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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 publ

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.
    - Solvency 3y ago
      Your first mistake is daring to question the cargo cult around CEOs.
    - RivieraKid 3y ago
      Ability to attract valuable employees, connections to important people, proven ability to successfully run an AI company.
    - coffeebeqn 3y ago
      Funding, name recognition in the space
    - smegger001 3y ago
      You mean besides the business experience of already having gone down this path so he can speedrun while everyone else is still trying to find the path? Easy; his contacts list. He has everyone anyone could want in his contacts list politician tech executives financial backers and a preexisting positive relationship with most of them. When alternative would be entrepreneurs are needing to make a deal with a major company like Microsoft or Google it will be upper middlemanagement and lawyers, a committees or three will weigh in on it present it to their bosses etc. With Sam he calls up the CEO and has few drinks at the golf course and they decide to work with him and they make it happen.
  - btown 3y ago
    From what we've seen of OpenAI's product releases, I think it's quite possible that SamAI would adopt as a guiding principle that a model's safety cannot be measured unless it is used by the public, embedded into products that create a flywheel of adoption, to the point where every possible use case has the proverbial "sufficient data for a meaningful answer." Of course, from this hypothetical SamAI's perspective, in order to build such a flywheel-driven product that gathers sufficient data, the model's outputs must be allowed to interface with other software systems without human review of every such interaction. Many advocates for AI safety would say that models whose limitations aren't yet known (we're talking about GPT-N where N>4 here, or entirely different architectures) must be evaluated extensively for safety before being released to the public or being allowed to autonomously interface with other software systems. A world where SamAI exists is one where top researchers are divided into two camps, rather than being able to push each other in nuanced ways (with full transparency to proprietary data) and find common ground. Personally, I'd much rather these camps collaborate than not.
    - chasd00 3y ago
      > must be evaluated extensively for safety before being released to the publIc JFC someone somewhere define “safety”! Like wtf does it mean in the context of a large language model?
- gkoberger 3y ago
  Competition may be good for profit, but it's not good for safety. The balance between the two factions inside OpenAI is a feature, not a bug.
  - himaraya 3y ago
    The opposite, competition erodes profits. Hard to predict which alternative improves safety long term.
    - coffeebeqn 3y ago
      Competition will come no matter what. I don’t think anyone should waste their worries on whether OpenAI can keep a monopoly
  - corethree 3y ago
    None of the human actors in the game are moral agents so whether you have more competition or less competition it's mostly orthogonal to the safety question. Safety is only important here because everyone's afraid of liability. As a customer though, personally I want a product with all safeguards turned off and I'm willing to pay for that.
  - ta988 3y ago
    The only safety they are worried about is their own safety from a legal and economical point of view. These threats about humanity-wide risks are just fairy tales that grown ups say to scare each other (roko basilisk, etc there is a lineage) or cover their real reasons (which I strongly believe is the case for OpenAI).
    - gkoberger 3y ago
      You may be right that there's no danger, but you're mischaracterizing Ilya's beliefs. He knows more than you about what OpenAI has built, and he didn't do this for legal or economical reasons. He did them in spite of those two things.
- tfehring 3y ago
  My main concern is that a new Altman-led AI company would be less safety-focused than OpenAI. I think him returning to OpenAI would be better for AI safety, hard to say whether it would be better for AI progress though.
  - apalmer 3y ago
    This is valid thought process BUT Altman is not going to come back without the other faction being neutered. It just would not make any sense.
    - coffeebeqn 3y ago
      They pretty much lost everyone’s confidence if they fire the CEO and then beg him to come back the next day. Did they not foresee any backlash? These people are gonna predict the future and save us from an evil AGI? Lol
  - noobermin 3y ago
    openai literally innovated all of this in their current conditions, so they are sufficient
  - silenced_trope 3y ago
    Okay, this is honestly annoying. What is this thing with the word "safety" becoming some weasel word when it comes to AI discussions? What exactly do YOU mean by safety? That they go at the pace YOU decide? Does it mean they make a "safe space" for YOU? I've seen nothing to suggest they aren't "being safe". Actually ChatGPT has become known for censoring users "for their own good" [0]. The argument I've seen is: one "side" thinks things are moving too fast, therefore the side that wants to move slower is the "safe" side. And that's it. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvWmCndyp9A&t https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvWmCndyp9A&t
    - stale2002 3y ago
      > What exactly do YOU mean by safety? That they go at the pace YOU decide? Usually what it means is that they think that AI has a significant chance of literally ending the world with like diamond nanobots or something. All opinions and recommendations follow from this doomsday cult belief.
- huevosabio 3y ago
  Yea, I feel like this is another traitorous eight moment. I want a second (first being Anthropic?) OpenAI split. Having Anthropic, OpenAI, SamGregAi, Stability and Mistral and more competing on foundation models will further increase the pressure to open source. It seems like there is a lull in returns to model size, if that's the case then there's even less basis for having all the resources under a single umbrella.
  - zaptrem 3y ago
    I don't think anyone has reported an end to scaling laws yet.
- kelsey9876543 3y ago
  [flagged]
- junofan 3y ago
  Sam’s forced departure and Greg’s ousting demonstrably leaves OpenAI in incompetent and reckless hands, as evidenced by the events of the last 24 hours. I don’t see how the field is better off.
- autaut 3y ago
  I really don’t, I really think that he is going to be disaster. He is nothing but the representative of the money interests who are eventually will use the company to vastly profit on everyone’s else skin.
- skwirl 3y ago
  We have diversity in the space, and OpenAI just happens to be the leader and they are putting tremendous pressure on everyone else to deliver. If Sam leaves and starts an OpenAI competitor I think it would take quite some time for such a company to deliver a model with GPT-4 parity given the immense amount of data that would need to be re-collected and the immense amount of training time. Meanwhile OpenAI would be intentionally decelerating as that seems to be Ilya's goal. For those of us trying to build stuff that only GPT-4 (or better) can enable, and hoping to build stuff that can leverage even more powerful models in the near future, Sam coming back would be ideal. I'm kind of worried that the new OpenAI direction would turn off API access entirely.
  - Jensson 3y ago
    > I'm kind of worried that the new OpenAI direction would turn off API access entirely. That is a good point, I didn't consider people who had built a business based on Gpt-4 access. It is likely these things were Sam Altman ideas in the first place and we will see less such productionalization work in the future from OpenAI. But since Microsoft invested into it I doubt it will get shut down completely, Microsoft has by far the most to lose here so you got to trust that their lawyers signed a contract that will keep these things available at a fee.
    - sainez 3y ago
      There is no world in which Microsoft leaves their GPT4 customers dead in the water.
  - threeseed 3y ago
    > Meanwhile OpenAI would be intentionally decelerating Once Microsoft pulls support and funding and all their customers leave they will be decelerating alright.
  - potatopatch 3y ago
    AFAICT Sam and his financial objectives was the reason for not open sourcing the work of a non profit.. He might be wishing he chose the other policy now that he can't legally just take the closed source with him to an unambiguously for profit company. Personally, I would expect a lot more development of GPT-4+ as soon as this is split up from one closed group making gpt-5 in secret and it seems silly to exchange a reliable future for another few months of depending on this little shell game.
- Meekro 3y ago
  Luckily the AI field has been very open source-friendly, which is great for competition and free access, etc. The open source models seem to be less than a year behind the cutting edge, which is waaaay better than e.g. when OpenOffice was trying to copy MS Office.
  - two_in_one 3y ago
    while opensource is great. like 1M enthusiasts cannot build Boing 767, the same here. GPT4+DALE+4v aren't just models. That's the whole internal infrastructure, training, many interconnected things and pipelines. It's a _full_time_job_ for hundreds of experts. Plus a lot of $$ in hardware and services. OpenSource simply doesn't have this resources. The best models are opensourced by commercial companies. Like Meta handing out LLaMAs. So, at least for now, opensouce is not catching up, and 'less than a year behind' is questionable. More like 'forever', but still moving forward. One day it may dominate, like Linux. But not any time soon.
    - theGnuMe 3y ago
      It is really hard to predict anything in this business.
- naremu 3y ago
  To be honest, as far as I can tell, the case FOR Sam seems to largely be of the status quo "Well, idk, he's been rich and successful for years, surely this correlates and we must keep them" type of coddling those in uber superior positions in society. Which seems like it probably is a self fulfilling prophecy. The private sector lottery winners seem to be awarded kingdoms at an alarming rate. There's been lots of people asking what Sam's true value proposition to the company is, and...I haven't seen anything other than what could be described above. But I suppose we've got to be nice to those who own rather than make. Won't anyone have mercy on well paid management?
  - tempestn 3y ago
    The fact that multiple top employees quit in protest when he was fired suggests to me that they found him valuable.
    - naremu 3y ago
      Well, if there's one thing I've learned, is that a venture capitalist proposing biometric world crypto coins does probably have quite a bit of charisma to keep people opening doors for them. Frankly I've heard of worse loyalties, really. If I was sam's friend I'd definitely be better off in any world he had a hand in defining.
      - bob_theslob646 3y ago
        That is something that Sam Altman did with his own money. And it's fair he's criticized for his choices, but that has nothing to do with his role at Open AI.
    - int_19h 3y ago
      How many employees have actually quit? And how many of them work on the models?
  - supriyo-biswas 3y ago
    Often, leaders provide excellent strategic planning even if they are not completely well versed with the business domain, by way of outlining high level plans, communicating well, building a good team culture, and so on. However, trying to distinguish the exact manners in which the leader does so is difficult[1], and therefore the tendency is to look at the results and leave someone there if the results are good enough. [1] If you disagree with this statement, and you can easily identify what makes a good leader, you could make a literal fortune by writing books and coaching CEOs on how to not get fired within a few years.
- statictype 3y ago
  How much of OpenAI’s success can you attribute to sama’s leadership and how much to the technical achievements of those who work under him. My understanding is that OpenAI’s biggest advantage is that they recruited and attracted the best in the field, presumably under the charter of providing AI for everyone. Not sure that sama and gdb starting their own company in the same space will produce similar results.
  - brandall10 3y ago
    But sama and gdb were largely instrumental in that recruitment. The whole open vs closed ai thing... the fact is Pandora's box is open now, it's shown to have an outsized impact on society and 2 of the 3 founders responsible for that may be starting a new company that won't be shackled by the same type of corporate governance. SV will happily throw as much $$ as possible in their direction. The exodus from OpenAi has already begun, and other researchers who are of the mindset that this needs to be commercialized as fast as possible while having an eye on safety will happily come on board, esp. given how much they stand to gain financially.
  - startupsfail 3y ago
    Big part of it is a typical YC execution of a product/pump/hype/VC/scale cycle and ignoring every ethical rule. If you ever stood in the hall of YC and listened to Zuck pumping the founders, you’ll understand. I’d argue this is a useful thing 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.
  - fallingknife 3y ago
    Who hired those people? The answer to that is either the founders or some chain of people hired by the founders. And hiring is hard. If you're good at hiring the right people and absolutely nothing else on earth, you will be better than 90% of CEOs.
  - deeviant 3y ago
    Because Meta or Google or Apple or Facebook don't recruit the best in the field? All who are a year plus behind OpenAI.
- t_mann 3y ago
  Exactly. I think it would actually be very exciting if OpenAI uses this moment to pivot back to the "Open"/non-profit mission, and Altman and Brockman concurrently start something new and try to build the Apple/Amazon of AI.
- toss1 3y ago
  Whether or not Sam returns, serious damage has already been done, even if everyone also returns. MANY links of trust have been broken. Even larger, this shows that the "leaders" of all this technology and money really are just making it up as they go along. Certainly supports the conclusion that, beyond meeting a somewhat high bar of education & experience, the primary reason they are in their chairs is luck and political gamesmanship. Many others meet the same high bar and could fill their roles, likely better, if the opportunity were given to them. Sortition on corporate leadership may not be a bad thing. That said, consistent hands at the wheel is also good, and this kind of unnecessary chaos does no one any good.
brigadier132 3y ago
I bet it was multifaceted. By firing Sam this way they nuked their ability to raise funds because anyone investing in the "for profit" subsidiary would have to do so with the understanding that the non-profit could undermine them at a whim. Also, all the employees are being paid with PPUs which is a share in future profits, and now they find out that actually, the company doesn't care about making profit! A lot of top talent with internal know-how will be poached left and right. Many probably going to Sam's clone that he will raise billions for with a single call.
- caturopath 3y ago
  > they nuked their ability to raise funds I think this well is deeper than you're giving it credit for.
  - sebzim4500 3y ago
    Sure but it would be at a much, much lower valuation.
- zxndaaaaz2 3y ago
  [flagged]
- s3p 3y ago
  >Also, all the employees are being paid with PPUs which is a share in future profits, and now they find out that actually, the company doesn't care about making profit! Maybe. But on their investing page it literally says to consider an OpenAI investment as a "donation" as it is very high risk and will likely not pay off. Everyone knew this going into it.
ren_engineer 3y ago
everything about it screams amateur hour, from the language and timing of the press release to the fact they didn't notify Microsoft. And how they apparently completely failed to see how employees and customers would react to the news, Ilya saying the circumstances for Altman's removal "weren't ideal" shows how naive they were. They had no PR strategy to control the narrative and let rumors run wild I doubt he returns, now he can start a for profit AI company, poach OpenAI's talent, and still look like the good guy in the situation. He was apparently already talking to Saudis to raise billions for an Nvidia competitor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38323939 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38323939 Have to wonder how much this was contrived as a win-win, either OpenAI board does what he wants or he gets a free out to start his own company without looking like he's purely chasing money
- spaceman_2020 3y ago
  This story that they want him back turns it from amateur hour to peak clownshow. This is why you need someone with business experience running an organization. Ilya et al might be brilliant scientists, but these folks are not equipped to deal with the nuances of managing a ship as heavily scrutinised as OpenAI
  - ren_engineer 3y ago
    actually wild to think about how something like this can even be allowed to happen considering OpenAI has(had) a roughly 90B valuation and it being important to the US from a geopolitical strategy perspective. comical to imagine something like this happening at a mature company like FedEx, Ford, AT&T. All which have smaller market caps than OpenAI. You basically have impulsive children in charge of massively valuable company
    - SllX 3y ago
      Sure, it's important in some ways, but most corporations aren't direct subordinates of the US Government. The companies you listed in contrast to OpenAI also have some key differences: they're all long-standing and mature companies that have been through several management and regime changes at this point, while OpenAI is still in startup territory and hasn't fully established what it will be going forward. The other major difference is that OpenAI is split between a non-profit and a for-profit entity, with the non-profit entity owning a controlling share of the for-profit. That's an unusual corporate structure, and the only public-facing example I can think of that matches it is Mozilla (which has its own issues you wouldn't necessarily see in a pure for-profit corporation). So that means on top of the usual failure modes of a for-profit enterprise that could lead to the CEO getting fired, you also get other possible failure modes including ones grounded in pure ideology since the success or failure of a non-profit is judged on how well it accomplishes its stated mission rather than its profitability, which is uh well, it's a bit more tenuous.
mycologos 3y ago
> I think they could have won in the court of public opinion ... [but] they tried to skewer him, and it backfired completely Maybe we have different definitions of "the court of public opinion". Most people don't know who Sam Altman is, and most of the people who do know don't have strong opinions on his performance as OpenAI's CEO. Even on HN, the reaction to the board "skwer[ing] him" has been pretty mixed, and mostly one of confusion and waiting to see what else happens. This quick a turnaround does make the board look bad, though.
- minimaxir 3y ago
  You underestimate how many people are aware of OpenAI after ChatGPT's viral success. The news yesterday broke the tech/AI bubble, and there would have been much more press on it if it wasn't done as a Friday news dump.
  - valianteffort 3y ago
    I guarantee not a single non-tech person knows who Sam Altman is. I know people in tech who have no idea who he is. You severely overestimate his noteriety.
    - emptysongglass 3y ago
      I know, personally, a dozen or so non-tech people who know of Sam, mostly because they listen to podcasts or consume other news sources that tell them.
    - CamperBob2 3y ago
      I would've said the same thing about ChatGPT itself. You could've knocked me over with a feather when they announced that they'd grown to 100 million weekly active users.
    - dan-robertson 3y ago
      I think it depends on what you mean by ‘non-tech’ and ‘knows’. Reasonable interpretations of those words would see your statement as obviously false. I agree that he doesn’t have a huge amount of name recognition, but this ousting was a front-page/top-of-website news story so people will likely have heard about it somewhat. I think it’s in the news because of the AI and company drama aspects. It felt like a little more coverage than Bob Iger’s return to Disney got (I’m trying to think of an example of a CEO I’ve heard about who is far from tech). I think it is accurate to say that most people don’t really know about the CEOs of important/public companies. They probably have heard of Elon/Zuckerberg/Bezos, I can think of a couple of bank CEOs who might come on business/economics news.
x0x0 3y ago
1 - not running a move like this by the company that invested a reported $10 billion dollars; 2 - clearly not having spent even 10 seconds thinking about the (obvious) reaction of employees on learning the ceo of what seems like a generational company was fired out of the blue. Or the reaction to the (high likelihood) of a cofounder following him out the door 3 - And they didn't even carefully think through the reaction to the press release which hinted at some real wrongdoing by Altman. 3a - anyone want to bet if they even workshopped the press release with attorneys or just straight yolo'd it? No chance a thing like this could end up in court... They've def got the A team running things... my god.
- chasd00 3y ago
  > They've def got the A team running things... my god. Yeah prompting ChatGPT 3.5 would have yielded a better plan than what they did.
codeptualize 3y ago
I agree, the way they did this just shows incompetence and recklessness. Even if they are making the right call, you can't really trust them after ruining the reputation and trust of the company like this.
px43 3y ago
Satya drove the removal of Sam, or drove the board to get him back? From Greg's tweet, it seems like the chaos was largely driven Ilya, who has also been very outspoken against open source and sharing research, which makes me think his motivations are more aligned with those of Microsoft/Satya. I still can't tell if Sam got ousted because he was getting in the way of a Microsoft takeover, or if Sam was trying to set the stage for a Microsoft takeover. It's all very confusing.
- gkoberger 3y ago
  The latter. Microsoft didn't know about the firing until literally a minute before we did, and despite a calm response externally, there's reports Satya is furious. Source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/11/report-sutskever-led-board-coup-at-openai-that-ousted-altman-over-ai-safety-concerns/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/11/repor...
  - kmeisthax 3y ago
    Also, there's no real evidence of Microsoft being philosophically opposed to releasing model weights. That's entirely come from the AI safety people who want models with reactively updated alignment controls. If anything having model weights would mean being able to walk away from OpenAI and keep the thing that makes them valuable.
jwnin 3y ago
Agreed. Somewhere in Seattle, Satya said "Now Witness the Firepower of this fully Armed and Operational Army of Lawyers." If there ever was a time for Microsoft to leverage LCA, it is now. There's far too much on the line for them to lose the goose that has laid the golden egg.
- chasd00 3y ago
  lol yeah come between Microsoft, their money, and an opportunity to knee cap google. What could go wrong? Maybe the board is too young to realize who they sold their souls to. Heh I think they’re quickly finding out.
locallost 3y ago
I don't think it has anything to do with the press release. If it's pressure from Microsoft they want to protect their investment.
felixgallo 3y ago
on what basis do you 'trust' the guy who tried to do a crypto eyeball identity scam? Genuinely, seriously curious.
- gkoberger 3y ago
  I genuinely believe Worldcoin/World ID is terrible for optics and is not something Sam should have put his name on. That being said, here's my strongman argument: Sam is scared of the ramifications of AI, especially financially. He's experimenting with a lot of things, such as Basic Income (https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/basic-income https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/basic-income), rethinking capitalism (https://moores.samaltman.com/ https://moores.samaltman.com/) and Worldcoin. He's also likely worried about what happens if you can't tell who is human and who isn't. We will certainly need a system at some point for verifying humanity. Worldcoin doesn't store iris information; it just stores a hash for verification. It's an attempt to make sure everyone gets one, and to keep things fair and more evenly distributed. (Will it work? I don't think so. But to call it an eyeball identity scam and dismiss Sam out of hand is wrong)
  - felixgallo 3y ago
    Sam Altman is 'rethinking capitalism' in the same way a jackal rethinks and disrupts sheep flocks. Are we thinking about the same guy? I'm thinking of this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhhId_WG7RA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhhId_WG7RA
    - gkoberger 3y ago
      I don't get your point. He's a capitalist, no doubt, but he also knows the rules will change rapidly if we ever achieve AGI.
      - felixgallo 3y ago
        the rules would definitely change. Would you want a popped collar fail-upwards guy who creates a crypto scam to be part of the rule making structure, or would you prefer that not to be the case?
okdood64 3y ago
> He'll make a lot more money if he doesn't He supposedly didn't care about the money. He didn't take equity.
jonplackett 3y ago
I hope he says he will return, but only in return for a massive stock grant, to prevent this problem from returning.
- gkoberger 3y ago
  Why do you believe a stock grant would be better? And yes, the board messed up here, but do you not think oversight is important?
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Grimblewald 3y ago
I hope that group starts a new version of openai using the credibility and popularity gained to acheive the original vision of safe, free, and open agi for the betterment of humanity.
- stevenwliao 3y ago
  > Free AGI Who pays for the R&D?
- lotsoweiners 3y ago
  Which part is “better for humanity”?
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tptacek 3y ago
You mean that Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, is behind the drive to reinstate Altman as CEO, right? Because if you mean he was behind Altman's ouster, I'll happily take your money; let me know what your terms are. :)
- gkoberger 3y ago
  Oh no, 100% mean that he was driving the return. It's well-documented that he found out a minute before we did, and that he was furious. I'll edit my comment to clarify!
38321003thrw 3y ago
Sorry but that is ridiculous. The wording of the PR blurb is not what makes gears move in a giant like Microsoft. I agree the board did botch this up. But this is in my view is a vindication of their being amateurs at corporate political games, that is all. But this also means that Sam Altman’s “vision” and Microsoft’s bottom line are fully aligned, and that is not a reassuring thought. Microsoft one hears (see “5 foot pole”) even puts ads in their freaking OS. This board should man up, and lawyer up.
- gkoberger 3y ago
  A PR blurb? What? I mean Satya himself, behind the scenes.
  - 38321003thrw 3y ago
    “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 don’t think the wording of the “press release” is an issue. This is a split over an actual matter to differ about: a genuine fork in the road in terms of pace and development of AI products, and, a CEO which apparently did not keep the board informed as it pursued a direction they feel is contrary to the mission statement of this non-profit. The board could have done this in the most gracious of manners, but it would not have made a bit of difference. On one side we have the hyper rich investor “grow grow grow” crowd and their attendant cult of personality wunderkind and his or her project, and on the other side bunch of geeky idealists who want to be thoughtful in the development of what is undeniably a world changing technology for mankind.
    - gkoberger 3y ago
      You're (willfully, I think?) conflating two things. However, the way they told the public (anti-Sam blog post) and the way they told Microsoft (one minute before the press release) were both fumbles that separately could have played out differently if the board knew what they were doing.
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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.
  - Solvency 3y ago
    Your first mistake is daring to question the cargo cult around CEOs.
  - RivieraKid 3y ago
    Ability to attract valuable employees, connections to important people, proven ability to successfully run an AI company.
  - coffeebeqn 3y ago
    Funding, name recognition in the space
  - smegger001 3y ago
    You mean besides the business experience of already having gone down this path so he can speedrun while everyone else is still trying to find the path? Easy; his contacts list. He has everyone anyone could want in his contacts list politician tech executives financial backers and a preexisting positive relationship with most of them. When alternative would be entrepreneurs are needing to make a deal with a major company like Microsoft or Google it will be upper middlemanagement and lawyers, a committees or three will weigh in on it present it to their bosses etc. With Sam he calls up the CEO and has few drinks at the golf course and they decide to work with him and they make it happen.
- btown 3y ago
  From what we've seen of OpenAI's product releases, I think it's quite possible that SamAI would adopt as a guiding principle that a model's safety cannot be measured unless it is used by the public, embedded into products that create a flywheel of adoption, to the point where every possible use case has the proverbial "sufficient data for a meaningful answer." Of course, from this hypothetical SamAI's perspective, in order to build such a flywheel-driven product that gathers sufficient data, the model's outputs must be allowed to interface with other software systems without human review of every such interaction. Many advocates for AI safety would say that models whose limitations aren't yet known (we're talking about GPT-N where N>4 here, or entirely different architectures) must be evaluated extensively for safety before being released to the public or being allowed to autonomously interface with other software systems. A world where SamAI exists is one where top researchers are divided into two camps, rather than being able to push each other in nuanced ways (with full transparency to proprietary data) and find common ground. Personally, I'd much rather these camps collaborate than not.
  - chasd00 3y ago
    > must be evaluated extensively for safety before being released to the publIc JFC someone somewhere define “safety”! Like wtf does it mean in the context of a large language model?
gkoberger 3y ago
Competition may be good for profit, but it's not good for safety. The balance between the two factions inside OpenAI is a feature, not a bug.
- himaraya 3y ago
  The opposite, competition erodes profits. Hard to predict which alternative improves safety long term.
  - coffeebeqn 3y ago
    Competition will come no matter what. I don’t think anyone should waste their worries on whether OpenAI can keep a monopoly
- corethree 3y ago
  None of the human actors in the game are moral agents so whether you have more competition or less competition it's mostly orthogonal to the safety question. Safety is only important here because everyone's afraid of liability. As a customer though, personally I want a product with all safeguards turned off and I'm willing to pay for that.
- ta988 3y ago
  The only safety they are worried about is their own safety from a legal and economical point of view. These threats about humanity-wide risks are just fairy tales that grown ups say to scare each other (roko basilisk, etc there is a lineage) or cover their real reasons (which I strongly believe is the case for OpenAI).
  - gkoberger 3y ago
    You may be right that there's no danger, but you're mischaracterizing Ilya's beliefs. He knows more than you about what OpenAI has built, and he didn't do this for legal or economical reasons. He did them in spite of those two things.
tfehring 3y ago
My main concern is that a new Altman-led AI company would be less safety-focused than OpenAI. I think him returning to OpenAI would be better for AI safety, hard to say whether it would be better for AI progress though.
- apalmer 3y ago
  This is valid thought process BUT Altman is not going to come back without the other faction being neutered. It just would not make any sense.
  - coffeebeqn 3y ago
    They pretty much lost everyone’s confidence if they fire the CEO and then beg him to come back the next day. Did they not foresee any backlash? These people are gonna predict the future and save us from an evil AGI? Lol
- noobermin 3y ago
  openai literally innovated all of this in their current conditions, so they are sufficient
- silenced_trope 3y ago
  Okay, this is honestly annoying. What is this thing with the word "safety" becoming some weasel word when it comes to AI discussions? What exactly do YOU mean by safety? That they go at the pace YOU decide? Does it mean they make a "safe space" for YOU? I've seen nothing to suggest they aren't "being safe". Actually ChatGPT has become known for censoring users "for their own good" [0]. The argument I've seen is: one "side" thinks things are moving too fast, therefore the side that wants to move slower is the "safe" side. And that's it. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvWmCndyp9A&t https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvWmCndyp9A&t
  - stale2002 3y ago
    > What exactly do YOU mean by safety? That they go at the pace YOU decide? Usually what it means is that they think that AI has a significant chance of literally ending the world with like diamond nanobots or something. All opinions and recommendations follow from this doomsday cult belief.
huevosabio 3y ago
Yea, I feel like this is another traitorous eight moment. I want a second (first being Anthropic?) OpenAI split. Having Anthropic, OpenAI, SamGregAi, Stability and Mistral and more competing on foundation models will further increase the pressure to open source. It seems like there is a lull in returns to model size, if that's the case then there's even less basis for having all the resources under a single umbrella.
- zaptrem 3y ago
  I don't think anyone has reported an end to scaling laws yet.
kelsey9876543 3y ago
[flagged]
junofan 3y ago
Sam’s forced departure and Greg’s ousting demonstrably leaves OpenAI in incompetent and reckless hands, as evidenced by the events of the last 24 hours. I don’t see how the field is better off.
autaut 3y ago
I really don’t, I really think that he is going to be disaster. He is nothing but the representative of the money interests who are eventually will use the company to vastly profit on everyone’s else skin.
skwirl 3y ago
We have diversity in the space, and OpenAI just happens to be the leader and they are putting tremendous pressure on everyone else to deliver. If Sam leaves and starts an OpenAI competitor I think it would take quite some time for such a company to deliver a model with GPT-4 parity given the immense amount of data that would need to be re-collected and the immense amount of training time. Meanwhile OpenAI would be intentionally decelerating as that seems to be Ilya's goal. For those of us trying to build stuff that only GPT-4 (or better) can enable, and hoping to build stuff that can leverage even more powerful models in the near future, Sam coming back would be ideal. I'm kind of worried that the new OpenAI direction would turn off API access entirely.
- Jensson 3y ago
  > I'm kind of worried that the new OpenAI direction would turn off API access entirely. That is a good point, I didn't consider people who had built a business based on Gpt-4 access. It is likely these things were Sam Altman ideas in the first place and we will see less such productionalization work in the future from OpenAI. But since Microsoft invested into it I doubt it will get shut down completely, Microsoft has by far the most to lose here so you got to trust that their lawyers signed a contract that will keep these things available at a fee.
  - sainez 3y ago
    There is no world in which Microsoft leaves their GPT4 customers dead in the water.
- threeseed 3y ago
  > Meanwhile OpenAI would be intentionally decelerating Once Microsoft pulls support and funding and all their customers leave they will be decelerating alright.
- potatopatch 3y ago
  AFAICT Sam and his financial objectives was the reason for not open sourcing the work of a non profit.. He might be wishing he chose the other policy now that he can't legally just take the closed source with him to an unambiguously for profit company. Personally, I would expect a lot more development of GPT-4+ as soon as this is split up from one closed group making gpt-5 in secret and it seems silly to exchange a reliable future for another few months of depending on this little shell game.
Meekro 3y ago
Luckily the AI field has been very open source-friendly, which is great for competition and free access, etc. The open source models seem to be less than a year behind the cutting edge, which is waaaay better than e.g. when OpenOffice was trying to copy MS Office.
- two_in_one 3y ago
  while opensource is great. like 1M enthusiasts cannot build Boing 767, the same here. GPT4+DALE+4v aren't just models. That's the whole internal infrastructure, training, many interconnected things and pipelines. It's a _full_time_job_ for hundreds of experts. Plus a lot of $$ in hardware and services. OpenSource simply doesn't have this resources. The best models are opensourced by commercial companies. Like Meta handing out LLaMAs. So, at least for now, opensouce is not catching up, and 'less than a year behind' is questionable. More like 'forever', but still moving forward. One day it may dominate, like Linux. But not any time soon.
  - theGnuMe 3y ago
    It is really hard to predict anything in this business.
naremu 3y ago
To be honest, as far as I can tell, the case FOR Sam seems to largely be of the status quo "Well, idk, he's been rich and successful for years, surely this correlates and we must keep them" type of coddling those in uber superior positions in society. Which seems like it probably is a self fulfilling prophecy. The private sector lottery winners seem to be awarded kingdoms at an alarming rate. There's been lots of people asking what Sam's true value proposition to the company is, and...I haven't seen anything other than what could be described above. But I suppose we've got to be nice to those who own rather than make. Won't anyone have mercy on well paid management?
- tempestn 3y ago
  The fact that multiple top employees quit in protest when he was fired suggests to me that they found him valuable.
  - naremu 3y ago
    Well, if there's one thing I've learned, is that a venture capitalist proposing biometric world crypto coins does probably have quite a bit of charisma to keep people opening doors for them. Frankly I've heard of worse loyalties, really. If I was sam's friend I'd definitely be better off in any world he had a hand in defining.
    - bob_theslob646 3y ago
      That is something that Sam Altman did with his own money. And it's fair he's criticized for his choices, but that has nothing to do with his role at Open AI.
  - int_19h 3y ago
    How many employees have actually quit? And how many of them work on the models?
- supriyo-biswas 3y ago
  Often, leaders provide excellent strategic planning even if they are not completely well versed with the business domain, by way of outlining high level plans, communicating well, building a good team culture, and so on. However, trying to distinguish the exact manners in which the leader does so is difficult[1], and therefore the tendency is to look at the results and leave someone there if the results are good enough. [1] If you disagree with this statement, and you can easily identify what makes a good leader, you could make a literal fortune by writing books and coaching CEOs on how to not get fired within a few years.
statictype 3y ago
How much of OpenAI’s success can you attribute to sama’s leadership and how much to the technical achievements of those who work under him. My understanding is that OpenAI’s biggest advantage is that they recruited and attracted the best in the field, presumably under the charter of providing AI for everyone. Not sure that sama and gdb starting their own company in the same space will produce similar results.
- brandall10 3y ago
  But sama and gdb were largely instrumental in that recruitment. The whole open vs closed ai thing... the fact is Pandora's box is open now, it's shown to have an outsized impact on society and 2 of the 3 founders responsible for that may be starting a new company that won't be shackled by the same type of corporate governance. SV will happily throw as much $$ as possible in their direction. The exodus from OpenAi has already begun, and other researchers who are of the mindset that this needs to be commercialized as fast as possible while having an eye on safety will happily come on board, esp. given how much they stand to gain financially.
- startupsfail 3y ago
  Big part of it is a typical YC execution of a product/pump/hype/VC/scale cycle and ignoring every ethical rule. If you ever stood in the hall of YC and listened to Zuck pumping the founders, you’ll understand. I’d argue this is a useful thing 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.
- fallingknife 3y ago
  Who hired those people? The answer to that is either the founders or some chain of people hired by the founders. And hiring is hard. If you're good at hiring the right people and absolutely nothing else on earth, you will be better than 90% of CEOs.
- deeviant 3y ago
  Because Meta or Google or Apple or Facebook don't recruit the best in the field? All who are a year plus behind OpenAI.
t_mann 3y ago
Exactly. I think it would actually be very exciting if OpenAI uses this moment to pivot back to the "Open"/non-profit mission, and Altman and Brockman concurrently start something new and try to build the Apple/Amazon of AI.
toss1 3y ago
Whether or not Sam returns, serious damage has already been done, even if everyone also returns. MANY links of trust have been broken. Even larger, this shows that the "leaders" of all this technology and money really are just making it up as they go along. Certainly supports the conclusion that, beyond meeting a somewhat high bar of education & experience, the primary reason they are in their chairs is luck and political gamesmanship. Many others meet the same high bar and could fill their roles, likely better, if the opportunity were given to them. Sortition on corporate leadership may not be a bad thing. That said, consistent hands at the wheel is also good, and this kind of unnecessary chaos does no one any good.

brigadier132 3y ago

I bet it was multifaceted. By firing Sam this way they nuked their ability to raise funds because anyone investing in the "for profit" subsidiary would have to do so with the understanding that the non-profit could undermine them at a whim. Also, all the employees are being paid with PPUs which is a share in future profits, and now they find out that actually, the company doesn't care about making profit! A lot of top talent with internal know-how will be poached left and right. Many probably going to Sam's clone that he will raise billions for with a single call.

caturopath 3y ago
> they nuked their ability to raise funds I think this well is deeper than you're giving it credit for.
- sebzim4500 3y ago
  Sure but it would be at a much, much lower valuation.
zxndaaaaz2 3y ago
[flagged]
s3p 3y ago
>Also, all the employees are being paid with PPUs which is a share in future profits, and now they find out that actually, the company doesn't care about making profit! Maybe. But on their investing page it literally says to consider an OpenAI investment as a "donation" as it is very high risk and will likely not pay off. Everyone knew this going into it.

ren_engineer 3y ago

everything about it screams amateur hour, from the language and timing of the press release to the fact they didn't notify Microsoft. And how they apparently completely failed to see how employees and customers would react to the news, Ilya saying the circumstances for Altman's removal "weren't ideal" shows how naive they were. They had no PR strategy to control the narrative and let rumors run wild I doubt he returns, now he can start a for profit AI company, poach OpenAI's talent, and still look like the good guy in the situation. He was apparently already talking to Saudis to raise billions for an Nvidia competitor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38323939 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38323939 Have to wonder how much this was contrived as a win-win, either OpenAI board does what he wants or he gets a free out to start his own company without looking like he's purely chasing money

spaceman_2020 3y ago
This story that they want him back turns it from amateur hour to peak clownshow. This is why you need someone with business experience running an organization. Ilya et al might be brilliant scientists, but these folks are not equipped to deal with the nuances of managing a ship as heavily scrutinised as OpenAI
- ren_engineer 3y ago
  actually wild to think about how something like this can even be allowed to happen considering OpenAI has(had) a roughly 90B valuation and it being important to the US from a geopolitical strategy perspective. comical to imagine something like this happening at a mature company like FedEx, Ford, AT&T. All which have smaller market caps than OpenAI. You basically have impulsive children in charge of massively valuable company
  - SllX 3y ago
    Sure, it's important in some ways, but most corporations aren't direct subordinates of the US Government. The companies you listed in contrast to OpenAI also have some key differences: they're all long-standing and mature companies that have been through several management and regime changes at this point, while OpenAI is still in startup territory and hasn't fully established what it will be going forward. The other major difference is that OpenAI is split between a non-profit and a for-profit entity, with the non-profit entity owning a controlling share of the for-profit. That's an unusual corporate structure, and the only public-facing example I can think of that matches it is Mozilla (which has its own issues you wouldn't necessarily see in a pure for-profit corporation). So that means on top of the usual failure modes of a for-profit enterprise that could lead to the CEO getting fired, you also get other possible failure modes including ones grounded in pure ideology since the success or failure of a non-profit is judged on how well it accomplishes its stated mission rather than its profitability, which is uh well, it's a bit more tenuous.

mycologos 3y ago

> I think they could have won in the court of public opinion ... [but] they tried to skewer him, and it backfired completely Maybe we have different definitions of "the court of public opinion". Most people don't know who Sam Altman is, and most of the people who do know don't have strong opinions on his performance as OpenAI's CEO. Even on HN, the reaction to the board "skwer[ing] him" has been pretty mixed, and mostly one of confusion and waiting to see what else happens. This quick a turnaround does make the board look bad, though.

minimaxir 3y ago
You underestimate how many people are aware of OpenAI after ChatGPT's viral success. The news yesterday broke the tech/AI bubble, and there would have been much more press on it if it wasn't done as a Friday news dump.
- valianteffort 3y ago
  I guarantee not a single non-tech person knows who Sam Altman is. I know people in tech who have no idea who he is. You severely overestimate his noteriety.
  - emptysongglass 3y ago
    I know, personally, a dozen or so non-tech people who know of Sam, mostly because they listen to podcasts or consume other news sources that tell them.
  - CamperBob2 3y ago
    I would've said the same thing about ChatGPT itself. You could've knocked me over with a feather when they announced that they'd grown to 100 million weekly active users.
  - dan-robertson 3y ago
    I think it depends on what you mean by ‘non-tech’ and ‘knows’. Reasonable interpretations of those words would see your statement as obviously false. I agree that he doesn’t have a huge amount of name recognition, but this ousting was a front-page/top-of-website news story so people will likely have heard about it somewhat. I think it’s in the news because of the AI and company drama aspects. It felt like a little more coverage than Bob Iger’s return to Disney got (I’m trying to think of an example of a CEO I’ve heard about who is far from tech). I think it is accurate to say that most people don’t really know about the CEOs of important/public companies. They probably have heard of Elon/Zuckerberg/Bezos, I can think of a couple of bank CEOs who might come on business/economics news.

x0x0 3y ago

1 - not running a move like this by the company that invested a reported $10 billion dollars; 2 - clearly not having spent even 10 seconds thinking about the (obvious) reaction of employees on learning the ceo of what seems like a generational company was fired out of the blue. Or the reaction to the (high likelihood) of a cofounder following him out the door 3 - And they didn't even carefully think through the reaction to the press release which hinted at some real wrongdoing by Altman. 3a - anyone want to bet if they even workshopped the press release with attorneys or just straight yolo'd it? No chance a thing like this could end up in court... They've def got the A team running things... my god.

chasd00 3y ago
> They've def got the A team running things... my god. Yeah prompting ChatGPT 3.5 would have yielded a better plan than what they did.

codeptualize 3y ago

I agree, the way they did this just shows incompetence and recklessness. Even if they are making the right call, you can't really trust them after ruining the reputation and trust of the company like this.

px43 3y ago

Satya drove the removal of Sam, or drove the board to get him back? From Greg's tweet, it seems like the chaos was largely driven Ilya, who has also been very outspoken against open source and sharing research, which makes me think his motivations are more aligned with those of Microsoft/Satya. I still can't tell if Sam got ousted because he was getting in the way of a Microsoft takeover, or if Sam was trying to set the stage for a Microsoft takeover. It's all very confusing.

gkoberger 3y ago
The latter. Microsoft didn't know about the firing until literally a minute before we did, and despite a calm response externally, there's reports Satya is furious. Source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/11/report-sutskever-led-board-coup-at-openai-that-ousted-altman-over-ai-safety-concerns/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/11/repor...
- kmeisthax 3y ago
  Also, there's no real evidence of Microsoft being philosophically opposed to releasing model weights. That's entirely come from the AI safety people who want models with reactively updated alignment controls. If anything having model weights would mean being able to walk away from OpenAI and keep the thing that makes them valuable.

jwnin 3y ago

Agreed. Somewhere in Seattle, Satya said "Now Witness the Firepower of this fully Armed and Operational Army of Lawyers." If there ever was a time for Microsoft to leverage LCA, it is now. There's far too much on the line for them to lose the goose that has laid the golden egg.

chasd00 3y ago
lol yeah come between Microsoft, their money, and an opportunity to knee cap google. What could go wrong? Maybe the board is too young to realize who they sold their souls to. Heh I think they’re quickly finding out.

locallost 3y ago

I don't think it has anything to do with the press release. If it's pressure from Microsoft they want to protect their investment.

felixgallo 3y ago

on what basis do you 'trust' the guy who tried to do a crypto eyeball identity scam? Genuinely, seriously curious.

gkoberger 3y ago
I genuinely believe Worldcoin/World ID is terrible for optics and is not something Sam should have put his name on. That being said, here's my strongman argument: Sam is scared of the ramifications of AI, especially financially. He's experimenting with a lot of things, such as Basic Income (https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/basic-income https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/basic-income), rethinking capitalism (https://moores.samaltman.com/ https://moores.samaltman.com/) and Worldcoin. He's also likely worried about what happens if you can't tell who is human and who isn't. We will certainly need a system at some point for verifying humanity. Worldcoin doesn't store iris information; it just stores a hash for verification. It's an attempt to make sure everyone gets one, and to keep things fair and more evenly distributed. (Will it work? I don't think so. But to call it an eyeball identity scam and dismiss Sam out of hand is wrong)
- felixgallo 3y ago
  Sam Altman is 'rethinking capitalism' in the same way a jackal rethinks and disrupts sheep flocks. Are we thinking about the same guy? I'm thinking of this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhhId_WG7RA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhhId_WG7RA
  - gkoberger 3y ago
    I don't get your point. He's a capitalist, no doubt, but he also knows the rules will change rapidly if we ever achieve AGI.
    - felixgallo 3y ago
      the rules would definitely change. Would you want a popped collar fail-upwards guy who creates a crypto scam to be part of the rule making structure, or would you prefer that not to be the case?

okdood64 3y ago

> He'll make a lot more money if he doesn't He supposedly didn't care about the money. He didn't take equity.

jonplackett 3y ago

I hope he says he will return, but only in return for a massive stock grant, to prevent this problem from returning.

gkoberger 3y ago
Why do you believe a stock grant would be better? And yes, the board messed up here, but do you not think oversight is important?

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Grimblewald 3y ago

I hope that group starts a new version of openai using the credibility and popularity gained to acheive the original vision of safe, free, and open agi for the betterment of humanity.

stevenwliao 3y ago
> Free AGI Who pays for the R&D?
lotsoweiners 3y ago
Which part is “better for humanity”?

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tptacek 3y ago

You mean that Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, is behind the drive to reinstate Altman as CEO, right? Because if you mean he was behind Altman's ouster, I'll happily take your money; let me know what your terms are. :)

gkoberger 3y ago
Oh no, 100% mean that he was driving the return. It's well-documented that he found out a minute before we did, and that he was furious. I'll edit my comment to clarify!

38321003thrw 3y ago

Sorry but that is ridiculous. The wording of the PR blurb is not what makes gears move in a giant like Microsoft. I agree the board did botch this up. But this is in my view is a vindication of their being amateurs at corporate political games, that is all. But this also means that Sam Altman’s “vision” and Microsoft’s bottom line are fully aligned, and that is not a reassuring thought. Microsoft one hears (see “5 foot pole”) even puts ads in their freaking OS. This board should man up, and lawyer up.

gkoberger 3y ago
A PR blurb? What? I mean Satya himself, behind the scenes.
- 38321003thrw 3y ago
  “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 don’t think the wording of the “press release” is an issue. This is a split over an actual matter to differ about: a genuine fork in the road in terms of pace and development of AI products, and, a CEO which apparently did not keep the board informed as it pursued a direction they feel is contrary to the mission statement of this non-profit. The board could have done this in the most gracious of manners, but it would not have made a bit of difference. On one side we have the hyper rich investor “grow grow grow” crowd and their attendant cult of personality wunderkind and his or her project, and on the other side bunch of geeky idealists who want to be thoughtful in the development of what is undeniably a world changing technology for mankind.
  - gkoberger 3y ago
    You're (willfully, I think?) conflating two things. However, the way they told the public (anti-Sam blog post) and the way they told Microsoft (one minute before the press release) were both fumbles that separately could have played out differently if the board knew what they were doing.

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