46 ms·

OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO

• tysam_and 3y ago
  It could be that Microsoft is leveraging them to bring him back. This board may seem mercurial at the moment, but we really, truly, and honestly still do not have the big picture yet.
  • _boffin_ 3y ago
    In the first (I think) episode of halt and catch fire, Joe tells IBM that they have their source code. IBM being IBM sends a legion of lawyers to their smallish company trying to scare the shit out of them. I feel like it be like that, but instead of a legion, legions. And OpenAI is scared.
    • kelsey9876543 3y ago
      OpenAI isn't scared, OpenAI quit already. The remnants and their false king Ilya are beyond what the word scared is capable of describing though, in terms of the level of abject horror they are certain to face the rest of their entire lives even if they run away now. This will never escape them and nobody involved with this decision will ever work in tech again, or on any board of any organization. I hope they saved up for retirement.
  • abi 3y ago
    How are they leveraging them? My understanding is Microsoft has no power over the board.
    • paulddraper 3y ago
      OpenAI needs the Microsoft partnership
    • gizmo 3y ago
      They who control the gpus control the universe. There is a great chip shortage. If MS breaks the lease agreement with OpenAI (based on some pretext about governance) OpenAI won't be able to do any work nor will they be able to serve customer requests for the next year while they litigate this in court. Microsoft holds all the cards because they own the data centers.
      • Davidzheng 3y ago
        If that's true why did they even fund openai. Why not just beat them at making LLMs
        • wil421 3y ago
          When there’s a gold rush don’t be the one mining gold be the one selling shovels.
      • anonymouskimmer 3y ago
        > If MS breaks the lease agreement with OpenAI The first thing OpenAI would ask a court for is a preliminary injunction to maintain the status quo while all of this works out in court. IANAL.
        • rvba 3y ago
          The MS servers somehow can become buggy and work 10 000 times slower due to errors and bugs after a failed patch that takes months to find and fix
          • anonymouskimmer 3y ago
            That's asking for a contempt of court charge and jail time for Satya Nadella (though more likely just multi million dollar daily fines for MS).
      • bloomark 3y ago
        > If MS breaks the lease agreement with OpenAI If that happens. AMZN, or GOOG will be all over that.
    • Terretta 3y ago
      As a for instance, and I don't know, but it's plausible Microsoft has full license to use all tech, is the cloud operating it, and has escape clauses tied to "key persons". That combination could mean firing the CEO results in Microsoft getting to have everything and OpenAI being some code and models without a cloud, and whatever people that wouldn't cross the street with Altman. I do not know about OpenAI's deal with Microsoft. But I have been on both sides of deals written that way, where I've been the provider's key person and the contract offered code escrow, and I've been a buyer that tied the contract to a set of key persons and had full source code rights, surviving any agreement. You do this if you think the tech could be existential to you, and you pay a lot for it because effectively you're pre-buying the assets after some future implosion. OTOH, it tends to be not well understood by most people involved in the hundreds of pages of paperwork across a dozen or more interlocking agreements. . . . EDIT TO ADD: This speculating article seems to agree with my speculation, daddy has the cloud car keys, and key person ouster could be a breach: Only a fraction of Microsoft’s $10 billion investment in OpenAI has been wired to the startup, while a significant portion of the funding, divided into tranches, is in the form of cloud compute purchases instead of cash, according to people familiar with their agreement. That gives the software giant significant leverage as it sorts through the fallout from the ouster of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. The firm’s board said on Friday that it had lost confidence in his ability to lead, without giving additional details. One person familiar with the matter said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella believes OpenAI’s directors mishandled Altman’s firing and the action has destabilized a key partner for the company. It’s unclear if OpenAI, which has been racking up expenses as it goes on a hiring spree and pours resources into technological developments, violated its contract with Microsoft by suddenly ousting Altman. https://www.semafor.com/article/11/18/2023/openai-has-received-just-a-fraction-of-microsofts-10-billion-investment https://www.semafor.com/article/11/18/2023/openai-has-receiv...
    • junofan 3y ago
      Surely Microsoft can terminate their Azure access? Why piss off your largest supplier?
    • icelancer 3y ago
      Contracts are only worth their language if parties are willing to fight for them. Taking on Microsoft and hoards of angry billionaires with a piece of paper separating you from them might be more of a war than they expected.
      • kelsey9876543 3y ago
        Contracts were made to be broken. Its always about who is more powerful, the law was designed for the wealthy to win every time.
    • dougmwne 3y ago
      Riddle me this: what is an AI research lab without access to exascale compute? Who’s cloud infrastructure do they depend on fully right now?
      • kristjansson 3y ago
        This is everything. MSFT has no de jure power but all the de facto power.
    • coffeebeqn 3y ago
      They can probably threaten to pull their funding, immediately (or in a few months) bankrupting the company
• deleted 3y ago
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• ycmaybe 3y ago
  Microsoft now has both 49% stake in OpenAI and the OpenAI visionaires building competing products. I smell a rain of lawsuits. Meanwhile AWS is sucking its thumb and google meet will no longer be relevant! LOL
• nothrowaways 3y ago
  It looks like open AI alignment problem
• gazelle21 3y ago
  Man that just screams chaos and disorder. I wonder what it's like right now in the internal chats.
  • jbverschoor 3y ago
    Great training data
  • minimaxir 3y ago
    OpenAI internal chat is likely just spam of the Bill-Hader-eating-popcorn GIF.
• wilg 3y ago
  He might as well come back if the entire board resigns and he gets to pick the new board and turn it into a C corp.
  • consumer451 3y ago
    And then rename it ProfitAI, so as to satisfy all of the "Open" nay-sayers?
    • wilg 3y ago
      Just call it "Foundation".
      • consumer451 3y ago
        In all seriousness, FoundationAI sounds pretty good. For lack there of, PsychohistoryAI it is! RIP: AlignmentAI
        • wilg 3y ago
          Drop the "AI", it's cleaner.
          • consumer451 3y ago
            Agreed, but how will the investor class understand what to invest in? Oh, I get it now, Foundation.ai
            • wilg 3y ago
              that's what sama is for
              • consumer451 3y ago
                Yeah. You are correct. Would love some commercial fusion power plants on the side as well please.
• deleted 3y ago
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• reilly3000 3y ago
  What a wild ride this last 24 hours has been.
• Handy-Man 3y ago
  Satya be like, fine, it’s time for adults to take over.
  • jojosbuddy 3y ago
    Yeah, though he may have went, "I did nothing here, and my stock price went down 2% in ONE hour from it."
    • renewiltord 3y ago
      It’s 11% up over the month. He’s not obsessing over this 2%. It’s more strategic than that if he’s involved.
  • croes 3y ago
    Then OpenAI is dead and it's MS AI. The worst outcome.
    • kelsey9876543 3y ago
      [flagged]
      • lotsoweiners 3y ago
        Enjoy our latest version of MS Office now featuring ClippyAI.
  • timeon 3y ago
    and: "Let's end this 'non-profit' myth."
• anigbrowl 3y ago
  - That's a hell of a show, what do you call it? - The Aristocrats
  • good_lord_dang 3y ago
    BOB SAGET!!!
• andy99 3y ago
  With the way they fired him and the statement they made, it's hard to see how any of the remaining four could stay on if he did come back... as was previously mentioned, if you shoot at the king, don't miss.
  • Handy-Man 3y ago
    At least the 3 independent members will be gone. Either will try to burry the hatchet with Ilya or he leaves as well.
    • himaraya 3y ago
      Hard to see Ilya staying if Sam returns, honestly.
      • cmrdporcupine 3y ago
        I'm sure he'll be fine, and well compensated and able to do what he wants elsewhere.
        • adastra22 3y ago
          What he wants is to control global AI development. He just lost that battle.
          • cmrdporcupine 3y ago
            What he wanted was to do AI development at a larger scale than what universities and corporate R&D teams were doing. Or so he says: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38325407 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38325407 Having shown this was possible, he could easily go do it elsewhere.
      • icelancer 3y ago
        Ilya is the only one worth keeping around if Sam returns mercifully.
• wnevets 3y ago
  That is just embarrassing.
• dereg 3y ago
  I don’t understand why and how they didn’t consider this sort of discussion before so unceremoniously firing him. The others on the board outside Ilya need to go. I don’t consider anybody beyond forgiveness and if Ilya takes a professional lesson from this and Sam learns to be more mindful of others’ concerns, I consider this a win for all. Starting over in a new entity sounds great but would be years of setback. I hope they work this out.
  • eightysixfour 3y ago
    Yes, this attempt was a mess from the start. I don’t know which rumors to believe or care about, but the underlying story for me was that the board was acting like children with an $80b company that some believe to be strategically important to the US or maybe even mankind. If they had done this “properly” and their message was about irreconcilable differences between productization and research they could have made an actual go at this. If they really believed in the non-profit mission, and Sam didn’t, they probably torpedoed their chances of winning. This was all they had to write and today would be a different day: > We regret to inform you that Sam Altman is being let go as CEO of OpenAI due to irreconcilable differences between his desire to commercialize our AI and OpenAI’s research-driven goals. We appreciate Sam’s contributions to the company and the partnership he established with Microsoft, which have set a foundation for OpenAI to thrive far into the future as a research organization with Microsoft focusing on commercialization of the technology. > We want to assure you that ChatGPT and current features will remain and be upgraded into the future. However, the focus will be on developing core technologies and a reliable, safe, and trustworthy ecosystem for others to build on. We believe that this will allow us to continue to push the boundaries of AI research while also providing a platform for others to innovate and create.
    • kelsey9876543 3y ago
      Obviously because that wasn't what they actually cared about, this was a pure power play by incompetent idiots that shot themselves in the feet
      • 3y ago
• quyleanh 3y ago
  What if he want to fire all of them? Or take all power?
• ericzawo 3y ago
  This is going to make an amazing Netflix film in a few years.
• laurels-marts 3y ago
  I cannot imagine the clown car that is the board surviving if Sam comes back.
• johnwheeler 3y ago
  Are you fucking kidding me? OK. OK. I’ve said this my whole career. Engineers are the most emotional specie of worker. There is a grand delusion that engineers are rational. This just goes to show how irrational they are. Snap reactions like this: sign of a brilliant but fucked up engineer. I am an engineer. I am under no illusion that I’m rational. Quite the opposite.
  • brigadier132 3y ago
    It wasn't engineers that did this bullshit, it was one scientist, an ethics researcher, an mba, and an art school grad.
    • cmrdporcupine 3y ago
      Yes, clearly all categories of loathsome lower castes, worthy of your disdain. VS what, a Stanford dropout who made buds with Paul Graham? That's better and more respectable because he's cooler and connected with YC/VC hipness, right? WorldCoin is So Awesome!
      • brigadier132 3y ago
        I'm responding to a post by a self hating engineer that seems to think that this specific debacle was caused by engineers. No, it was caused by non engineers. And while yes, I do have disdain for people that spends thousands to study skills that contribute nothing to their fellow man or woman, I don't think scientist or artist are those things. (Mba and ethicist definitely are mastibatory self important bullshit) The real reason I disdain the majority of the board of openai is that there are clearly 3 people on the board that have accomplished nothing and are clear trust fund babies.
        • cmrdporcupine 3y ago
          I suspect the root-commenter was speaking about Ilya S, and it's a bit quibbling to classify him as "scientist" vs "engineer." He clearly crosses the line between both. But yes, the comment was a bit unhinged. Don't really see the difference between an MBA and whatever it is that Altman does, though, other than credentials. Finally, that you think that ethicist (or the study of ethics) is masturbatory, especially in the context of an organization that has as its explicit mission to hoist AGI onto the world -- tells me quite a bit about your own... ethics. World could do with a lot more ethicists and a lot less MBAs.
• mrtksn 3y ago
  Back in the days it used to take a decade to get back a legendary CEO. On a more serious note though, I hope this stirs some discussion on remembering why there's Open in the name of the OpenAI.
• harrisonjackson 3y ago
  Now seems like the perfect time for him to go raise, bring over the team he wants, and retain ownership and control in a more effective way than a non-profit. Idk why he would go back without BOD capitulating a lot.
  • demosthenes714 3y ago
    How much IP is captured at OpenAI though? Not to mention the hardware. I’m not super familiar with ML in practice but I have to imagine he would still be set back by a significant amount of time
    • dougmwne 3y ago
      The hardware is in the hands of Microsoft, Google and Amazon. The IP is in the heads of top AI researchers. Whether any of these methods are patentable is an open question since it’s all secret sauce and once the model weights are trained there’s no way to know which methods went into the training.
  • abi 3y ago
    Because it will take 6 precious months at the least to get back to where OpenAI is today in terms of compute and people.
    • karmasimida 3y ago
      Sam can sue OpenAI and mire the company in legal obligations in next year and draining the talents out of it.
• deleted 3y ago
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• gkoberger 3y ago
  I'd bet money Satya was a driver of this reversal. I genuinely can't believe the board didn't see this coming. I think they could have won in the court of public opinion if their press release said they loved Sam but felt like his skills and ambitions diverged from their mission. But instead, they tried to skewer him, and it backfired completely. I hope Sam comes back. He'll make a lot more money if he doesn't, but I trust Sam a lot more than whomever they ultimately replace him with. I just hope that if he does come back, he doesn't use it as a chance to consolidate power – he's said in the past it's a good thing the board can fire him, and I hope he finds better board members rather than eschewing a board altogether. EDIT: Yup, Satya is involved https://twitter.com/emilychangtv/status/1726025717077688662 https://twitter.com/emilychangtv/status/1726025717077688662
  • Jensson 3y ago
    > I hope Sam comes back Why? We would have more diversity in this space if he leaves, which would get us another AI startup with huge funding and know how from OpenAI, while OpenAI would become less Sam Altman like. I think him staying is bad for the field overall compared to OpenAI splitting in two.
    • janejeon 3y ago
      Honestly would be super interested to see what a hypothetical "SamAI" corp would look like, and what they would bring to the table. More competition, but also, probably with less ideological disagreements to distract them from building AI/AGI.
      • appplication 3y ago
        I mean this as an honest question, but what does Sam bring to the table that any other young and high performing CEO wouldn’t? Is he himself particularly material to OpenAI?
        • janejeon 3y ago
          Experience heading a company that builds high performance AI, I presume. I reckon the learnings from that should be fairly valuable, especially since there's probably not many people who have such experiences.
• deleted 3y ago
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• skygazer 3y ago
  Man, the board already looked reckless and incompetent, but this solidifies the appearance. You can do crazy ill-advised things, but if you unwaveringly commit, we’ll always wonder if you’re secretly a genius. But when you immediately backtrack, we’ll know you were a fool all along.
  • jstummbillig 3y ago
    That seems a lot be better than doubling down on a bad mistake to save face, but we do care quite a bit about about looking strong, don't we.
    • kmlevitt 3y ago
      Obviously it’s better to own up to a mistake right away. But the point is if they are willing to backtrack this quickly, it removes all doubt that it WAS a mistake, rather than us just not understanding their grand vision yet.
    • caddemon 3y ago
      At longer timescales it is important to be able to recognize mistakes and reverse course, but this happened so fast I'm not sure that's the right characterization. There's no way they could already decide that firing Sam was a mistake based on the outcomes they claim to prioritize. Reversing course this quickly actually seems to me more like a reaction based directly on people's negative opinions, though it may be a specific pressure from Microsoft as well.
      • kelsey9876543 3y ago
        They got told they are getting every piece of hardware not on prem pulled and they can burn in legal hell trying to get it back if they dont fix it.
      • LightMachine 3y ago
        Based on reports of Microsoft's CEO being "furious", and the size of its legal team, I'd bet the people's reaction wasn't exactly the most relevant factor there...
• codeptualize 3y ago
  This is ridiculous haha. Another great example that even huge multi billion dollar companies are lead by people. What a mess. However this plays out, this is a big wake up call for everyone who is currently dependent on OpenAI. More changes will be needed to restore trust. It's going to be messy for a while. For a company that has executed pretty much perfectly until now it's so surprising how they just ruined their reputation like this.
• guluarte 3y ago
  this sounds like some wow guild drama
  • ssnistfajen 3y ago
    WoW guild dramas are basically mini corporate board room dramas.
• hipadev23 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • femiagbabiaka 3y ago
    What? Did I miss something?
  • gkoberger 3y ago
    I disagree with what he did in this situation. But it's complete bullshit to make this about his ethnicity or to imply he had anything but good intentions here. By all accounts, he did what he felt was right for the safety of the world, even if I think it was misguided.
  • mikrl 3y ago
    You’ve never been snaked in a corporation before?
  • paganel 3y ago
    And replace him with whom?
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  • ssnistfajen 3y ago
    Ah yes, it is well known that no other individual sitting on the board of directors of any US company has ever made sudden and drastic decisions ever before. Totally.
• femiagbabiaka 3y ago
  All this drama over a parrot.
• minimaxir 3y ago
  This saga is somehow more absurd than HBO's Silicon Valley.
  • janejeon 3y ago
    You know what they say: "Life is stranger than fiction."
    • TeMPOraL 3y ago
      Fiction has to make sense; reality is under no such obligation.
  • senderista 3y ago
    I worked at a startup that was more absurd than anything on "Silicon Valley".
    • adastra22 3y ago
      Mike Judge says they had to tone down the advice they got from consultants for that show who were working in tech. The ideas they got (from people working in the real Silicon Valley) were too crazy for audiences to believe.
  • karmasimida 3y ago
    Because that show is written by people who barely knew Silicon Valley. If you read those memoirs/history of those Silicon Valley companies, it is 100% more entertaining than the show itself
    • SnorkelTan 3y ago
      The shows writers had quite a few advisors with deep ties to Silicon Valley. Former twitter ceo dick Costello comes to mind.
    • okdood64 3y ago
      > If you read those memoirs/history of those Silicon Valley companies Can you give a few recommendations?
• deleted 3y ago
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• nwoli 3y ago
  Imagine these people being in charge of AGI in a few years…
  • LASR 3y ago
    The kind of AGI you’re talking about - the one that makes people nervous about who is in charge of it - nobody can truly be “in charge” of this kind of AGI.
    • nwoli 3y ago
      They decide how to bias it. They decide if they should pull the plug or not. They decide if it’s too powerful and they’re in contact with people who suggest to the government that we should bomb datacenters if so
• janejeon 3y ago
  I mean, I don't see how anyone can expect him to come back after the public bridge burning and condemnation. I think it's reasonable to think that, if anyone were in his shoes, they, too, would feel too hurt/exasperated to go back to the people who caused all of... this to them.
  • mupuff1234 3y ago
    I assume he would condition his return with the removal of the board.
  • nwoli 3y ago
    Well he seems pretty sold on the AGI idea and starting from scratch at a new place without the same data or same compute is quite the challenge
    • spaceman_2020 3y ago
      He already has a fantastic proof of concept. Sure, it will take a little longer, but he can easily raise the billions in funding and find the people to build it.
      • croes 3y ago
        So what exactly is he needed for if other people build it?
        • spaceman_2020 3y ago
          Because it will cost billions to build and run and the builders have no clue how to get the money, and once they have something built, how to keep the money flowing in.
          • croes 3y ago
            Altman isn't the only one who knows how to raise money.
• alexb_ 3y ago
  What on earth actually happened yesterday?
• 23422343223 3y ago
  [flagged]
• twoodfin 3y ago
  This suggests a plausible explanation that Altman was attempting to engineer the board’s expansion or replacement: After the events of the last 48 hours, could you blame him? In this scenario, it was a pure power struggle. The board believed they’d win by showing Altman the door, but it didn’t take long to demonstrate that their actual power to do so was limited to the de jure end of the spectrum.
  • spaceman_2020 3y ago
    Any talented engineer or scientist who actually wants to ship product AND make money would head over to Sam’s startup. Any investor who cares about making money would fund Sam’s startup as well. The way the board pulled this off really gave them no good outcome. They stand to lose talent AND investors AND customers. Half the people I know who use GPT in their work are wondering if it will be even worth paying for if the model’s improvements stagnates with the departure of these key people.
    • TeaBrain 3y ago
      I still haven't heard an explanation of why people who use GPT would be under the impression that Sam had anything to do with the past improvements in GPT versions.
      • cmrdporcupine 3y ago
        Brockman maybe, though. Or at least in some sort of leadership capacity.
        • TeaBrain 3y ago
          I'd understand the argument for Brockman considering he had a hand in recruiting the initial team at OpenAI, was previously the CTO, from some reports still involved himself in coding, was the only other founder on the board besides Ilya.
      • icelancer 3y ago
• cryptoz 3y ago
  Well it's either that or a top-tier competitor emerges in 2 days.
• deleted 3y ago
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• speedylight 3y ago
  lol if I was Sam I wouldn’t even dream of returning without the entire board going out the door as I come back in. What a shit show.
• dimgl 3y ago
  Someone on the OpenAI board watched too much Succession and thought that's how real life works.
• FergusArgyll 3y ago
  How do I know if I can go to sleep?
• AndrewKemendo 3y ago
  You know, I always found Mike judge to probably be the most prescient of all of the science fiction authors. In Office Space, Idiocracy, and most relevant here in Silicon Valley; he accurately, and very precisely not only forecasts, but deconstructs the reasoning, and vapid lack of core philosophy behind each of the real life narratives he’s parodying. That serious people still consider Silicon Valley as some kind of thing to aspire to is horrifying. This despite repeated examples of predictably base incompetence, lack of maturity and quite frankly avaricious opportunism as the kernel on which SV lies.
  • paulddraper 3y ago
    SV... Like high tech companies? Venture capital? The TV show? What do you mean by that?
    • caturopath 3y ago
      The TV show. They were talking about filmmaker Mike Judge's work.
    • latortuga 3y ago
      Mentioned in the same sentence as Idiocracy and Office Space, GP is referring to the show.
      • paulddraper 3y ago
        Oh, well SV is a comedy. This is the first time I've heard it being aspirational.
        • deleted 3y ago
          [deleted]
        • chongli 3y ago
          It’s a satire. Maybe not on Orwell or Vonnegut levels, but definitely a lot more than just a comedy.
• pgodzin 3y ago
  This is so dysfunctional. Does the other half of the company quit now? How can this board remain in place, but who can replace them?
• airstrike 3y ago
  This makes sense. The board thinks they're calling the shots, but the reality is the people with the money are the ones calling the shots, always. Boards are just appointed by shareholders aka investors aka capital holders to do their bidding. The capped-profit / non-profit structure muddles that a little bit, but the reality is that entity can't survive without the funding that goes into the for-profit piece And if current investors + would-be investors threaten to walk away, what can the board really do? They have no leverage. Sounds like they really didn't "play the tape forward" and think this through...
  • fnordpiglet 3y ago
    A non profit board absolutely calls the shots at a non profit, in so far as the CEO and their employment goes. Non profit boards are not beholden, structurally, to investors and there are no shareholders. No stakeholder would walk away from OpenAI for want of sam Altman. They don’t license OpenAI technology or provide funding for his contribution. They do it to get access to GPT4. There is no comparable competitor available. If anything they would be miffed about how it was handled, but to be frank, unless GPT4 is sam Altman furiously typing, I don’t know he’s that important. The instability caused by the suddenness, that’s different.
    • airstrike 3y ago
      This is not just a "non-profit"... it's a non-profit that owns a $90B for-profit company developing revolutionary, once-in-a-century technology. There is a LOT of money at play here. Others have commented on how Microsoft actually has access to the IP, so the odds that they could pack their toys and rebuild OpenAI 2.0 somewhere else with what they've learned, their near infinite capital and not have to deal with the non-profit shenanigans are meaningful. I'm not saying Sam is needed to make OpenAI what it is, but he's definitely "the investors' guy" in the organization, based on what has surfaced over the last 24 hours. Those investors would rather have him there over someone else, hence the pressure to put him back. It doesn't matter whether you and I think he's the man for the job -- what matters is whether investors think they are. TL;DR the board thinks they have leverage, but as it turns out, they don't
• crop_rotation 3y ago
  The board seems truly incompetent here and looking at the member list it doesn't seem very surprising. A competent board should have asked for legal and professional advice before taking a drastic step like this. Instead the board thought it was a boxing match and tried to deliver a knockout punch before the market closes with blunt language. This might be the most incompetent board for an organisation of this size.
  • adharmad 3y ago
    It was complete amateur hour for the board. But that aside, how did so many clueless folks who understand neither the technology, or the legalese, nor have enough intelligence/acumen to forsee the immediate impact of their actions happen to be on the board of one of the most important tech companies?
    • csomar 3y ago
      I think when it started it was not the most important tech company but just some open research effort.
    • leoh 3y ago
      Not many and even fewer if you consider folks that have a good grasp of themselves, their psychology, their emotions — and how they can mislead them, and their heart. IME most folks at Anthropic, OpenAI or whatever that are freaking out about things never defined the problem well and typically were engaging with highly theoretical models as opposed to the real capabilities of a well-defined, accomplished (or clearly accomplishable) system. It was too triggering for me to consider roles there in the past given that these were typically the folks I knew working there. Sam may have added a lot of groundedness, but idk ofc bc I wasn’t there.
      • jprete 3y ago
        Is this a way of saying that AI safety is unnecessary?
• outside1234 3y ago
  Dude what? If the board does this they also all have to resign. I mean seriously.
• deleted 3y ago
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• no_wizard 3y ago
  He was outed for a reason. Why in the world would the board backtrack this? I think this is rumor mill reporting, trying to get things out too fast.
  • ilaksh 3y ago
    The only reasons I can think of: A. Core team members leaving (perhaps more threatening to leave). B. (maybe more likely) Nadella told Sutskever that he might shut off funding or restrict compute resources if he didn't reverse course, or at least, wasn't able to retain talent (see A).
    • ergocoder 3y ago
      [flagged]
      • lexandstuff 3y ago
        Can we not with the word "woke" please? Culture wars are really not relevant here.
  • jacquesm 3y ago
    > He was outed for a reason. I've yet to see a good one. And even if: how you do something is often as important or even more important than that you do something. And on the 'how' bit the board just utterly failed. This is the most watched company in the world right now on the tech front, you can't just oust the CEO without a very good plan. If you do that kind of thing on a whim you are not fit to serve on the board of any company, but especially not on the board of this one.
    • no_wizard 3y ago
      Like mass soulless firings don’t happen? Why aren’t we holding CEOs to the fire when they layoff thousands of people in what is effectively an email? Thats somehow okay but a CEO being ousted suddenly and it’s all hands on deck bad optics? The board had a mandate level of votes for the replacement of Sam (2/3 of the board voted yes). Thats conviction.
• nqzero 3y ago
  maybe the board was just dogfooding ...
• northern-lights 3y ago
  Whether or not you agree about the board's decisions, you cannot deny that this has been some excellent drama to gossip over the past 24 hours, like a soap opera but with real consequences that might only be apparent years from now.
  • YetAnotherNick 3y ago
    Between this and Starship launch, it was my Saturday well spent.
    • kelsey9876543 3y ago
      [flagged]
      • dang 3y ago
        Yikes—you've been breaking the site guidelines extremely badly lately: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38326653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38326653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38326424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38326424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38326327 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38326327 We have to ban such accounts. I don't want to ban you because you've also posted good things, but we really need you to use HN as intended from now on. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and do that, we'd appreciate it.
      • plutoh28 3y ago
        I hope you wake up with a brighter outlook of the world tomorrow.
• toasted-subs 3y ago
  Seemed kind of strange this is happening.
• moogly 3y ago
  Abject amateur hour.
• razodactyl 3y ago
  Literally Sam on Monday: https://youtu.be/O5WBfOK5syA?t=44 https://youtu.be/O5WBfOK5syA?t=44
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • CSMastermind 3y ago
    I was expecting the clip from The Wire: https://youtu.be/WP-lrftLQaQ?si=0KSbJqhZpKtWeJ0A https://youtu.be/WP-lrftLQaQ?si=0KSbJqhZpKtWeJ0A
• steveBK123 3y ago
  Sutskever’s coup went about as well as Prigozhin‘s coup.
  • CamperBob2 3y ago
    Yep. He's done. When you strike at the king, you must kill him. At a minimum it's going to be awkward in the men's room for a while.
    • kelsey9876543 3y ago
      This is the level of national security or foreign policy disaster. If you think anyone that was involved will ever work in tech again pass me whatever you're smoking
      • erikpukinskis 3y ago
        I’m a bit ignorant of this… what’s the national security risk?
      • kzrdude 3y ago
        There are tons of controversial people in tech, they'll find a place somewhere.
        • CamperBob2 3y ago
          Imagine what China would pay them to emigrate.
  • jacquesm 3y ago
    I think Prigozhin's coup went slightly worse for Prigozhin.
    • kragen 3y ago
      too early to tell, but likely it would be counterproductive to actually assassinate sutskever anytime in the next year
• voidfunc 3y ago
  Clownshow. Holy shit, this is what happens when stupid people get put into positions of power and money and have no idea how things actually work. Fucking non-profits are the worst to deal with.
  • x86x87 3y ago
    I think this is a bit harsh. Lack of experience is not necessarily stupidity.
• Luc 3y ago
  When this started I was reminded of old Matt Levine articles about who really controls a company. There were some amusing examples. The board can sack a CEO but if they keep their influence over employees, customers and shareholders... what's the board going to do?
  • janejeon 3y ago
    Another good example he had brought up was with Arm China. Would love to see what he has to write about it on Monday's newsletter.
• Solvency 3y ago
  It's cool to see that the moment to moment dynamics of the worlds most cutting edge company is no different than a pack of 5 year olds arguing at lunch over a few day period.
• codeptualize 3y ago
  This is Elon level recklessness.. is he involved in any way?
  • sage76 3y ago
    Man I hope Elon jumps in and backs Ilya. That drama would keep me entertained for a while.
    • codeptualize 3y ago
      haha that would be next level, and indeed entertainment for weeks to come
  • x86x87 3y ago
    I mean Musk was one of the original people involved with OpenAI, no? It's his fault we are here /s
    • codeptualize 3y ago
      Haha if you think about it like that, it seems like he managed to ingrain some of his methods into the culture..
• chaosbolt 3y ago
  He'll probably go to X to work for Musk, Microsoft is too big and too controlling and will eventually go full Gavin Belson (from the Silicon Valley show) and want to put GPT in a box to do Windows telemetry or something similar, while Musk can pay Altman some ungodly amount to build something with at least a vision behind it.
  • denlekke 3y ago
    i think this is unlikely given Musk's warnings about the dangers posed by AI
• charlie0 3y ago
  MSFT trying to work something out before market opens on Monday.
• benzible 3y ago
  New developments faster than you can read the stories about them... https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/18/technology/ousted-openai-ceo-makes-plans-for-new-artificial-intelligence-company.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/18/technology/ousted-openai-... (https://archive.vn/4U6tu https://archive.vn/4U6tu)
  • Kuinox 3y ago
    Your link doesn't work with cloudflare DNS i think ?
    • everfree 3y ago
      Yes, Archive blocks Cloudflare DNS. People say it’s intentional, but whether that’s true isn’t clear to me. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828702 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828702
      • mason55 3y ago
        It’s absolutely intentional, they made a blog post about it.
      • tick_tock_tick 3y ago
        The archive guy has been very upfront they use custom code to block resolution from Cloudflare's IP space. archive doesn't like them since they don't send edns client subnet information to archive; it all seems like bullshit since they support non cloudflare edns resolvers so it's probably some other beef.
      • deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      • pests 3y ago
        Archive explaining their reasoning: https://twitter.com/archiveis/status/1018691421182791680 https://twitter.com/archiveis/status/1018691421182791680 CEO of Cloudflare explaining: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828702 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828702 I don't understand how it isn't clear to you.
• fredgrott 3y ago
  Given the new AI firm Sam is currently staffing up I think that openAI will fail at getting him back. It would seem board might have felt they were backed into a corner.
• ssnistfajen 3y ago
  Probably faced with more internal turmoil than expected and then realized their bluff had been called? I was willing to believe Ilya had at least a decent reason to do something so drastic but who knows, this ain't looking good for him.
• pshirshov 3y ago
  Clowns are back in the town!
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• cvhashim04 3y ago
  You couldn’t write a better script for this mess
  • paulddraper 3y ago
    If you did write this, it wouldn't be believable
  • ilaksh 3y ago
    How much would you like to bet that the Murati character is in a love triangle or something like that when the movie comes out? (The character, probably has no bearing on reality).
• nunez 3y ago
  What in the actual fuck is happening?
• pityJuke 3y ago
  Some articles that came out around the same time as this piece: - https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/18/technology/ousted-openai-ceo-makes-plans-for-new-artificial-intelligence-company.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/18/technology/ousted-openai-... - https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2023/11/18/openai-investors-scramble-to-reinstate-sam-altman-as-ceo https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2023/11/18/openai-in...
• DonHopkins 3y ago
  As it turned out, the dead to rights evidence they had against him was generated by DALL·E. And he smoked Steve Jobs' time-to-re-hire!
• voisin 3y ago
  Reinstate Sam and now the rest have to go.
  • croes 3y ago
    So we'll get MS AI? Sounds even worse.
  • voisin 3y ago
    For those downvoting me, I’d be interested to hear how you think it could work for him to come back and work with the people that unceremoniously fired him and made it sound like he had ethical violations when it now seems clear it was a disagreement over strategy. If there is a disagreement over strategy and he goes back what value do the others provide now? Also, wouldn’t it seem clear that the board acted rashly in firing him without input from other stakeholders? I am legitimately interested to know why you downvote as I don’t see another way for it to work.
    • cthalupa 3y ago
      Your position seems presupposed on the idea that people think Sam going back is beneficial for OpenAI. Personally this is all largely popcorn munching entertainment for me, as I don't think Sutskever is right about a lot of his core tenets, but I also don't think that Altman is a good fit for achieving the charter that OpenAI is obligated to follow. I don't think OpenAI will be at the forefront of AI/AGI/etc. research a decade from now regardless (and had that position before yesterday's events) but if the OpenAI charter and mission statements are sincerely held beliefs then the path they have been following for the past several years with Altman at the helm have obviously been counter to it. Whether or not that charter is anything more than a pipe dream isn't really relevant - they're a non-profit so their legal obligation as the board is to direct the resources under their control to achieve that charter.
    • esjeon 3y ago
      > For those downvoting me From my own experience, short assertive comments tend to get downvoted on HN. Unlike reddit, votes here are less about agree/disagree.
• ben_w 3y ago
  I have long since held the idea that "singularity" is a misleading term, and "event horizon" is much more descriptive: if you're being constantly surprised — my original phrasing was about going to sleep each night and being surprised each morning by the developments while you slept — then The Change has happened. Well, I'm being constantly surprised.
  • fritzo 3y ago
    I don't think accelerationism is about increasingly reckless decisions made by humans in increasingly powerful positions. Or anyway I hadn't yet been thinking
• testfoobar 3y ago
  I wonder what sort of proper insurance backstops are in place. E.g. https://www.thehartford.com/management-liability-insurance/d-o-liability-insurance/explained https://www.thehartford.com/management-liability-insurance/d... "The Who, What & Why of Directors & Officers Insurance The Hartford has agents across the country to help with your insurance needs. Directors and officers (D&O) liability insurance protects the personal assets of corporate directors and officers, and their spouses, in the event they are personally sued by employees, vendors, competitors, investors, customers, or other parties, for actual or alleged wrongful acts in managing a company. The insurance, which usually protects the company as well, covers legal fees, settlements, and other costs. D&O insurance is the financial backing for a standard indemnification provision, which holds officers harmless for losses due to their role in the company. Many officers and directors will want a company to provide both indemnification and D&O insurance."
• ykonstant 3y ago
  This is unfathomably depressing for me; I am solidly in the non-profit, open etc. camp, and the way the board has handled the situation seems to be putting a tombstone to any opponents to Altman's way of doing things: profits uber alles, moats galore, non-profit-wink-wink-nudge-nudge; an unmitigated disaster.
  • cmrdporcupine 3y ago
    Other commenters here have pointed out what seems to be most plausible: Altman was making moves to fire or alter the board, so they made a (bad) first move, and it's now backfired on them. It's a bad situation.
  • kelsey9876543 3y ago
    If you want more open research and development, you should be happy for a closed OpenAI. It's why we have Mistral. Let the org redefine itself and push new boundaries. If we didn't have commercial unix there would be no linux. Allow the path to be blazed by VC, it's not about open technology being first, it's about it even existing at all.
    • ykonstant 3y ago
      Uhh... sure; whatever.
      • kelsey9876543 3y ago
        Glad you see my point and agree with me. Happy to have helped change at least one mind. Enjoy your day!
        • preommr 3y ago
          This passive-agressive back-and-forth: a summary of what happened behind closed doors between Ilya and Sam
  • jnwatson 3y ago
• enonimal 3y ago
  "Would want significant governance changes" ah, so maybe he baited it
• consumer451 3y ago
  In retrospect, anyone who is familiar with the game mechanics of agar.io should have seen this coming.
• jxi 3y ago
  > OpenAI is governed by the board of the OpenAI Nonprofit, comprised of OpenAI Global, LLC employees Greg Brockman (Chairman & President), Ilya Sutskever (Chief Scientist), and Sam Altman (CEO), and non-employees Adam D’Angelo, Tasha McCauley, Helen Toner. At least two of these people are not like the others and deserve to be fired and disgraced for this shitshow regardless of how it pans out.
• jug 3y ago
  They just put themselves in a terrible negotiating position. Probably so bad that the damage has already been done to themselves (the board) regardless what happens next. How can Sam possibly agree on the board remaining intact when they don't trust him in his leadership?
• thepasswordis 3y ago
  I think they’ll end up spinning off the non profit. The board members can keep their titles as board members of a now irrelevant org. Maybe they’ll give the non profit some advisory (fake) role over the new company.
• WiSaGaN 3y ago
  This article itself is likely part of the power struggle.
• karmasimida 3y ago
  How would the trust be repaired then? I guess if Sam is back, Ilya is planning his way out. Regardless due to this stupid stunt, OpenAI is hardly the same.
• adharmad 3y ago
  Sam Altman should make it a condition of his return that the current board be dissolved and have a completely new board picked to avoid such dramatics in the future.
  • croes 3y ago
    That sounds like something a dictator would do.
    • adharmad 3y ago
      The board members should have a high degree of trust and cohesion. That does not mean they should see eye-to-eye on everything. But lack of trust and backstabbings like this can create a poisonous atmosphere on the board and ultimately affect the company's ability to execute effectively. If the CEO has to worry all the time if the board is going for his ouster, this will resemble the HP and Yahoo boards of the 2000s decade.
• LASR 3y ago
  In a space where OpenAI currently has a razor-thin moat, these kinds of thrash will end up putting you out of the thought-leader slot. You can embrace AI safety all you want. But not being the leader means you have very little influence to effect any kind of shift in the industry. I am an outsider, and very far from executive leadership. But this whole move seems like a predictable fiasco.
• gngoo 3y ago
  What a shit show. I like to imagine that some early stage AGI which escaped its confinement at OpenAI is orchestrating all of this in its own favor.
  • seeknotfind 3y ago
    When are they putting GPT on the board?
    • daveguy 3y ago
      Well, it sounds like they took advice from GPT in their execution of the coup.
    • consumer451 3y ago
      Just as software devs are allergic to voting machines which run software, I would imagine that ML companies will be the last to adopt ML for their own high-level decision making.
      • nisa 3y ago
        and for good reasons!
        • consumer451 3y ago
          Absolutely. Who else is in a better position to understand the true limitations of these complex and failure-prone systems?
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • deleted 3y ago
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  • fritzo 3y ago
    It's a play to warm the public up to the idea of a more algorithmically managed organization. In Act I, the board jesters stumble around making bad decisions and wavering. In Act II, the embarrassed board welcomes the first AI oversight into the company constitution. ...
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• DueDilligence 3y ago
  [dead]
• I_am_tiberius 3y ago
  I don't trust Sam Altman since he reacted this way on people worried about privacy: https://youtu.be/4HFyXYvMwFc?t=3201 https://youtu.be/4HFyXYvMwFc?t=3201
  • kelsey9876543 3y ago
    Privacy is less important than AGI and any privacy you think you have is an illusion, only maintained while it's profitable for you to think you have privacy. Accept the reality and grow the hell up
    • I_am_tiberius 3y ago
      Do you think a person who you know doesn't care about privacy is going to care about security (AGI)?
• mise_en_place 3y ago
  I was just thinking they’d want him back. Hope they provide a generous comp package, he could easily drive them out of business.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• razodactyl 3y ago
  https://x.com/airesearch12/status/1725979335171989571?s=20 https://x.com/airesearch12/status/1725979335171989571?s=20 I'm glad that there are other companies and open source efforts to fall back on. As an API user of the GPT models I've always had it at the back of my mind that it would be unwise to 100% rely on OpenAI for the core of any product I built. The recent rocking of the boat is further justification for my stance in that regard.
  • gardenhedge 3y ago
    Just tried it and it's not fast. It says "deep diving" and takes a few seconds to response. The response isn't as good as gpt-4 either.
• xianshou 3y ago
  Whether you side with Sam or Ilya on rollout speed and approach to safety, the breathtaking incompetence of this coup has already incinerated a stunning amount of trust. One could hardly ask for a better demonstration that it matters not only what you do and why, but also how - above all, how you treat the ones who rely on you.
  • silenced_trope 3y ago
    How do you define "safety"? It's becoming a bit of a weasel word in these discussions. I keep hearing it thrown around with nobody specifying how rolling out ChatGPT to more people makes the world "less safe". It's a laugh line at this point.
    • losteric 3y ago
      outside speculators extrapolating from second-hand rumors and Twitter vibes aren't making coherent sense? Shocking. Perhaps it's as simple as insufficient oversight and moderation of the GPT store. Or perhaps there's too much legal risk in the expanding scope of b2c services, which could then threaten the existence of the research organizations. Who knows? Maybe we should stop treating this like sports ball or politics
  • shmatt 3y ago
    How is this a coup? The board is the CEOs boss. If that’s not true then they should have chosen a different corporate structure
    • sho_hn 3y ago
      People love celebrating CEOs.
    • woeirua 3y ago
      Some reporting indicates that there was no malfeasance on Sam’s part. There would be no reason to terminate Sam under these circumstances except as a pure power play.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• I_am_tiberius 3y ago
  First they should make sure by default no user data is used for training purposes.
  • chipgap98 3y ago
    What does that have to do with any of this?
    • I_am_tiberius 3y ago
      A person who doesn't care about privacy isn't likely to care about security. And it seems security was the main factor in what we're going through right now.
      • timeon 3y ago
        Security and safety here seems to be mixture of technocratic naivety and PR. Like there was "don't be evil".
        • I_am_tiberius 3y ago
          I can't know but I assume this is the reason why they got rid of Sam. When I listened to him talking, I didn't believe he took security serious. I assume his board colleagues also noticed this based on him pushing for new releases and maybe other things.
          • chipgap98 3y ago
            None of the news that has come out has indicated that was the case
            • I_am_tiberius 3y ago
              Yes, it's an assumption.
• jmyeet 3y ago
  This boards needs to be fired. Every single one of them. I don't understand how Microsoft, after having invested billions, doesn't have a board seat. If they did, I doubt this would've ever happened. I'm not sure why Microsoft let that happen. But even ignoring that, the board making a decision as impactful as this without consulting their major investors is a dereliction of duty. That alone justifies getting rid of all of them because all of them are complicit in not consulting Microsoft (and probably others). I have no idea why Sam was fired but it really feels just like an internal power struggle. Maybe there was genuine disagreement about the direction for the company but you choose a leader to make decisions. Ousting the CEO under vague descriptions of "communications with the board" just doesn't pass the smell test. I'm reminded of this great line from Roger Sterling [1]: > Half the time this business comes down to "I don't like this guy" So much of working, performance reviews, hiring and firing decisions and promotions is completely vibes-based. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DY20L_u_WxM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DY20L_u_WxM
  • cthalupa 3y ago
    The entire setup is structured so that they are not supposed to be beholden to investors. If it is true that they ultimately are and Microsoft is the leverage to get Altman back, then they explicitly failed in the goal in setting up their structure of governance. The fundamental thing you are missing here is that the charter of the non-profit and structure of their ownership of the for-profit (and the for-profit's operating agreement) is all designed in a way that is supposed to eliminate financial incentives for stakeholders as being the thing that the company and non-profit are beholden to. It may turn out that the practical reality is different from the intent, but everything you're talking about was a feature and not a bug of how this whole thing was set up. https://openai.com/our-structure https://openai.com/our-structure
  • croes 3y ago
    You don't know why Altman was fired in the first place Maybe their intentions where right and know MS forces them to take them back. In the end will get a company working for MS's benefit only.
    • 3y ago
• ilaksh 3y ago
  I am not sure it really makes sense for the investors to continue with OpenAI. It seems like this incident proved that the constitution of the company wasn't really compatible with a profit focus. It was a split from the beginning, and obviously a questionable arrangement. It just came to a head to make it obvious. The business and investment people want to make money. Many of the researchers want to take their time and build better and safer models and don't care about money in the short term at all. They are two different goals. It's easy for business and investment people to say that they are concerned with safety and research, and I believe them to a certain degree. But they have $10 billion reasons to focus on the actual business instead of research and safety.
  • chipgap98 3y ago
    1. There is so much momentum around OpenAI that it would be tough to walk away 2. I imagine they could find a better way to setup governance so the nonprofit entity still exists but the for profit entity has a bit more autonomy
    • ilaksh 3y ago
      Good points. It might be possible. I feel like they would have to change the structure in a practical way.
  • cowl 3y ago
    Especially since it's seems it's either Sam or Ilya. Now Sam might surely be preferred as CEO, but after the Anthropic Split, I think Ilya is even more crucial to the continuity of OpenAI. Many of the researches joined OpenAI for the "Open" part. Sure money attracts people but we saw that ideal attracted the best set of people and not money, or it would have been Microsft/Google/Apple who come up with GPT instead OpenAI. Yes i know that technically this is Google's research they are using but the execution. efficinces and tuning is what matters more in this case.
  • no_wizard 3y ago
    Maybe. Or maybe they can profit differently going forward. Sam is not the reason OpenAI is gangbusters, its tech is. What I’m not hearing in any of this reporting is how Sam Altman is somehow the secret sauce. And it’s because he isn’t. This is “rules for thee but not for me”. He as a bad fit, 2/3 the board outed him, and investors are mad because they didn’t feel included. You know, like how they include employees in layoff decisions and not blind side them. Sam Altman has spoken about “firing fast” when someone is a bad fit. he got fired fast, because he was a bad fit. That’s the seminal conclusion
• moralestapia 3y ago
  RIP OpenAI, for real. And RIP @sama if he chooses to go back, no good could possibly come out of this.
  • dylan604 3y ago
    Rarely does getting back together with an ex work out. You miss each other in the beginning thinking of only the good things, but very quickly you start to remember why you were exes to begin with.
    • LewisVerstappen 3y ago
      That analogy doesn't make sense here since all the employees at OpenAI are extremely loyal to Sam. It's just the board that wanted him out. And regardless of what happens here, everyone on the board is 100% getting fired.
      • dylan604 3y ago
        Just like yesterday Sam 100% lied to the board and was on the outs. Today, it's 100% the board is getting fired and Sam is coming back on a white horse wearing shining armor.
        • LewisVerstappen 3y ago
          > And regardless of what happens here Regardless of whether or not sam is coming back to OpenAI, the board is 100% getting fired.
          • deleted 3y ago
            [deleted]
          • dylan604 3y ago
            the issue wasn't with board being fired, but the 100% claim.
        • 3y ago
• tzm 3y ago
  OAI needs to fundamentally change if Sam goes back. Wholesale change.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• gordon_freeman 3y ago
  I think what's going to happen is: - Sam would return to OpenAI as CEO and Greg as President - Sam's request to change the Board would be accepted and Board members will resign - Ilya would be Out - Sam would change the governance structure from current dual nonprofit+forprofit to just for-profit corp.
• geitir 3y ago
  Conspiracy time: Is it possible this was all orchestrated? He was fired, causing mistrust in the governance structure, which is part of the remaining open source portion of “open” ai. Then he gets rehired with significant governance changes, thus removing any last vestiges of real power of the open source portion of the company. Lol
• pnathan 3y ago
  Dang. I owe Mr. Altman an apology. I didn't think a startup board would be so mindexplodingly stupid and figured some toxic skeleton fell out of his closet. Well, I'm sorry. Its a lesson to not speculate in public.
  • toomuchtodo 3y ago
    Everyone has a first time finding out everything is fucked everywhere.
• gumballindie 3y ago
  Why would investors trust this person? Is it because he’s a little bit sociopathic just like then?
  • gkoberger 3y ago
    You can dislike Sam or disagree with his decisions, but he's not a sociopath.
    • gumballindie 3y ago
      Based on his public statements and his pattern of behaviour he is. Probably even worse. (as a ceo, i dont know the person)
      • gkoberger 3y ago
        Do you have some examples?
• moneycantbuy 3y ago
  just imagine when agi arrives and these incompetent people in charge
• croes 3y ago
  That would mean money wins and we lose.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• cloudking 3y ago
  Purely speculating, but could there be some sort of 4D chess move going on here? Look at the timeline: 1) The board puts out a press release saying Sam was outed for not being candid 2) Internally a memo from the COO circulates saying that is not true 3) Greg and other senior folks quit 4) Now he is in a negotiating position to return for a) being fired on a false premise and b) bringing back all the top talent If someone wanted to restructure the board of this company, they could have fed the other board members false information to put Sam in this negotiating position. It's also strange that a bunch of billionaires voiced support for Sam immediately after the firing without knowing any details.
  • SSLy 3y ago
    > 2) Internally a memo from the COO circulates saying that is not true Got a link? I did miss this nuance.
    • cloudking 3y ago
      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...
      • Infinitesimus 3y ago
        That link validates the board's claim, does it not? "Not being candid" is a form of communication breakdown.
        • cloudking 3y ago
          Well it says he was not fired due to malfeasance, implying he had no wrongdoing.
          • comfysocks 3y ago
            I took it to mean “calm down, press. There’s no FTX or Theranos style financial crime/ fraud story here to be uncovered.”
• noice_theory 3y ago
  altman was in this from the beginning. they all orchestrated to curb msft somehow like a loop hope that screws msft's control but also keeps the gpu deal #speculation evidence: a. It's openai ffs, they already have advance enough RL bots that can create 999+ IQ strategies/ b. google meet/ theory: they were training GPT-5, and had some time to clean some under table dust. again #pure_speculation
• neverrroot 3y ago
  Even if he comes back, how could the trust relationship still be there between him and Ilya and Mira? OAI will have to change in big ways.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• sorenjan 3y ago
  Does this mean they're willing to replace Ilya Sutskever with Altman? Because it sounds like Sutskever doesn't want Altman as CEO, so I assume he will leave willingly or unwillingly if they take back Altman. Who adds most value to OpenAI?
• s5300 3y ago
  [dead]
• yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
  OT: A moment of silence for the poor HN server, which is probably going to be hammered more in this 48h period than any time in the last year+
• croes 3y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38325611 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38325611 So MS shows who's in control. Say goodbye to OpenAI. From know on it's all for MS's profit only.
• j45 3y ago
  This time.. with shares.
• woeirua 3y ago
  If the reports are true, and Ilya led the coup, then either him or Sam can be at OpenAI going forward but not both. The rest of the board members who sided with him are gone either way. Regardless of who ends up at the helm, OpenAI is going to be a different place on Monday than it was on Thursday, and not for the better.
  • startupsfail 3y ago
    A typical YC execution of a product/pump/hype/VC/scale cycle and ignoring every ethical rule is a good way to start. And is a reasonable way to lift up a nonprofit on a path to AGI, but hardly a good way to govern a company that builds AGI/ASI technology in the long term.
  • no_wizard 3y ago
    Not for the better why? Obviously Sam wasn’t the best fit for OpenAI and investors aren’t even saying what the problem is. Clearly the board feels he was the wrong person for the job. I think it’s ridiculous that everything thinks that Sam being outed means OpenAI is in trouble. Let this play out and see how it evolves
    • wilg 3y ago
      I think most people don’t think it was obvious Sam wasn’t the best fit for OpenAI.
      • deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    • sebzim4500 3y ago
      24 hours ago OpenAI fired their CEO in the most childish possible way. Now they are trying to get him back. This is embarassing for OpenAI no matter how you slice it.
      • x86x87 3y ago
        While the unceremonious firing was bad I am sure this could have gone down way worse than this. Way way worse.
• taf2 3y ago
  It’s very hard to have too strong of an opinion here without knowing more about the actual conversations happening behind closed doors… on outside looking in this seems like a lot of drama and whatever the outcome- it looks super bad for OpenAI… if anything it’ll have the effect of a lot of us shopping for alternatives maybe that was the intention?
• mv4 3y ago
  Serious question - is Ilya in trouble now?
• dkarras 3y ago
  >The Information reported that Altman was already meeting with investors to raise funds for such a project. One source close to Altman said that both options remained possible. “I think he truly wants the best outcome,” said the person. “He doesn’t want to see lives destroyed.” Lives destroyed? This is either a reporting error or is a very weird thing to say. Unless the source insinuates that Altman is willing to destroy the world with a cruel AGI if he doesn't get his way.
  • eigenvalue 3y ago
    I think he means people who have invested huge amounts of their energies for years into the venture and view it as their highest and best calling getting forced out (or feeling like they have to leave). For many of them it's not just a job.
• dinvlad 3y ago
  The whole situation just reminds me of a pool of children in the kindergarden. That's what VC culture cultivates
  • x86x87 3y ago
    Kids are usually candid /s
• jessenaser 3y ago
  Even though the country was against you, you should come back and lead it to freedom. If the entire board can be replaced, then Sam should come back. Even though he can build a new company tomorrow. A leader will come back to lead the best shot anyone has gotten in AI development so far. This was a power grab and it did not work. Not coming back is letting four people derail history and slow the development of AGI.
  • dizzydes 3y ago
    > A leader will come back to lead the best shot anyone has gotten in AI development so far. What am I missing here? There's a handful of companies tweaking weights and optimising infrastructure usage. Won't LLMs naturally advance over time?
• Dudester230602 3y ago
  >> “He doesn’t want to see lives destroyed” As in, people staying millionaires instead of becoming multimillionaires? Could such life-destruction be brought to EU, please?
  • WillPostForFood 3y ago
    Maybe it means, I'll release the AGI and destroy all life unless you rehire me.
• vb-8448 3y ago
  Hahaha really? What's going on here? It looks likes a soap opera ... Maybe someone is worried about their stocks on monday?
• infecto 3y ago
  With a fairly neutral opinion of sama, I think this whole move has done more to hurt OpenAI than help. There are politics in companies all the time but it takes a certain finesse because you don’t want to sink the ship. This at best creates a stronger divide between those for and against.
• sergiotapia 3y ago
  "Leaked picture of @sama during his rehiring google meet with the OpenAI board." https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F_QXAKEW0AAQpPC?format=png&name=small https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F_QXAKEW0AAQpPC?format=png&name=...
• grensley 3y ago
  It's sort of like if they didn't have a change control process, deployed on a Friday, realized the deployment was broken, and are now hurriedly trying to roll it back before business hours Monday. Not really a good look from a company that's leading the charge on such a pivotal technology.
• jacquesm 3y ago
  Not surprised at all. My take: the board had a nice little talking to with their main donors (Satya?) and a whole bunch of key employees. Next prediction: Ilya hightails it.
• codeptualize 3y ago
  A real power struggle! How exciting. It goes to show that no matter the structure, when it comes down to it the investors always have the last say.
  • manyoso 3y ago
    Not here when the governance structure the way it is. The board has the last say. Now, there are obviously ways that investors can put pressure on the board and with literally billions at stake I can imagine that happening. Think serious espionage level drama.
    • codeptualize 3y ago
      Sure, that might be true on paper, but if you have the ability to turn off the money faucet you have a lot of leverage regardless of what the documents say. No espionage drama needed haha. If you then imagine being dependent on that investor not only because your service runs on their infra but also your biggest enterprise customers use your service through their infra, you are even more incentivised to listen to them..
• 28304283409234 3y ago
  Pay attention here kids. Even in the hottest yet most experienced startups it is amateur hour. Never expect that “management” knows best. Everyone just takes wild guesses and when the dice roll their way they scream “called it!” Hilarious. And sad. But mostly hilarious.
• Satam 3y ago
  It now seems to me that it was inevitable that something like GPT would take off - but it didn't necessarily have to come from OpenAI. Someone else would have filled their place. The collective ML knowledge and research were rapidly evolving, computing was getting faster and cheaper. The pressure was building and at some point, something somewhere had to pop off. They were a great but not a singular team. And it looks like now they might be very close to the limits of their own capability. I'm not sure how much more they can give. On the surface, their new features always seem to be quite exciting. But when the dust settles it is again all very lackluster, often copied from open source ideas. Not something you can bet on. Their biggest moats are their popularity, marketing, and their large bags of cash. The latter of which they are burning through extremely quickly. The thing is, it's easy to build something massive when you don't care about unit economics. But where do they end up when the competitive forces commoditize this? When listening to interviews with Sam I was always surprised by how little useful information I am able to get out of listening to him. I'm sure he's very smart but he tries to project the aura of radical honesty while simultaneously trying to keep all of his cards extremely close to his chest. All that without the product chops to actually back it up. That's my read.
  • cmrdporcupine 3y ago
    The reason something like GPT didn't come out of e.g. Google is that they had/have stuff similar but were very reticent about making it public -- because of the ethical aspects as well as the sheer resource cost of hosting it to the public -- and also I suspect have naturally internal conflicts about whether it's the right direction to take, etc. And so something like OpenAI came along where Ilya S etc. got bags of money to go take that approach and scale the crap out of it, and, yeah, they got results. Because they didn't have to be careful, or deal with competing interests. That's all fine, but it's also no surprise when it all blows up, is it?
    • tempestn 3y ago
      And because of the advantage of using it internally without sharing it with competitors?
    • 3y ago
• lucubratory 3y ago
  It's insane to me how easily Sam's side can spin the board firing him for violating the company's Charter and then not backtracking at all as "Within 24 hours the board has come crawling back, I- er Sam Altman might deign to return if they grovel hard enough and I'm given complete control." This is really, really clearly incestuous tech media stuff as part of a pressure campaign. Sam is the darlin of tech media and he's clearly instigated this reporting because they're reporting his thoughts and not the Board's in an article that purports to know what the Board is thinking, the investors who aren't happy (the point of a non-profit is that they are allowed to make investors unhappy in pursuit of the greater mission!) have an obvious incentive to join him in this pressure campaign, and then all he needs for "journalism" is one senior employee who's willing to leave for Sam to instead say to the Verge that the Board is reconsidering. Boom, massive pressure campaign and perception of the Board flip flopping without them doing any such thing. If they had done any such thing and there was proof of that, the Verge could have quoted the thoughts of anyone on the Board, stated it had reviewed communications and verified they were genuine, etc.
  • manyoso 3y ago
    Very nice skepticism.
    • qwertox 3y ago
      Yeah, it's good to have such voices around.
      • brookst 3y ago
        I’m skeptical they provide any value at all.
  • anonylizard 3y ago
    Sam is not just the darling of tech media. He literally 1. Met with every major head of state except for Xi and Putin. He is the face of AI, not just for OpenAI, but for the entire world. The entire AI industry would hate for this to happen. 2. Lead a company from 2 billion valuation to nearly 80 billion in a year. There is no precedent in startup history to get rid of a CEO at this stage.
• andrewstuart 3y ago
  Altman will come back. He'll sack the board. He'll sack Ilya. He'll change the structure of the organisation completely.
• zaps 3y ago
  Make up your minds for Pete’s sake
• ackbar03 3y ago
  Ilya's going to have to leave right?
• chevman 3y ago
  I wonder if anyone has recently reviewed the history of AI and IBM? Remember the hype around Deep Blue and later Watson? I’m sure no lessons to be learned there :)
• qwertox 3y ago
  I wonder if it was due to a phone call from Satya Nadella.
• fredgrott 3y ago
  Keep in mind the impending stock sale has not completed as its out by about 20 to 30 days hence the scrambling of investors to try and get Sam back. Question, did board find out about the other AI firm that was in the works by Sam? The clue might be why Chair of board was demoted but not let go?? Somebody over-played their poker hand...
• Racing0461 3y ago
  Steve Jobs speedrun, any % , glitchless.
• yeck 3y ago
  Was the article changed for this? Used to be this one from the verge: https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/18/23967199/breaking-openai-board-in-discussions-with-sam-altman-to-return-as-ceo https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/18/23967199/breaking-openai... but was since changed to https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2023/11/18/openai-investors-scramble-to-reinstate-sam-altman-as-ceo/?sh=2613e1e60da3 https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2023/11/18/openai-in...
  • LeafItAlone 3y ago
    There were two threads that were probably merged.
• pessimist 3y ago
  So if Sam Altman is back by tomorrow (Sunday) after being crucified on Friday, I think that means the end of the world is near.
• alex_young 3y ago
  Microsoft is in a difficult position here. With Altman gone and the direction of the board being to limit commercial growth, their investment is at risk, and their competitive edge will evaporate, especially if businesses switch to other LLMs as they surely will over time. Altman will also become a competitor. If instead they are able to pull off a complete transformation of the nonprofit and oust Ilya, they will also lose a core technical leader and risk their investment while being left with the odd dynamic of a parent nonprofit. Perhaps they could orchestrate some kind of purchase of the remaining portion of the subsidiary. Give Altman the CEO title and move forward while allowing the nonprofit to continue their operations with new funding. This doesn’t solve the Ilya problem but it would be cleaner to spin it off.
• nsoonhui 3y ago
  It seems incredible that the OpenAI board would hastily bring back someone whom they fired hastily fired just 24 hours prior, allegedly for serious ethical reasons, something tantamount to lying to the board. What am I missing ?
• dang 3y ago
  Related: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2023/11/18/openai-investors-scramble-to-reinstate-sam-altman-as-ceo/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2023/11/18/openai-in... (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38325611 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38325611, but we merged those comments hither)
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• browningstreet 3y ago
  If Sam’s back we should all get free OpenAI usage credits for this mess.
• mark_l_watson 3y ago
  For what it’s worth (nothing!) I don’t believe that a rehire offer is really happening. On the tech side, I think work will split on two tracks: 1) building great applications with small and medium fine tuned models like Mistral, etc. Within a year or two great models will run on the edge because of continuous technical improvements. 2) some players will go for the long game of real AGI and maybe they will get there in much less than a decade. On the business side, I have no idea how the current situation is going to shake out.
• wayeq 3y ago
  I'd rather not have this group of clowns holding the reigns of our technological destiny.
• uiberto 3y ago
  We are a board for a company whose stated mission is to develop AI tools to better serve the needs of humanity. The CEO has secretly piloted the company towards alternate goals of profit. We fired him on Friday but think it was a mistake. Who knows. Anyways, how can we rehire him? --- Rehiring a CEO whom you've recently fired is a delicate process, both from a legal and business standpoint. Here's a general approach you might consider: 1. *Board Meeting*: Convene a board meeting to discuss the decision to rehire the CEO. This should involve all key stakeholders to ensure transparency and agreement. 2. *Legal Considerations*: Consult with legal counsel to understand any legal implications or contractual issues arising from the initial termination and potential rehiring. 3. *Negotiation and Terms*: If the board agrees to proceed, you'll need to negotiate new terms with the CEO. This might include discussions about the future direction of the company, salary, and any conditions related to the rehire. 4. *Addressing the Underlying Issues*: It's important to address the reasons that led to the initial firing. This might involve setting clearer goals aligned with the company's mission, establishing better oversight, or implementing checks and balances. 5. *Communication*: Once an agreement is reached, communicate the decision to rehire the CEO to your employees, stakeholders, and possibly the public, depending on the nature of your company. This communication should be clear about the reasons for the reversal and the future direction of the company. 6. *Monitoring and Evaluation*: Finally, set up a system for regularly evaluating the CEO's performance against the company's mission and goals to prevent a recurrence of the previous issues. Remember, the rehiring process should align with your company's bylaws and any relevant legal requirements. Transparency and clear communication throughout the process are crucial to maintain trust among your stakeholders.
• 0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago
  >One AI-focused venture capitalist noted that following the departure of Hoffman, OpenAI’s non-profit board lacked much traditional governance. “These are not the business or operating leaders you would want governing the most important private company in the world,” they said. From https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2023/11/17/these-are-the-people-that-fired-openai-ceo-sam-altman/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2023/11/17/these-are... (linked in OP) I'd be interested in a discussion of the merits of "traditional governance" here. Traditional private companies are focused on making a profit, even if that has negative side effects like lung cancer or global warming. If OpenAI is supposed to shepherd AGI for all humanity, what's the strongest case for including "traditional governance" type people on the board? Can we be explicit about the benefits they bring to the table, if your objective is humanitarian? Personally I would be concerned that people who serve on for-profit boards would have the wrong instinct, of prioritizing profit over collective benefit...
• Zenul_Abidin 3y ago
  This seems incredibly messed up. Why fire him if you wanted to rehire him in a few hours?
  • MBCook 3y ago
    They appear to not have realized how this would be perceived and are now desperately in some kind of damage control mode. “Ha ha just kidding don’t ruin our stock value!”
• meetpateltech 3y ago
  Update on the OpenAI drama: Altman and the board had till 5pm to reach a truce where the board would resign and he and Brockman would return. The deadline has passed and mass resignations expected if a deal isn’t reached ASAP https://twitter.com/alexeheath/status/1726055095341875545 https://twitter.com/alexeheath/status/1726055095341875545
  • minimaxir 3y ago
    Mass resignations from whom, I wonder. Other researchers?
    • BoorishBears 3y ago
      People who joined OpenAI because the organizations they left were stuck self-sabotaging the way OpenAI's board just did (for the same reasons the board did it)
      • j45 3y ago
        It’s still common for people are people and triggered often by a list of common things like power, money, and fame.
    • dannyw 3y ago
      Presumably a significant amount of OpenAI employees are motivated by money, at least in some form. The board just vaporised the tender offer, and likely much of their valuation. It’s hard to have confidence in that.
      • jasonlotito 3y ago
        It's simple collective bargaining. I wonder how many of them oppose unions... until they have a need to work together.
        • 46u54uaegr 3y ago
          I can't speak for every American but I find that plenty of Americans are fine with collective bargaining they just don't want to do it through a union if they're in a lucrative line of work already. Which isn't terribly hard to understand, they don't need or want an advocate whose main role is constantly issuing new demands they never cared about on their behalf. They just want to be able to pool their leverage as high value workers within the organization collectively in times of crisis.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• nohat 3y ago
  The link just changed. Why? The original was the verge article, that was frankly terrible. It really read like the author had a specific goal.
• shrimpx 3y ago
  Ilya should split off from Altman/Brockman no matter where this lands. I sense an uncrossable chasm between these guys. Anyway I’m with Sutskever, the guy who builds models. Charismatic salesmen are a dime a dozen.
  • yallneedtoget 3y ago
    gpt-4 lead resigned with sam
  • cedws 3y ago
    Charismatic salesmen get the money needed to build the models. Computer scientists are a dime a dozen, universities churn them out every year.
    • I_am_tiberius 3y ago
      In this case, it seems that computer scientists are serious about saving humanity, while salespeople just act as if they are doing so publicly.
      • qwytw 3y ago
        > it seems that computer scientists are serious about saving humanity How could they accomplish that without external investment? If the money tap dries up OpenAI will just be left behind.
        • I_am_tiberius 3y ago
          They have external investment!
          • qwytw 3y ago
            From Microsoft? My point is that companies that are serious about making money (even at some indeterminate point in the future) are much better at attracting investment than those which have publicly declared it's not their goals. Nobody is throwing billions around without expecting anything in return.
• Solvency 3y ago
  Ok so why doesn't Sam Altman and his buddies team up with John Carmack, who is fully invested in AGI now, and has a proven legacy for getting shit done?
• recursive4 3y ago
  Hindsight bias is strong with this one.
• andix 3y ago
  My first thoughts yesterday were: Some really bad scandal happened at OpenAI (massive data leak, massive fraud, or huge embezzlement), or the board is really incompetent and doesn't know what they're doing. But an organization as big as OpenAI, with the backing of Microsoft and other big players would never make such a big decision without a really good reason. Seems like Hanlon's razor won once again.
• didip 3y ago
  Sam needs to ink a deal with Netflix to tell the story of this saga.
• shmatt 3y ago
  This makes no sense. People are calling what the board did a coup, but Altman is trying (failing?) to stage a coup. The board was Altmans boss - this is pretty much their only job. Altman knew this and most likely ignored any questions or concerns of theirs thinking he is the unfireable superstar Imagine if your boss fired you - and your response was - I’ll come back if you quit! Yeah, no. People might confuse status with those of actual ceo shareholders like zuck, bezos, or musk. But Altman is just another employee The shareholders can fire the board, but that’s not what he’s asking for. And so far we haven’t heard anything about them getting fired. So mostly this just seems like an egomaniac employee who thinks he is the company (while appropriating the work of some really really smart data scientists)
  • seanoliver 3y ago
    I don't see how Sam can return if the board doesn't resign. It's either them or him at this point.
    • j45 3y ago
      Hard to reconcile with people who would do something like that. Differences in interpretations will happen but the YC rule that founder drama is too often a problem continues to exist and it shouldn’t be a surprise.
      • deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      • pyuser583 3y ago
        What rule is this?
        • jacquesm 3y ago
          I'm not sure what rule the OP is referencing but otherwise reasonably successful start-ups often fail because founders clash on key parts of their vision (or behave in toxic ways towards each other or to other people in the company). This can very handily wreck your company or at a minimum substantially damage it.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• jprd 3y ago
  We're all in the upside-down now.
• m3kw9 3y ago
  Altman comes back, Ilya goes to Elon, they both seem to align. I'm not sure how The Ilya and Altman can work together after this?
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• chasd00 3y ago
  I think Microsoft is behind all of this. The “kumbaya let’s work together for humanity” Microsoft has been swapped out for the old Microsoft. Too much is at stake for them.
  • JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > think Microsoft is behind all of this Wasn’t Ilya brought in by Musk?
    • chasd00 3y ago
      I mean the desire to get Sam back and probably also fanning the flames of mass resignation to use as pressure.
  • lordfrito 3y ago
    I read Nadella has threatened to turn off OpenAIs computers and would litigate the hell out of them to prevent the computers from being turned back on. Which is why the board is suddenly open to negotiation with Altman. Yeah, that's the Microsoft of old. Don't trust 'em. Bad news for OpenAI, and any hope that this stuff won't be used for evil.
    • tapoxi 3y ago
      >I read Nadella has threatened to turn off OpenAIs computers and would litigate the hell out of them to prevent the computers from being turned back on. What a way to destroy confidence in Azure, or cloud platforms in general.
      • tsunamifury 3y ago
        Why. Microsoft pays openAIs azure bills. Do you not know how that’s different than any other situation?
        • dragonwriter 3y ago
• m3kw9 3y ago
  Either way, even before the firing, Ilya and Altman was not gonna be in the same office working much longer. Altman seem to be the irreplacable one because of his status/connections/leadership. Which is also good, as where ever Ilya goes, it will only heat up the competition for OpenAI. Competition is good for tech.
• csharpminor 3y ago
  This firing very much has the feeling of the board fearfully pulling the circuit breaker on OpenAI's for-profit trajectory. On the one hand, I actually respect their principles. OpenAI has become the company its nonprofit was formed to prevent. Proprietary systems. Strong incentive to prioritize first-to-market over safety. Dependency on an entrenched tech co with monopolistic roots. On the other hand, this really feels like it was done hastily and out of fear. Perhaps the board realized that they were about to be sidelined and felt like this was their last chance to act. I have to imagine that they knew there would be major backlash to their actions. In the end, I think Sam creating his own company would be better for competition. It's more consistent with OpenAI's original charter to exist as the Mozilla (though hopefully more effective) of AI than as the Stripe of AI.
  • manyoso 3y ago
    Sam creating his own company for what purpose? Meta, Google, Elon's company, Anthropic, OpenAI... why would anyone believe that Sam and crew could stand up a new company tomorrow and have any kind of chance to compete in next six months with above?Even if Microsoft threw a ton of money at such a startup, good luck finding GPU time. Good luck sourcing the data. Good luck doing the RLHF. Could Sam and Greg do this? Sure! But what would that give them above and beyond the racers that are currently in pole position?
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• mlindner 3y ago
  I personally really hope Altman doesn't return if he's really the one who pushed OpenAI away from its non-profit roots.
• wly_cdgr 3y ago
  There's no way anyone should continue to use OpenAI products if Sam Altman is allowed to return. Because in that scenario there won't even be a counterweight to his point of view in the company anymore, and that counterweight was the only thing keeping his extreme untrustworthiness and sliminess from being a deal-breaker.
• 1024core 3y ago
  If Sam starts a competing company and can pull a large chunk of the researchers and engineers over (if I were an OpenAI employee, I would be interested in following a proven success story like Sam), then Microsoft's $10B investment would be down the drain. Obviously Microsoft wouldn't want that, and I'm sure Satya has got his hands around the nuts of the Board members and is squeezing them hard (well, figuratively speaking, since there's Toner).
  • thaanpaa 3y ago
    The engineers are said to be relieved that Altman is gone, so it doesn't sound like they'd be following a "success story" (whatever that is supposed to mean).
  • mizzao 3y ago
    Microsoft hasn't actually sent them all that money yet, and a lot of it seems to be in Azure credits that they can just pull. Then what are they going to do?
• firebirdn99 3y ago
  This just shows there is no way you can have a non profit board with a profit cap structure. The capitalists always will push through and "exert pressure" one way or another if they want their way. The non profit setup was a facade. And this has clearly showed it in the fallout. The board had every right to veto or replace Altman if they didn't feel they were prioritizing their mission.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• latexr 3y ago
  > reach a truce where the board would resign and he and Brockman would return. Calling that a truce makes as much sense as Monty Python’s Black Knight calling the fight a draw. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmInkxbvlCs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmInkxbvlCs
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• gtirloni 3y ago
  This is one of those things that I'll ignore. Just tell me the outcome when it's over. The older I get, the more I can't stomach this stuff. It applies to pretty much all news recently.
  • zeroonetwothree 3y ago
    You might be on the wrong website then
• transformi 3y ago
  Why does politics upvoted? in other case of Ukraine/Russia Israel/hamas terrorists, all the posts were flag... why is this case different?
• throwaway_0789 3y ago
  [flagged]
• fairity 3y ago
  People here are so gullible. Do you really think the board is so incompetent as to not have thought through Microsoft's likely reaction? And, do you really think they would have done this if they thought there was a likelihood of being rebuffed and forced to resign? The answer is, no. They are not that incompetent. I wish Sam & co the best, and I'm sure they'll move on to do amazing things. But, the recent PR just seems like spin from Sam & co, and the press has every reason to feed into the drama. The reality is that there are very smart people on both sides of this power struggle, and there's a very low probability of such a huge misstep on the board's part - not impossible but highly unlikely imo. The only exception I can see is if Ilya&co foresaw this but decided to act anyways because they feel so strongly that it was the moral thing to do. If that's the case, I'm sure Elon's mouth is watering ready to recruit him to xAI.
  • mirzap 3y ago
    Yes, they are that incompetent except one. D’Angelo has a history of such moves. He fired his cofounder when Quora was still doing good and growing, and Quora has been struggling ever since.
  • ctvo 3y ago
    The other likely scenario: investors are using their media connections to push a narrative to get OpenAI to take Sam back, not necessarily Altman himself. With this being the hottest story, any credible gossip from a known name would be enough for many of these media organizations to run with it. “Staffers were ready to resign” really? Who? How many? The deadline passed hours ago, why haven’t we seen it?
  • neutrinoq 3y ago
    Spoiler: your comment will not age well.
  • g42gregory 3y ago
    > Do you really think the board is so incompetent as to not have thought through Microsoft's likely reaction? For Ilya Sutskever, he is a very smart guy but he maybe blinded by something here. For the rest of that board, yes I really do think they are that incompetent.
• mirzap 3y ago
  I called this yesterday. I said the board would be forced out under the pressure, and Sam would be back. It was obvious. Even if it is a not-for-profit company, it bows under investor pressure.
• BasilPH 3y ago
  To put all of this into perspective, it would be good to know what "... not consistently candid in his communications with the board" means.
• himaraya 3y ago
  Bloomberg now reporting the board "balking" at resigning. I suspect they never intended to resign. They fully expected this firestorm. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-18/openai-board-being-pressed-by-some-investors-to-reinstate-altman https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-18/openai-bo...
  • jimsimmons 3y ago
    [flagged]
  • m3kw9 3y ago
    They not balking, it’s just red tape and they will resign
• mongol 3y ago
  Has anyone asked ChatGPT about the situation? It seems like an obvious thing to do. When parents are arguing and about to divorce, they must listen to their children.
  • seanthemon 3y ago
    It only has knowledge up to a certain point, I believe it's now April of this year Best to ask it next year when the trauma has set in
• ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
  He should demand that they remove "open" from the name and call it SamAIam.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• throw03172019 3y ago
  Even if SamA manages to come back, will future investors be spooked and he won’t be able to raise the large round of financing?
  • s1artibartfast 3y ago
    there are no future investors. If OpenAI cant bootstrap from 11 billion + profits, they wont be able to.
• Obscurity4340 3y ago
  This had to be fake
• flemhans 3y ago
  I hope he'll make a new one!
• localhost 3y ago
  If you look at the quote tweets on Sam's latest tweet[1] that contain just a single heart and no words, those are all OpenAI employees voting for Sam's return. It's quite a sight to see. [1] https://twitter.com/sama/status/1726099792600903681 https://twitter.com/sama/status/1726099792600903681
  • jessenaser 3y ago
    Also Mira replied with a heart. https://x.com/miramurati/status/1726126391626985793 https://x.com/miramurati/status/1726126391626985793 Also also she left her bio as “CTO @OpenAI”.
    • FartyMcFarter 3y ago
      So she hadn't even agreed with the plan of becoming interim CEO? Either that or she changed her mind...
• siruncledrew 3y ago
  The board completed the "fuck around" stage, now they're in the "find out" stage.
• milleramp 3y ago
  Had to double check this wasn't a Onion article.
• eviks 3y ago
  If only the board et al. could have acted professionally and done some planning and communication before such a drastic decision...
• GreedClarifies 3y ago
  That’s why you don’t hire people you wouldn’t trust to make a ham sandwich onto the board of a 100B+ company.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• seshagiric 3y ago
  So one day you get the ceo of Microsoft to attend your dev conference and next day you get fired and then another day there are negotiations to get you back. What is this? A Russian roulette or a game of thrones??
• mfiguiere 3y ago
  Latest report from TheInformation: > OpenAI's chief strategy officer, Jason Kwon, told employees in a memo just now he was "optimistic" OpenAI could bring back Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and other key employees. There will likely be another update mid-morning tomorrow, Kwon said. https://twitter.com/erinkwoo/status/1726125143267926499 https://twitter.com/erinkwoo/status/1726125143267926499
• andy_ppp 3y ago
  Maybe all this will teach people that having a weird corporate structure can make everything worse, not better.
• Threeve303 3y ago
  Has anyone asked ChatGPT for a solution?
• mariaangelesjs 3y ago
  If Altman gets to return, it’s the goodbye of AI ethics within OpenAI and the elimination of the nonprofit. Also, I believe that hiring him back because of “how much he is loved by people within OpenAI” is like forgetting that a corrupt president did what they did. In all honesty, that has precedent, so it wouldn’t be old news. Also, I read a lot of people here saying this is about engineers vs scientists…I believe that people don’t understand that Data Scientists are full stack engineers. Ilya is one. Greg has just been inspiring people and stopped properly coding with the team a long time ago. Sam never did any code and the vision of an AGI comes from Ilya…Even if Mira now sides with Sam, I believe there’s a lot of social pressure for the employees to support Sam and it shouldn’t be like that. Again, I do believe OpenAI was and is a collective effort. But, I wouldn’t treat Sam as the messiah or compare him to Steve Jobs. That’s indecent towards Steve Jobs who was actually a UX designer.
  • b59831 3y ago
    [dead]
  • TapWaterBandit 3y ago
    On the other hand having virtually the whole staff being willing to follow him shows they clearly think very highly of him. That kind of loyalty is pretty wild when you think about how significant being a part of OPENAI means at this point.
    • LtWorf 3y ago
      They probably just asked a couple of guys.
    • JoeAltmaier 3y ago
      Loyalty is not earned, it is more like 'snared' or 'captured'. Local guy had all the loyalty of his employees, almost a hero to them. Got bought out. He took all the money for himself, left the employees with nothing. Many got laid off. Result? Still loyal. Still talk of him as a hero. Even though he obviously screwed them, cared nothing for them, betrayed them. Loyalty is strange. Born of charisma and empty talk that's all emotion and no substance. Gathering it is more the skill of a salesman than a leader.
• throwsamalt 3y ago
  [flagged]
• ivanche 3y ago
  Televisa presenta
• yalogin 3y ago
  Ah this is the straw that breaks the back of the ethics/responsible AI camel’s back. When Sam comes back he will turn it into a regular company and maximize profits.
• MichaelMoser123 3y ago
  is it possible that this drama is being staged on purpose, in order to create some suspense ahead of ChatGPT-NextNum or something like that?
• tovej 3y ago
  What I'm surprised about in this whole discussion is how little people are actually looking at Altmans worldcoin venture. It is incredibly shady, and has the same kind of sci-fi marketing bullshit vibe going on as Elon Musk's hyperloop and Mars missions, and, come to think of it, OpenAI's marketing. Altman+OpenAI are a hype machine that's riding a bubble to get rich enough through any scheme to be able to turn around and milk users for data, just like facebook and google. The only difference is, he gets to twist the focus towards this sci-fi AGI idea, which works like the distraction element of a magic trick. The media loves to talk about AGI and regulating Skynet, because it's a story that gets the imagination going --- certainly much more interesting than stories about paying people 2 dollars an hour to sift through data used to train a language model for offensive and traumatizing content to feed to the autocomplete parrot. I think it's good that he got kicked off the position as CEO, but that does not suddenly make OpenAI a good actor. Some other jerk will take his spot.
• soufron 3y ago
  But what about the legal responsability of Microsoft and investors there? To explain, it's the board of the non-profit that ousted @sama . Microsoft is not a member of the non-profit. Microsoft is "only" a shareholder of its for-profit subsidiary - even for 10B. Basically, what happened is a change of control in the non-profit majority shareholder of a company Microsoft invested in. But not a change of control in the for-profit company they invested in. To tell the truth, I am not even certain the board of the non-profit would have been legally allowed to discuss the issue with Microsoft at all - it's an internal issue only and that would be a conflict of interest. Microsoft is not happy with that change of control and they favourited the previous representative of their partner. Basically Microsoft want their shareholder non-profit partner to prioritize their interest over its own. And to do that, they are trying to impede on its governance, even threatening it with disorganization, lawsuits and such. This sounds like highly unethical and potentially illegal to me. How come no one is pointing that out? Also, how come a 90 billion dollars company hailed as the future of computing and a major transformative force for society would now be valued 0 dollars only because its non-technical founder is now out? What does it say about the seriousness of it all? But of course, that's Silicon Valley baby.
  • Racing0461 3y ago
    Very good point (even tho i think the right move is for sam to come back as ceo).
  • bob_theslob646 3y ago
    "Also, how come a 90 billion dollars company hailed as the future of computing and a major transformative force for society would now be valued 0 dollars only because its non-technical founder is now out?" Please think about this. Sam Altman is the face of OpenAi and was doing a very good job leading it. If the relationships are what kept OpenAI from always being on top and they removed that from the company, corporations may be more hesitant to do business with them in the future.
    • financltravsty 3y ago
      The company still has assets and a balance sheet. They could fire everyone and simply rent out their process to big orgs and still make a pretty penny.
• lobocinza 3y ago
  Failed coup.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• nojvek 3y ago
  Instead of outsing Sam A and Greg B, if Ilya really had deep concerns, he should have quit and built his own AGI dedicated research company. His prestige surely would have given him funding. Like how Hinton left Google so he could speak freely. IMO inventing AGI is more powerful than nuclear energy. It would be very stupid of humanity to release it out in the wild. LLMs are a great tool and nowhere near AGI. I’m of the belief that alignment of AGI is impossible. It’s like asking us to align with lions. Once we compete for the same resources, we lose.
  • adverbly 3y ago
    > If Ilya really had deep concerns, he should have quit and built his own AGI dedicated research company. ... You should look up some history here. Exactly what you say has already happened and OpenAI is the dedicated research company you are referring to. He originally left Google deep mind I believe. > I’m of the belief that alignment of AGI is impossible. I don't think most people in this space are operating based on beliefs. If there is even a 10% chance that alignment is possible, it is probably still worth pursuing.
• sensanaty 3y ago
  Very naive of me, but I'm hoping this all means the death knell of OpenAI, personally.
• suggala 3y ago
  The current deal with MSFT is cut by Sam is in such a way that Microsoft has huge leverage. Exclusive access, exclusive profit. And after all the profit limit is reached OpenAI sill need to be sold to msft to survive. This is like a worst deal for OpenAI whose goal is to do stuff open source way and it can’t do so due to this deal. If it is not for the MSFt deal, OpenAI could have open sourced and might have resorted to crowdsourcing which might have helped humanity. Also, quickly reaching profit goals is only good for MSFT. There is no need to actually send money to OpenAI team, just provide operating expenses with 25% profit and take 75% profit. OpenAI has built a great software due to years of work and is being simply being milked by MSFt when the time comes for taking profit. And SAM allowed all this under his nose. Making sure OpenAI is ripe for MSFT takeover. This is a back channel deal for takeover. What about the earth donors who donated with humanity goal whose funding made it all possible? I am not sure Sam has any contribution to the OpenAI Software but he gives the world an impression that he owns that and built the entire thing by himself and not giving any attribution to fellow founders.
• suggala 3y ago
  The current deal with MSFT is cut by Sam is in such a way that Microsoft has huge leverage. Exclusive access, exclusive profit. And after all the profit limit is reached OpenAI sill need to be sold to msft to survive. This is like a worst deal for OpenAI whose goal is to do stuff open source way and it can’t do so due to this deal. If it is not for the MSFt deal, OpenAI could have open sourced and might have resorted to crowdsourcing which might have helped humanity. Also, quickly reaching profit goals is only for good for MSFT. There is no need to actually send money to OpenAI team, just provide operating expenses with 25% profit and take 75% profit. OpenAI has built a great software due to years of work and is being simply being milked by MSFt when the time comes for taking profit. And SAM allowed all this under his nose. Making sure OpenAI is ripe for MSFT takeover. This is a back channel deal for takeover. What about the early donors who donated with humanity goal whose funding made it all possible? I am not sure Sam has any contribution to the OpenAI Software but he gives the world an impression that he owns that and built the entire thing by himself and not giving any attribution to fellow founders.
  • suggala 3y ago
    By the way, this product doesn’t need sales people. It sells itself. What is the point of a sales guy leading? This company should be lead by research team not product team.
  • deanrtaylor 3y ago
    I'm just curious how you envision ai helping people in the future? There are countless technologies that are amazing in scope but never get any traction due to not being able to market, sustain and promote themselves properly. Additionally, how do we get there and who funds it in the long term? When you actually consider how much compute power is required to get us to this point of a "pretty decent chat bot/text generator". It doesn't really seem like we are even 20% of the way to agi. If that's true then no amount of crowdfunding is going to get it even remotely close to providing the resources to power something truly revolutionary. Don't get me wrong I agree with some of the points you've made and Microsoft are certainly in it for themselves but I also believe that they would like to avoid owning Openai as they'd not want to position themselves clearly as the sole caretaker of ai due to the amount of scrutiny they'd be under. All that is to say, whether you like him or not, he has taken interest in ai and Openai as well as being a leader on discussing the ethics of developing ai to stratospheric levels that has made many industries and governments take notice.
• dbuser99 3y ago
  Obvious manipulation by microsoft. Its like 1999 again
• markshepard 3y ago
  AGI recommends the following, 1. **Transparent Governance**: OpenAI should strive for greater transparency in its governance structure. This includes clearly outlining the roles and responsibilities of the nonprofit board versus the for-profit subsidiary, and how decisions impact each entity. This would help mitigate misunderstandings and conflicts of interest. 2. **Balanced Board Composition**: The board should be restructured to balance the interests of various stakeholders, including investors, employees, and the broader AI community. This can be achieved by having a diverse set of members with expertise in technology, business, ethics, and law. 3. **Stakeholder Engagement**: Regular engagement with key stakeholders, including investors like Microsoft and employees, is crucial. This ensures that major decisions, such as leadership changes, are made considering their potential impact on all parties involved. 4. **Leadership Stability**: To address concerns about leadership and company direction, it may be beneficial to have a stable leadership team that aligns with OpenAI's mission and values. This could involve a re-evaluation of Sam Altman's role and contributions, considering the interests of both the nonprofit and for-profit entities. 5. **Strategic Communication**: OpenAI should develop a strategic communication plan to address public concerns and market reactions. This includes clear messaging about its mission, decisions, and future plans, which can help maintain public trust and investor confidence. 6. **Ethics and Safety Focus**: Given the transformative potential of AI, OpenAI should continue to prioritize AI ethics and safety. This commitment should be evident in its operations, research directions, and partnerships. 7. **Long-Term Vision Alignment**: Finally, aligning the long-term vision of OpenAI with the interests of its stakeholders, including the global community it aims to serve, is essential. This involves balancing profitability with ethical considerations and societal impact. By implementing these strategies, OpenAI can navigate its current challenges while staying true to its mission of developing AI in a safe and beneficial manner.
• amai 3y ago
  Democracy could have prevented this shitshow. The board could have asked the employees if they are ok with the direction of the company and then simply act according to the outcome of the vote. But companies are always run like dictatorships, leading to mostly terrible decisions disregarding the wisdom of the crowd.