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I 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

by bogwog 3y ago

I 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 ago
The 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 ago
I 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 ago
Even 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 ago
  Thank 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.
  - 627467 3y ago
    > Even if Altman had been engaged in some kind of criminal act, this is not the way in which you proceed. No information came to light to back this sudden and unexpected decisions but were there criminal acts involved, it certainly would not be unexpected. CEOs get instant fired for being under investigation for criminal acts all the time. But again, 48hs later it seems clear it was not the case
  - piuantiderp 3y ago
    I think he might have been caught fundraising for a new venture in AI, but separate from OpenAI. It would be a gray-area in many other companies but as CEO, reporting to a board where he has no seat, it would be cause.
  - 15457345234 3y ago
    > Even if Altman had been engaged in some kind of criminal act, this is not the way in which you proceed. Sometimes this is the _only_ way in which you proceed. If you gain knowledge of something truly egregious and don't eject the culprit you become immediately liable for any future malfeasance. Sometimes 'wow, gtfo right now' is the only safe course of action.
    - wddkcs 3y ago
      Unless Sam was using the AI to commit satanic sacrifices, it's hard to see what warrants expulsion at all, let alone immediate termination. If they did have such a compelling reason to stuff their own reputation, they did a horrible job communicating it.
      - 15457345234 3y ago
        > they did a horrible job communicating it I think their communication is perfectly professional. You're just expecting some weird tell-all because that's how this sector weirdly chooses to operate, just blurting shit out on twitter then thinking about the consequences later. The wording of their press release is wonderfully professional. Discreet, generic, succinct. That's how things should be done. It's the other side that are acting oddly. Charging into the office and taking selfies, counting public oaths of fealty on twitter? V. weird.
gpsx 3y ago
I don't think the backlash is about one person as much as it is the direction of the company. Doing something for the good of humanity is all well and good, which seems to be the boards position, but I think they really need to test themselves in the market if they want to make something good. And then there are the employees and the investors who would much rather see more money come out of this.
gumballindie 3y ago
He’s critical to those he’s making favours.
figassis 3y ago
They likely knew if this was not a surprise, they would have been blocked from doing it by political maneuvering.
VirusNewbie 3y ago
Ilya is certainly the brains behind ChatGPT, but I believe a lot of engineering talent recently joined OpenAI because they aligned with Sam and Greg’s vision of making consumer software and commercializing it. So while you’re right that Sama isn’t crucial to OpenAI, I think a lot more employees are aligned with Sama’s vision.
- Hizonner 3y ago
  Having those people quit could be a feature, rather than a bug. If that "vision" is the thing that you're worried about, because you think rapid commercialization is actively dangerous, then you may very well have a reason to want to completely blow up the commercial side of OpenAI. Even if it gets reconstituted elsewhere, you've at least created a speed bump by forcing it to get reconstituted. It's inconvenient that in the medium to long term that means you wind up with fewer GPUs for the True Cause(TM), but at least the people you have working on it believe in that cause, and at least you haven't actively accelerated some destructive outcome.
tw04 3y ago
They’re afraid he’s an actual leader and all of their talent will follow him. It doesn’t matter how good Ilya is individually, nobody is building gpt-5+ as an individual contributor.
m_ke 3y ago
He is one of the most well connected people in tech and probably responsible for all of their partnerships and fundraising success. His departure in this fashion would make it really hard for them to raise as much money as they will need and potentially put them on a blacklist of a lot of YC companies. To top it off he'd probably raise a few billion and poach half of the team.
- abracadaniel 3y ago
  To the first point, they’re hugely well known at this point and could probably continue to raise money fine without him. But to your 2nd point, they wouldn’t be doing that in a vacuum. They’d be competing against him, and he could probably still out-raise them to do the poaching.
- nicce 3y ago
  > His departure in this fashion would make it really hard for them to raise as much money as they will need and potentially put them on a blacklist of a lot of YC companies. How does this matter anymore? OpenAI is the most known company from the last year. You don’t need specific person anymore to market about your company. If it is up to single person whether company is worth investment, then everyone just hopes that eventually OpenAI will turn to full-profit mode. It is pretty clear, that if board wants to run company for greater good, for-profit-only CEO must leave.
  - Johnny555 3y ago
    If it is up to single person whether company is worth investment, Regardless of who they fired, if the board is known to make arbitrary and capricious decisions about top executives without so much as a heads up to large investors, it's not clear that any investor will see them as being worth investment.
    - nicce 3y ago
      > Regardless of who they fired, if the board is known to make arbitrary and capricious decisions about top executives without so much as a heads up to large investors, it's not clear that any investor will see them as being worth investment. It is non-profit company, so investors should not be expecting too much increased returns for their investment other than the product and cooperation what this company provides. If firing the CEO has no significant negative impact for actual product quality or cooperation, it should not be in the intrestes of investors. Especially, if the argument for firing is revolved around profit/non-profit future of the company, if the expectations for the original investors was right (investing non-profit). In that case, it is not arbitrary or capricious decisions. But I would of course would like to see some transparency, since we don't really know what happened yet.
seltzergenius 3y ago
[flagged]
- dang 3y ago
  "Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." It's reliably a marker of bad comments and worse threads. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
andreyk 3y ago
Altman has been the CEO of OpenAI since early 2019, so he has been there for the whole journey from GPT-2 to GPT-4/ChatGPT and the company's shift to mostly focusing on LLMs over RL/robotics/other stuff. I can't say I know much about the degree of his involvement, but my gut feeling is that he has been heavily involved in steering the company's direction and efforts.
CPLX 3y ago
There’s no real evidence that the board is considering bringing him back. Team Altman is firmly in place as part of the global elite (that’s not an insinuation he literally attends Bohemian Grove) and has lots of connections and influence. That’s pretty clearly where the stories are being sourced from. The narrative that the board was begging to get him back emerged all at once in an organized fashion. Doesn’t prove it’s not true, maybe they are. Stranger things have happened. But definitely not something to take on faith without a clearer statement from those on the other side of the conflict.
preommr 3y ago
Altman is the commercial streak of OpenAI. Investors are nervous because that's the part that actually makes money. If it was left up to Ilya, it's unlikely that OpenAI is going to reach it's full earning potential in favor of things that are more research oriented.
- abracadaniel 3y ago
  This really does feel like Ilya is Woz, an idealist, doing the hard work and soon to be cast aside for Altman as their Jobs. Because idealism doesn’t make people billionaires.
camhart 3y ago
He made paul grahams list of 5 noteworthy start up founders in 2009: http://www.paulgraham.com/5founders.html http://www.paulgraham.com/5founders.html After that he was Pres of ycombinator for a while. Lucky? Sure. But I'd guess he's responsible for a significant amount of OpenAI's success.
siva7 3y ago
Yes, that critical. Sam and Greg hired Ilya among many other world class researchers to build AI. Their business execution was so successful that replacing them with another leadership team triggered panic to investors.

by bogwog 3y ago

ergocoder 3y ago

The 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 ago

I 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 ago

Even 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 ago
Thank 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.
- 627467 3y ago
  > Even if Altman had been engaged in some kind of criminal act, this is not the way in which you proceed. No information came to light to back this sudden and unexpected decisions but were there criminal acts involved, it certainly would not be unexpected. CEOs get instant fired for being under investigation for criminal acts all the time. But again, 48hs later it seems clear it was not the case
- piuantiderp 3y ago
  I think he might have been caught fundraising for a new venture in AI, but separate from OpenAI. It would be a gray-area in many other companies but as CEO, reporting to a board where he has no seat, it would be cause.
- 15457345234 3y ago
  > Even if Altman had been engaged in some kind of criminal act, this is not the way in which you proceed. Sometimes this is the _only_ way in which you proceed. If you gain knowledge of something truly egregious and don't eject the culprit you become immediately liable for any future malfeasance. Sometimes 'wow, gtfo right now' is the only safe course of action.
  - wddkcs 3y ago
    Unless Sam was using the AI to commit satanic sacrifices, it's hard to see what warrants expulsion at all, let alone immediate termination. If they did have such a compelling reason to stuff their own reputation, they did a horrible job communicating it.
    - 15457345234 3y ago
      > they did a horrible job communicating it I think their communication is perfectly professional. You're just expecting some weird tell-all because that's how this sector weirdly chooses to operate, just blurting shit out on twitter then thinking about the consequences later. The wording of their press release is wonderfully professional. Discreet, generic, succinct. That's how things should be done. It's the other side that are acting oddly. Charging into the office and taking selfies, counting public oaths of fealty on twitter? V. weird.

gpsx 3y ago

I don't think the backlash is about one person as much as it is the direction of the company. Doing something for the good of humanity is all well and good, which seems to be the boards position, but I think they really need to test themselves in the market if they want to make something good. And then there are the employees and the investors who would much rather see more money come out of this.

gumballindie 3y ago

He’s critical to those he’s making favours.

figassis 3y ago

They likely knew if this was not a surprise, they would have been blocked from doing it by political maneuvering.

VirusNewbie 3y ago

Ilya is certainly the brains behind ChatGPT, but I believe a lot of engineering talent recently joined OpenAI because they aligned with Sam and Greg’s vision of making consumer software and commercializing it. So while you’re right that Sama isn’t crucial to OpenAI, I think a lot more employees are aligned with Sama’s vision.

Hizonner 3y ago
Having those people quit could be a feature, rather than a bug. If that "vision" is the thing that you're worried about, because you think rapid commercialization is actively dangerous, then you may very well have a reason to want to completely blow up the commercial side of OpenAI. Even if it gets reconstituted elsewhere, you've at least created a speed bump by forcing it to get reconstituted. It's inconvenient that in the medium to long term that means you wind up with fewer GPUs for the True Cause(TM), but at least the people you have working on it believe in that cause, and at least you haven't actively accelerated some destructive outcome.

tw04 3y ago

They’re afraid he’s an actual leader and all of their talent will follow him. It doesn’t matter how good Ilya is individually, nobody is building gpt-5+ as an individual contributor.

m_ke 3y ago

He is one of the most well connected people in tech and probably responsible for all of their partnerships and fundraising success. His departure in this fashion would make it really hard for them to raise as much money as they will need and potentially put them on a blacklist of a lot of YC companies. To top it off he'd probably raise a few billion and poach half of the team.

abracadaniel 3y ago
To the first point, they’re hugely well known at this point and could probably continue to raise money fine without him. But to your 2nd point, they wouldn’t be doing that in a vacuum. They’d be competing against him, and he could probably still out-raise them to do the poaching.
nicce 3y ago
> His departure in this fashion would make it really hard for them to raise as much money as they will need and potentially put them on a blacklist of a lot of YC companies. How does this matter anymore? OpenAI is the most known company from the last year. You don’t need specific person anymore to market about your company. If it is up to single person whether company is worth investment, then everyone just hopes that eventually OpenAI will turn to full-profit mode. It is pretty clear, that if board wants to run company for greater good, for-profit-only CEO must leave.
- Johnny555 3y ago
  If it is up to single person whether company is worth investment, Regardless of who they fired, if the board is known to make arbitrary and capricious decisions about top executives without so much as a heads up to large investors, it's not clear that any investor will see them as being worth investment.
  - nicce 3y ago
    > Regardless of who they fired, if the board is known to make arbitrary and capricious decisions about top executives without so much as a heads up to large investors, it's not clear that any investor will see them as being worth investment. It is non-profit company, so investors should not be expecting too much increased returns for their investment other than the product and cooperation what this company provides. If firing the CEO has no significant negative impact for actual product quality or cooperation, it should not be in the intrestes of investors. Especially, if the argument for firing is revolved around profit/non-profit future of the company, if the expectations for the original investors was right (investing non-profit). In that case, it is not arbitrary or capricious decisions. But I would of course would like to see some transparency, since we don't really know what happened yet.

seltzergenius 3y ago

[flagged]

dang 3y ago
"Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." It's reliably a marker of bad comments and worse threads. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

andreyk 3y ago

Altman has been the CEO of OpenAI since early 2019, so he has been there for the whole journey from GPT-2 to GPT-4/ChatGPT and the company's shift to mostly focusing on LLMs over RL/robotics/other stuff. I can't say I know much about the degree of his involvement, but my gut feeling is that he has been heavily involved in steering the company's direction and efforts.

CPLX 3y ago

There’s no real evidence that the board is considering bringing him back. Team Altman is firmly in place as part of the global elite (that’s not an insinuation he literally attends Bohemian Grove) and has lots of connections and influence. That’s pretty clearly where the stories are being sourced from. The narrative that the board was begging to get him back emerged all at once in an organized fashion. Doesn’t prove it’s not true, maybe they are. Stranger things have happened. But definitely not something to take on faith without a clearer statement from those on the other side of the conflict.

preommr 3y ago

Altman is the commercial streak of OpenAI. Investors are nervous because that's the part that actually makes money. If it was left up to Ilya, it's unlikely that OpenAI is going to reach it's full earning potential in favor of things that are more research oriented.

abracadaniel 3y ago
This really does feel like Ilya is Woz, an idealist, doing the hard work and soon to be cast aside for Altman as their Jobs. Because idealism doesn’t make people billionaires.

camhart 3y ago

He made paul grahams list of 5 noteworthy start up founders in 2009: http://www.paulgraham.com/5founders.html http://www.paulgraham.com/5founders.html After that he was Pres of ycombinator for a while. Lucky? Sure. But I'd guess he's responsible for a significant amount of OpenAI's success.

siva7 3y ago

Yes, that critical. Sam and Greg hired Ilya among many other world class researchers to build AI. Their business execution was so successful that replacing them with another leadership team triggered panic to investors.