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OpenAI investors try to get Sam Altman back as CEO after sudden firing
- crowcroft 3y agoUltimately the board shouldn’t have signed off on the big Microsoft deals etc in the first place, or taken action sooner…
- nl 3y agoI wish we knew what the real cause was. Some initial coverage talked about Sutskever's concerns over the lack of openness (possibly in publishing results if not full open source). Other coverage made Sutskever sound like a doomer (the "AI will take over" type), although popular media often does conflate real concerns about the biases of some AI models with doomerism.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- hobobaggins 3y agoWe'll never know exactly what the issue was. It's in nobody's best interest to share that information. It's not in OpenAI's, Microsoft's, and certainly not sama's. Probably not even Ilya's. Ultimately, whatever it was, it will be smoothed over.
- MuffinFlavored 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_too_shall_pass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_too_shall_pass
- PeterStuer 3y agoI'm sure they all "invested" because they truly believed in the non-profit mission of OpenAI /s
- arisAlexis 3y agoCapital tries to make a company forfeit it's constitution of non profit to make profit. Shocked I tell ya
- samspenc 3y ago[flagged]
- supergirl 3y agoat this point returning would make the situation worse. better a completely fresh start if openai is to have a future.
- floydnoel 3y agoNo, not necessarily any more than Steve Jobs returning to Apple made it worse.
- gumballindie 3y agoWhat’s up with comparing altman to steve jobs? He’s well behind him on the scale of leadership, inspiration, vision, and not to mention he had little to no contribution to ai, other than a crypto style aggressive marketing campaign, sprinkled with fud fomo and gaslighting.
- cmrdporcupine 3y agoThis is a site run by YCombinator. Altman is Paul Graham's bud, and YCombinator alumni.
- bigyikes 3y agoNot saying you're wrong, but the analogy is easy to draw. Both are CEOs, both were ousted, both are charismatic, Apple is the most valuable company in history, and OpenAI is among the fastest growing in history.
- timeon 3y agoUsing analogy is often fallacy.
- hello_moto 3y agoCharismatic? Altman? Hmmmm
- ahmedhosssam 3y ago
- PeterStuer 3y ago"Line must go up"
- neonate 3y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20231119200418/https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/openai-investors-try-to-get-sam-altman-back-as-ceo-after-sudden-firing/ar-AA1k9Jom https://web.archive.org/web/20231119200418/https://www.msn.c... https://archive.ph/NBs7w https://archive.ph/NBs7w
- roland35 3y agoOops! Not being candid isn't so bad after all...
- htrp 3y agoApparently Sam and Greg are at the OpenAI offices to negotiate their return.
- huytersd 3y agoSource?
- gkoberger 3y agoFor what it's worth, I doubt any negotiations will be taking place in the OpenAI office. They've been negotiating since yesterday. The board doesn't work from the office (they're not employees), and there's absolutely no way they'd negotiate on Sam's home turf. It's been noted that Satya is leading the negotiations on Sam's behalf, and he's certainly not in SF. Rather, this is a show of solidarity from the OpenAI team. I bet the plan is to be together when Sam is reinstated.
- nothrowaways 3y agoTechnically, They can't negotiate their return if they have already returned.
- jterrys 3y agoOf course they would. There's a lot of money and TC tied to OpenAI. Nonprofit status, ethical mission, and the problematic legalese of the datasets used be damned.
- anotherhue 3y agoDon't forget to checkout the LocalLLaMA subreddit to see the current state of hobbyist->small professional quality. Obviously not on the level of GPT4/Claude (there are some good comparisions), but close enough to dispel any notion that this One True Saviour is needed for this field to advance. By all accounts he wasn't even spending that much time on it. https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/top/?t=month https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/top/?t=month
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- rosywoozlechan 3y agoI think Altman must have worked in the past with lots of ycombinator founders to resolve disputes. Then to end up in his own, completely blind-sided and cut off. Nobody is immune to bad founder relationships.
- gkoberger 3y agoI don't think he's on his own. All those people he helped in the past have come out to support him via heart emojis. Almost his entire company (minus the board) has publicly supported him. His team is currently hosting him at the office with hopes to reinstate him. The CEO who temporarily replaced him has publicly and privately supported his return. OpenAI's investors are backing him. His cofounder quit in solidarity. Turns out the secret to getting through something like this is to simply have spent the past 15+ years genuinely helping everyone you've ever come across.
- denverllc 3y agoSure, he may have support from people like yourself. However, it’s possible that many people supporting him know the full story, or may be supporting him for the wrong reasons. For instance, Sam may have been courting outside investment for OpenAI or his own ventures competing with OpenAI without disclosing it to the board. Also, people may be supporting him because of their own interests (consider Microsoft). To say that he has support from people not involved is a bit meaningless right now; and saying he has support from j side OpenAI is devoid of evidence.
- gkoberger 3y agoI think you missed a majority of my post? His CEO replacement supports him, the chairman of the board supports him, his investors (at least Satya + Kohsla) support him, his entire org supports him. You'd expect a handful of these people not to if there was really anything there, right?
- rosywoozlechan 3y agoI'm sure that this even happened at all isn't good for anyone. I can't for the life of me understand how the people who made this decision did it in the complete absence of talking to investors, stakeholders and even the OpenAI employees in leadership positions. And then to provide no explanation. Even the community and people who were using their APIs deserved one. They behaved so irresponsibly.
- layer8 3y agoApparently nothing new since https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38325552 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38325552.
- clnq 3y agoLooks like a lot of people were taken by surprise. It's almost as if whoever planned the coup wasn't very... candid (to borrow a word).
- comfysocks 3y agoIf you telegraph your punch, you might get punched. Also: “when you have to shoot, shoot. Don’t talk!”
- layer8 3y agoOne might argue that firing Sam Altman was too candid an action.
- modernpink 3y agoSurely the entire board would have to stand down
- seydor 3y agomarkets are about to open again
- nextworddev 3y agoLol
- bogwog 3y agoI don't follow OpenAI or SV news all that much. Is this guy really that critical to the company? I thought Ilya Sutskever was the genius? Is this a non-compete thing, where they're scared Altman will take company secrets to a competitor, or is this dude actually a major factor in the company's success (and not just a lucky bystander)?
- ergocoder 3y agoThe dude is the CEO. Likely he is a significant factor of success. Have you worked for an average / incompetent boss? It is bad.
- christkv 3y agoI mean he probably was an important factor in getting the commercial state of OpenAI Inc to what it is today. However a lot of people feel that he betrayed the original funding goal of OpenAI which was to work for the benefit of humanity. I'm not convinced OpenAI Inc is doing anything more for "humanities benefit" than Meta, Google, Microsoft or other players in the space. I would like to know what is the actual reason for why they fired him though. Is there more to this story than meets the eye?
- infoseek12 3y agoEven if he isn’t critical to OpenAI’s future there is the issue of how the board handled this. They surprised everyone from their most significant investors to their employees, which would be justified if they have a very good reason. Without an excellent reason, all of this looks capricious and incompetent.
- projectileboy 3y agoThank you - this is one of the few reasonable takes I've seen on this whole mess. There is literally nothing Altman could have done that would justify the board having handled the situation in this way, and it makes them look grossly incompetent. Even if Altman had been engaged in some kind of criminal act, this is not the way in which you proceed. And regardless of whatever corporate structures you have in place, it is the height of naivete to think you can ignore the concerns of people who have written you a $10B check. I do think this is a shame, because the structure had the potential to allow altruistic people to maintain some kind of governor on the commercial growth engine, but now that will be gone.
- sp332 3y agoSutskever has been clashing with Altman and it looks like he orchestrated his firing. Getting him back would almost certainly mean losing the other or even the whole board. Investors have decided which they would prefer to hang on to. Edit: updated pronouns
- romanhn 3y agoIlya is a he, not she
- antimora 3y agoShe?
- gkoberger 3y agoIlya is a "him". And yes, there's probably no path to Ilya and Sam both remaining at the company... but both are brilliant adults with (relatively) low egos, so there's hope they can settle this and work together. Their disagreements on the future of AI are a feature, not a bug.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dontupvoteme 3y agoWell that's curtains for the concept of safety in AI.
- brookst 3y agoWell that’s certainly in keeping with the tone of those who profess to care about AI safety.
- pjc50 3y agoThe idea of "safety" by self-restraint was always ludicrous. It would disintegrate like a snowflake under a blowtorch in pursuit of profit. Mind you, the risk of "AI" acting on its own is massively exaggerated. It's AI-wielding humans who are the real unalignable threat.
- ben_w 3y ago> Mind you, the risk of "AI" acting on its own is massively exaggerated. It's AI-wielding humans who are the real unalignable threat. IMO depends where you draw the line between "AI acting on its own" and "person takes AI that shouldn't be left unsupervised, sets it going in an infinite loop, leaves it unsupervised, then it explodes" (so far mostly in small ways and in the face of the person who did it, which is basically fine, but still, where do you draw the line?)
- smnrchrds 3y agoWhat are the odds that, if Sam Altman returns to OpenAI, it would remain a non-profit? From everything that the news has covered since his departure, it seems that the board is committed to the non-profit mission, but Sam runs OpenAI like a for-profit startup company. I imagine if he returns, the board will be replaced with people who share Sam's vision and OpenAI will drop the façade of public responsibility and non-profit mission and start optimizing for money.
- neonate 3y agoFTA: "Altman is thinking about returning but has told investors that if he does return, he wants a new board and governance structure"
- gkoberger 3y agoIf I had to bet, I'd say it remains a non-profit but with significant structural changes (such as removing caps on returns and more experienced people joining the board). Sam has always spoken favorably of the non-profit portion of the company, and he's very aware that the importance of what OpenAI is doing exceeds what a corporation can handle.
- layer8 3y agoI think it would really be best overall if they can find a compromise. Both a full for-profit takeover and half of OpenAI’s employees leaving for a new startup would seem to be worse outcomes.
- pardoned_turkey 3y agoThey dropped it right after ChatGPT came out. For a full year, they were luring top talent with promises of exorbitant equity, sold integrations left and right, played a role in writing the EO that makes it difficult for newcomers to compete with OpenAI, etc. Didn't we have a story about $10M comp packages at OpenAI just a week ago? I can't imagine this was just Altman. I suspect that a large proportion of current OpenAI staff is in it for the money and couldn't care less about the non-profit goals of the pre-ChatGPT era. In fact, many probably oppose the idea because it stands in the way of a big payout down the line. This coup was probably some sort of the last stand for the old-timers who still believe in the non-profit mission, but I doubt they can prevail in the long haul. Not without gutting the company, at the very least.
- mirekrusin 3y agoSo if you wanted to remove non profit status from the equation, this is the best way to play it where at the end everybody is going to cheer "yey!", right?
- benzible 3y agohttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-19/openai-negotiations-to-reinstate-altman-hit-snag-over-board-role https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-19/openai-ne... (https://archive.vn/hLl2l https://archive.vn/hLl2l) A group of OpenAI executives and investors racing to get Sam Altman reinstated to his role as chief executive officer have reached an impasse over the makeup and role of the board, [...] Altman, who was fired Friday, is open to returning but wants to see governance changes — including the removal of existing board members, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the negotiations are private. After facing intense pressure following their decision to fire Altman Friday, the board agreed in principle to step down, but have so far refused to officially do so. As of midday Sunday, the board had not resigned out of concern over who could replace them, and were vetting candidates, one of the people said.
- piuantiderp 3y agoWhy would they step down? Why have the fiction of a board then if the CEO can handle everything on his own?
- I_am_tiberius 3y agoMicrosoft worried about market opening...
- jrflowers 3y agoI love donating money to nonprofits and then exercising my rights as a shareholder to get my legal mandated influence over board seats. These board members must be sweating bullet given their fiduciary duty to these investors.
- trashtester 3y agoI don't think so. OpenAI was created as a non-profit, and I don't think they have any kind of fudiciary duty to create profit.
- jrflowers 3y agoIt is a special thing, a for-profit 501c3. At tax time it is tax exempt but when a guy I like gets fired the investors can leverage their donationvestments to fire the board and push the chari-business into further profitability. It is a good setup and it makes sense why so many people are cheering things on today :)
- blackoil 3y agoMS investments are in for-profit company, not the parent.
- jrflowers 3y agoExactly, that’s why the investors should get to fire the board of the charity
- trashtester 3y agoWhich board? The board of the for-profit subsidiary or the non-profit parent?
- jrflowers 3y agoYes
- dang 3y agoRelated ongoing thread: OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38337568 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38337568 - Nov 2023 (18 comments)
- ravenhappy 3y agoFrom what's been said a plausible explanation could be the sama was being courted by saudi investors, incl vision fund, to make AI silicon, for 100 billion dollars, and wasn't upfront with the board. Who knows, total speculation, but definitely grounds for dismissal. Of course he was probably a managed asset, and who knows what kind of complexity is behind the scenes. OpenAI has a very valuable product. Not supporting any ideology here, but the Russian president said that whomever controls AI controls the world. Well, anyway, AI will be a useful tool for technological advancement. It can definitely solve problems. EDIT: meaning it's important that the AI isn't given problems whose solution harms beings, at all, let alone war- not even by carbon emissions into the atmosphere.