's a story about greed, vanity, and envy. Impossible to be more human than that.
- epolanski 3y ago
  The commercial shift has started quite some time ago, what's the point of firing them now? And why such a controversial wording around Altman? Why fire Brockman too?
  - ayoubd 3y ago
    Brockman quit, he wasn’t fired.
    - vertis 3y ago
      He was removed from one of his roles (chairman) and quit the other (president) if I understand correctly.
- jdthedisciple 3y ago
  What a hypocritical board, firing them after massive commercial success! Classic virtue signalling for the sake of personal power gains as so often.
  - CPLX 3y ago
    What’s hypocritical about a non-profit firing a leader who wanted lots of profits.
    - jdthedisciple 3y ago
      Didn't think I'd need to explain this: The hypocritical part is doing so right AFTER beginning to take off commercially. An honorable board with backbone would have done so at the first inkling of commercialization instead (which would have been 1-2 years ago). Maybe you can find a better word for me but the point should be easily gotten ...
      - layer8 3y ago
        Three other board members stepped down this year. It might not have been possible before.
        jdthedisciple 3y ago
        Ofc it's "not possible" in that it may incur personal costs. But it's the honorable thing to do if you truly believe in something. Otherwise it's just virtue signalling.
        jprete 3y ago
        No, they may literally have not had the votes.
      - diognesofsinope 3y ago
        Almost more of a "takeover" by the board after it's successful lol
- ChatGTP 3y ago
  Sutskever and his allies focused on the original non-profit mission of OpenAI." Seems reasonable, I mean that's why Sutskever joined in the first place ?
  - ignoramous 3y ago
    Not just Sustkever, but other top researchers joined the then nascent OpenAI team for the same reason. Most of them on-record indicating they turned down much bigger paychecks. The problem I see is, astronomical costs of training and inference warrants a for-profit structure like the one Sam put up. It was a nice compromise, I thought; but of course, Sustkever thinks otherwise.
    - ChatGTP 3y ago
      Maybe Sutskever is finished with his LLM experiments and now has other interests and ideas to pursue meanwhile Sam was keen to make money and stay on the same trajectory. Microsoft also felt the same way. Could see this
belter 3y ago
I am going to go on a limb here, and speculate...This was because of the surprise party crashing of the Microsoft CEO, at OpenAI first Developer Conference...
- renegade-otter 3y ago
  Kara Swisher was told the dev conference was "an inflection point", so it's not that speculative.
layer8 3y ago
He may have had ample chance before.
hef19898 3y ago
Why would employees be consulted begore being fired?
- joshlegs 3y ago
  would be hilarious if Altman was directly hired by Microsoft to head their AI teams now.
- crazygringo 3y ago
  Because board members are not employees, or not just employees. They're part of the democratic governance of an organization. The same way there's a big difference between firing a government employee and expulsion of a member of Congress.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    Wow, that is actually the first time I hear someone use democracy and corporation unironically together... In a semse board memebers have even less protection than rank and file. So no, nothing special happening at OpenAI other than a founder CEO being squezzed out, not the first nor the last one. And personal feeling never factored into that kind of decision.
    - crazygringo 3y ago
      Ha, true. Well, I did say "democratic governance", not "democracy" itself. Substitute "rules of order" or "parliamentary procedure" if you like. At the end of the day, it's majority vote by a tiny number of representatives. Whether political or corporate.
    - drexlspivey 3y ago
      Is that news to you? Corporate governance is structure pretty much the same as parliamental democracies. The C-suite is the cabinet, the board of directors is the parliament/house of representatives and the shareholders are the public/voters.
zer0c00ler 3y ago
I doubt this was a surprise to them, I’m sure Sam was well aware of the concerns and repeatedly ignored them, and even doubled down. Putting OpenAI’s mission in jeopardy. Many politically aligned folks will leave, and OAI will go back and focus on mission. New company will emerge and focus on profits. Overall probably good for everyone.

jojobas 3y ago

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andrewstuart 3y ago

[dead]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

tchalla 3y ago

[flagged]

quickthrower2 3y ago
What should they use? Self hosted Jitsi?
- gundmc 3y ago
  I mean, presumably Teams?
  - bryanrasmussen 3y ago
    Haven't these people suffered enough!?
    - Bobaso 3y ago
      I can relate
    - yankput 3y ago
      In my experience Teams is great for calls (both audio and video), horrible for chat. I guess because it's built on top of Skype codebase? (just a guess) But it's out of the scope for this discussion.
      - Shadowmist 3y ago
        [flagged]
      - Lio 3y ago
        The chat portion of Teams is so very poorly designed compared to other corporate chat systems I've used. I mean even copy and paste doesn't work correctly. You highlight text, copy it and Teams inserts its own extra content in there. That's basic functionality and it's broken. Or you get tagged into conversations and with no way to mute them. For a busy chat that alert notification can be going off continuously. Of course the alert pop up has been handily placed to cover the unmute icon in calls, so when someone asks you a question you can't answer them. Teams feels like a desperate corporate reaction to Slack with features added as a tickbox exercise but no thought given to actual usability. I never thought that Slack or the whatever Google's chat system is currently called was in any way outstanding until I was made to use the dumpster fire that is Teams. It's a classic example of where the customers, corporate CTOs, are not the end users of a product.

waihtis 3y ago

power hijack by the doomers. too bad the cat is out of the bag already

fsloth 3y ago
Quite possible actually, this seems to become a really hot political potato with at least 3 types of ambition running it 1. Business 2. Regulatory 3. ’Religious/Academic’. By latter I mean the divide between ai doomerists and others is caused by insubstantiable dogma (doom/nirvana).
- waihtis 3y ago
  this is why you don't bring NGO types into your board, and you especially don't give them power to oust you.
  - mrmanner 3y ago
    > this is why you don't bring NGO types into your board OpenAI is an NGO…?
    - glompers 3y ago
      That is neither stated nor implied, unless you’re simply making the objection, “But OpenAI _is_ nongovernmental.” Most readers are aware they were a research and advocacy organization that became (in the sense that public benefit tax-free nonprofit groups and charitable foundations normally have no possibility of granting anyone equity ownership nor exclusive rights to their production) a corporation by creating one; but some of the board members are implied by the parent comment to be from NGO-type backgrounds.
      - emn13 3y ago
        I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. Perhaps you could point out where your perspective differs from mine? So, as I see it: Open AI _is_ a non-profit, though it has an LLC it wholly controls that doesn't have non-profit status. It never "became" for-profit (IANAL, but is that even possible? It seems like that should not be possible), the only thing that happened is that the LLC was allowed to collect some "profit" - but that in turn would go to its owners, primarily the non-profit. As far as I'm aware the board in question that went through this purge _was_ the non-profit's board (does the LLC have a board?) From the non-profit's perspective, it sounds pretty reasonable to self-police and ensure there aren't any rogue parts of the organization that are going off and working at odds with the overall non-profit's formal aims. It's always been weird that the Open-AI LLC seemed to be so commercially focused even when that might conflict with it's sole controller's interests; notably the LLC very explicitly warned investors that the NGO's mission took precedence over profit.

__jambo 3y ago

Sam's sad face in the NYT article is pretty priceless.