9 ms·

I can't find the exact quote, but I distinctly remember Sam giving founders advice along the lines of, "operate under the assumption that co-founders and invest

• psadri 3y ago
  Ultimately one important job of the board is to be able to replace the CEO. So it would be odd if it was structured in a way that this wasn’t possible.
  • leroy_masochist 3y ago
    > Ultimately one important job of the board is to be able to replace the CEO. This is true in the abstract but it is not common to see the narrowest possible majority on a six-person board oust the co-founder/CEO (also a board member) while excluding the board chair (who was also the company's President and co-founder) from the process. > So it would be odd if it was structured in a way that this wasn’t possible. You are wrong here. Boards are usually structured so that what just happened at OpenAI is not possible. The exclusion of the board chair from the process is especially egregious and the involvement of board chairs in decisions of this magnitude is often mandated in documents of incorporation. Matt Levine is going to have a field day with this, LOL.
    • psadri 3y ago
      Sure. This particular incident has irregularities. I was referring to the general idea of a board not being able to change CEOs in the parent comment.
    • freeAgent 3y ago
      No, the VAST majority of boards are able to fire the CEO and replace the Chairman if they have the votes for it. It’s just that this is a rare occurrence, and certainly rare at a high-profile tech startup. The. ChargePoint board just fired the CEO (and non-Chairman member of the board) on Thursday along with the CFO. https://www.chargepoint.com/about/news/chargepoint-announces-executive-leadership-changes https://www.chargepoint.com/about/news/chargepoint-announces...
• anonymouskimmer 3y ago
  You're missing that boards have fiduciary obligations to govern and cannot do so when the CEO isn't fully communicative with them. Yet another reason why it's a bad idea for a CEO to also be on the board. And probably also evidence that it's a bad idea for conflating the jobs of CEO and chief spokesperson.
  • leroy_masochist 3y ago
    Nope. This is a 501c3 board, so it explicitly doesn't have any Revlon or other fiduciary responsibilities.
    • anonymouskimmer 3y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38323470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38323470 Dropping this link to another comment I made because people often forget what "fiduciary" actually means. You see it all the time in legal dramatizations where the lawyer is telling the client that they can get more money, but the client tells the lawyer they just want the legal process to stop. The client gets their way because the lawyer has a fiduciary duty to them. Edit to add: I'm curious what word "Revlon" was supposed to be.
      • deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      • deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      • nkurz 3y ago
        > Edit to add: I'm curious what word "Revlon" was supposed to be. I'd guess "revenue", but who knows. Autocorrect is a disaster for clear communication these days. It's strange to me that it's as bad as it is. Is there a patent on using context to decide which word is appropriate? If not, I can't figure out why it isn't done more commonly. It seems certain the poster didn't type "Revlon" with a capital R, and it also seems certain that any statistical model wouldn't think "Revlon" would be the most likely word here.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• nvm0n2 3y ago
  > I cannot think of a single facet of their day-to-day operations, product roadmap, competitive position, etc. that would be improved If the dispute is over whether they should be a pure research nonprofit or not, then operations, product roadmaps and competitive positions are things they would not even want to begin with. It was only four of them that booted the other two out, and of those at least two seem to be professional non-profit board sitters. The transition of OpenAI into an actual product company doing something useful for other people is incredibly recent, it's barely a year old. It may be that they simply felt that offering products isn't what OpenAI is meant to be doing. Alternatively it could be some blowup related to doomerism, although the memo saying it's not related to "safety practices" may rule that out.
  • bbor 3y ago
    Definitely related to doomerism, imo. There’s no way Ilya spends all day thinking about how to contain “super intelligent AI” and watching prototype demos that “push back the veil of ignorance” and makes a decision of this magnitude without all that being the driving factor. The safety comment seemed more about reassuring people there wasn’t, like, a data breach or “escaped model” or something crazy. In other words, clarifying that the disagreement was about the future, not the present.
• latchkey 3y ago
  My favorite NDA: https://friendda.org/ https://friendda.org/
  • unsupp0rted 3y ago
    This seems like it would strain a friendship in exchange for no protection gain?
    • latchkey 3y ago
      Only if one of the individuals is a douche.
• dieselgate 3y ago
  > "operate under the assumption that co-founders and investors are not going to screw you" Think this is good advice for day-to-day interactions for everyone but it will always run into limitations. Especially for an edge case like OpenAI I'm unbiased and not super familiar with this situation either but the quote above makes me think of "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
  • fragmede 3y ago
    that's Hanlon's razor imo "never" ignores cases where malice can be proven, so i don't like it as a saying
  • qball 3y ago
    >Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. Sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.
• CPLX 3y ago
  > I cannot think of a single facet of their day-to-day operations, product roadmap, competitive position, etc. that would be improved by this decision. This is a genuine question, can anyone explain to me what the actual value of San Altman is? I don’t know anything about the guy except the core public outline of his career but I find his timeline confusing. He founded Loopt which by all accounts was unremarkable. Then he ran YC during a period where at best you can say it didn’t get wrecked, though it seems to have lost focus and influence. He left YC in a situation that seems similarly abrupt minus the PR drama which was kept completely under wraps. Then OpenAI which is a genuinely impressive organization but by now he’s been in personal conflict with basically everyone involved and doesn’t seem to have been a driver of the actual technology. Other than that there’s world coin which is a total grift at best and dystopian at worst. And stuff like Bohemian Grove or whatever. With all that said I don’t have a personal opinion just observing the broad strokes and trying to figure out how exactly he ended up some kind of kingpin.
  • jacquesm 3y ago
    > can anyone explain to me what the actual value of San Altman is Weird as it may seem: that's not all that important. What is important is that the rest of the world sees OpenAI as a mature and stable organization and that image has now been seriously damaged. Even if they wanted to fire Sam there must have been a dozen ways in which that could have been done more effectively and without this much damage to the OpenAI brand. It's almost comical, they were on track to outrun Google and Facebook combined and now they're on track to be an also-ran. You can expect a large number of resignations because no matter what you think of Sam Altman you want to work for a company that is mature and stable, not one where execs are replaced on a moments notice on a clear and sunny day without a direct and clear cause.
    • CPLX 3y ago
      > they were on track to outrun Google and Facebook combined But what if they don’t want that. Those are rapacious and malevolent organizations. Regardless, even if that is the goal what’s the evidence Altman is the right guy for that? It’s not like he’s done that before. The relationship between his stature and his track record is the part that’s confusing me.
• shrimpx 3y ago
  Sam Altman is a typical fast-growth guy and this is the opportunity of a lifetime to cement himself in the pantheon of high growth tech gods — Jobs, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Musk, Hoffman, etc. But aw shucks it’s a terrible fit actually, because this company has a non-profit, idealistic mission. In the face of unprecedented high demand, Sam Altman is like fuck the nonprofit hippie shit, let’s launch this thing into outer space. Let’s build fast and ship too many products too early, use investor money to give discounts and build moats, let’s go for regulatory capture! It’s the opportunity of a lifetime guys! But the board is like nah, fuck that tiring ‘ship broken shit’ tech bro shit, let’s stick to our vision. This is too serious and important to treat it like a fucking Airbnb or Coinbase.
  • CPLX 3y ago
    This is the most on point comment I’ve seen in the dozen threads on this topic. I think the reason so many people on HN can’t come to this obvious conclusion is they share the same sociopathic Silicon Valley worldview he does.
    • skygazer 3y ago
      That’s a broad, uncharitable brush with which to paint everyone else. Maybe we need a razor: hesitate to attribute to sociopathy that which can reasonably be explained by a benign difference of opinion.
      • solardev 3y ago
        In two decades of tech booms, when have we seen a huge company actually do what's good for society? Our economy and society elevates sociopathy by design. The "difference of opinion" is a fundamental difference in ideology and motivations, not to mention day to day operating differences.
        • skygazer 3y ago
          I think the opinion that the grand parent identifies as sociopathic wasn’t the board’s or even Altman’s, but of the masses on HN shocked by the event. The opinions of the majority here are the “sociopathy.”
• username332211 3y ago
  > What am I missing? It's all so strange. That they weren't concerned about day-to-day operations, employee morale, product roadmaps or any of that boring stuff. They were operating on the precarious calculus of their "friendships" and commitments. They had to act fast. It is possible, if Altman or Brockman had more chance to talk to board people, they could have changed at least one member's mind.
• fragmede 3y ago
  That the board is not very good at their job. A more experienced board would have been more professional and less dramatic, but we're in the stupidest timeline.
• ssivark 3y ago
  > This is a tremendously momentum-killing event. I cannot think of a single facet of their day-to-day operations, product roadmap, competitive position, etc. that would be improved by this decision. What you’re missing is that the board (at least what remains) seems to disagree strongly with the direction in which the organization was headed — then why would they care to maintain momentum along the “wrong” roadmap? The changes seem (deliberately) driven by the intent to steer in a different direction and with slower momentum. Others might disagree with that vision, but the board feels that it aligns better with the founding charter.
  • leroy_masochist 3y ago
    > the board (at least what remains) seems to disagree strongly with the direction in which the organization was headed Yeah that is clearly the case, but when you have a situation where four of the six board members execute a coup against the two most powerful and important board members (the CEO and the chair), the company looks like a shitshow and nobody is going to want to work there or partner with them, at least until they are able to present a credible narrative about what they did (which may never happen). Totally get the fact that the four remaining board members didn't like where things were headed, but their actions yesterday created a tremendous amount of collateral damage that will massively impede OpenAI in its journey toward whatever new azimouth they choose.
    • logifail 3y ago
      > a situation where four of the six board members execute a coup against the two most powerful and important board members (the CEO and the chair), the company looks like a shitshow Umm, if it's "one human, one vote" then the board was working exactly as designed. Being "important" may not save your job. Been there, done that.
      • aluminum96 3y ago
        I don't think total organizational chaos and fracture is "exactly as designed." The board was designed to have independent veto power in the name of ethical AGI, but they broke the emergency glass for apparently no real reason.
• dragonwriter 3y ago
  > What am I missing? That 501(c)3s like OpenAI are entities where the shared interests they are designed to serve are ideological, not generating profits to return to investors; OpenAI (the governing nonprofit) is in some respects more like a church than a commercial enterprise.