7 ms·

Through all of this, no one has cogently explained why Altman leaving is such a big deal. Why would workers immediately quit their job when he has no other comp

by bmitc 3y ago

Through all of this, no one has cogently explained why Altman leaving is such a big deal. Why would workers immediately quit their job when he has no other company, and does he even know who these workers are? Are these people that desperate to make a buck (or the prospect of big bucks)? It seems like half of the people working at the non-profit were not actually concerned about the mission but rather just waiting out their turn for big bucks and fame. What does Altman bring to the table besides raising money from foreign governments and states, apparently? I just do not understand all of this. Like, how does him leaving and getting replaced by another CEO the next week really change anything at the ground level other than distractions from the mission being gone? And the outpouring of support for someone who was clearly not operating how he marketed himself publicly is strange and disturbing indeed.

lazystar 3y ago
stability.
- bmitc 3y ago
  But Altman, the ousted CEO, appears to have been adding to the instability. His firing seems like a step in getting back to a desired stability.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - mdekkers 3y ago
    Can you, you know, bring facts and data to this discussion, as opposed to vague handwaving of weird accusations? Altman has been doing an amazing job at running the business he co-founded, and “instability” isn’t something _anyone_ at any side of the discussion is accusing him of. What is this instability, in your view? And how is this “desired stability” going to come back?
    - bmitc 3y ago
      What discussion, specifically, as you're just joining in here? If a CEO of a non-profit is raising billions of dollars from foreign companies and states to create a product that he will then sell to the non-profit he is CEO of, I view that as adding instability to the non-profit given its original mission. Because that mission wasn't to create a market for the CEO to take advantage of for personal gain.
JanSt 3y ago
Seems like the board wants to slow down progress which pretty much means sitting there waiting for alignment instead of putting out the work you came for. Sam will let them work to progress I guess, plus a mountain of cash/equity for them.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
varjag 3y ago
A CEO typically builds up a network of his people within the org and if he falls hard they are next on the chopping block. Same deal as with dictators. "Dozens" sounds like about right amount for a large org.
- mcv 3y ago
  So having Altman's loyalists leave is probably exactly what Sutskever wants? Still, what do they actually want? It seems a bit overly dramatic for such an organisation.
  - lucubratory 3y ago
    This is very short and explains exactly what they want: https://openai.com/charter https://openai.com/charter I think it's pretty obvious after reading it why people who were really committed to that Charter weren't happy with the direction that Sam was taking the company.
    - ric2b 3y ago
      It doesn't sound obvious to me, can you clarify on what Sam was doing that went against the charter?
      - ruszki 3y ago
        Looking on Windows 11 and Copilot, it’s easy to see that Microsoft deal violates “Broadly distributed benefits” on some level. But of course, who knows without an official statement.
alex_young 3y ago
Looks like they have about 700 employees. A handful quitting doesn’t seem like a mutiny.
- zuppy 3y ago
  yes, but although we can all be replaced in a company, some of the people can be replaced much harder. so, i wouldn’t say that the number is high but maybe (and i only speculate) some of them are key people.
- redlampdesk 3y ago
  More senior employees can easily know ~1000x more about the company than new employees. These employees are like lower branches on a tree, their knowledge crucially supporting many others. Key departures can sever entire branches.
- code_runner 3y ago
  far more than a handful are thinking of quitting, and the open invite from microsoft makes this a very different animal from a typical upheaval.
hobofan 3y ago
<deleted>
- famouswaffles 3y ago
  >why else would they bring a hyper-capitalist like Sam Altman on board They didn't "bring" a hyper capitalist. Sam Co-founded this entire thing lol. He was there from the beginning.
- MattGaiser 3y ago
  Who among the founders isn't a hyper-capitalist? Elon Musk? Peter Thiel? Reid Hoffman?
- krystianantoni 3y ago
  He is the one of two original founders :)
reissbaker 3y ago
The board fired Altman for shipping too fast compared to their safety-ist doom preferences. The new interim CEO has said that he wants to slow AI development down 80-90%. Why on earth would you stay, if you joined to build + ship technology? Of course, some employees may agree with the doom/safety board ideology, and will no doubt stay. But I highly doubt everyone will, especially the researchers who were working on new, powerful models — many of them view this as their life's work. Sam offers them the ability to continue. If you think this is about "the big bucks" or "fame," I think you don't understand the people on the other side of this argument at all.
- BoorishBears 3y ago
  Not enough people understand what OpenAI was actually built on. OpenAI would not exist if FAANG had been capable of getting out of it's own way and shipping things. The moment OpenAI starts acting like the companies these people left, it's a no brainer that they'll start looking for the door. I'm sure Ilya has 10 lifetimes more knowledge than me locked away in his mind on topics I don't even know exist... but the last 72 hours are the most brain dead actions I've ever seen out of the leadership of a company. This isn't even cutting your own nose of to spite the face: this is like slashing your own tires to avoid going in the wrong direction. The only possible justification would have been some jailable offense from Sam Altman, and ironically their initial release almost seemed to want to hint that before they were forced to explicitly state that wasn't the case. At the point where you're forced to admit you surprise fired your CEO for relatively benign reasons how much must have gone completely sideways to land you in that position?
  - jonbell 3y ago
    It’s possible be extremely smart in one narrow way and a complete idiot when it comes to understanding leadership, people, politics, etc. For example, Elon Musk was smart enough to do some things … then he crashed and burned with Twitter because it’s about people and politics. He could not have done a worse job, despite being “smart.”
    - 3y ago
MattGaiser 3y ago
> Why would workers immediately quit their job when he has no other company It is Sam Altman. He will have one in a week. > It seems like half of the people working at the non-profit were not actually concerned about the mission but rather just waiting out their turn for big bucks and fame. I would imagine most employees at any organization are not really there because of corporate values, but their own interests. > What does Altman bring to the table besides raising money from foreign governments and states, apparently? And one of the world's largest tech corporations. If you are interested in the money side, that isn't something to take lightly. So I would bet it is just following the money, or at least the expected money. The new board also wants to slow development. That isn't very exciting either.
- bayindirh 3y ago
  > It is Sam Altman. He will have one in a week. Welcome to Cargo Cult AI.
  - alsodumb 3y ago
    What's wrong with that statement though? It's the AI era - VCs are going crazy funding AI startups. What makes you think Greg and Sam would have a hard time raising millions/billions and starting a new company in a week if they want to?
    - bmitc 3y ago
      How will they come up with the idea? One is an investor and the other is an infrastructure software engineer.
      - alsodumb 3y ago
        What idea are you talking about? They are not your classic founders coming up with an idea to join Y combinator. They build OpenAI for many years, they know what to do. It won't be hard for them to hire researchers and engineers, from OpenAI or other places. Questions like this makes me wonder if you are a troll. I won't continue this thread.
fevangelou 3y ago
100% spot on. The world is filled with Sam Altmans, but surely not enough Ilya Sutskevers.
- exitb 3y ago
  Was Sutskever really that instrumental to OpenAI's success, if it was at all possible for him to be surprised at the direction the company is taking. It doesn't seem that he is that involved in the day-to-day operations.
  - modeless 3y ago
    Is operations responsible for their success? Or is it rather their technology?
    - exitb 3y ago
      I understand that we was instrumental in the earlier days, but does it seem like he is involved in the day-to-day work on the technology, today? When the new CEO advocates for a near-pause in AI development, does he mean operations?
  - fredoliveira 3y ago
    Anyone asking this question has never gone through Ilya's achievements. He is quite brilliant, and clearly instrumental here. And Sam is amazing in his own way too, for sure.
    - exitb 3y ago
      I understand his achievements, but is he involved right now? Does he, nowadays, provide to the company anything other than his oversight?
- AbrahamParangi 3y ago
  This is deeply wrong. Just because you don’t see what’s special about him doesn’t mean he isn’t a rare talent.
jmerz 3y ago
I think he's not as known in the outside world but it's really difficult to understate the amount of social capital sama has in the inner circles of Silicon Valley. It sounds like he did a good job instilling loyalty as a CEO as well, but the SV thing means that the more connected someone at the company is to the SV ecosystem, the more likely they like him/want to be on his good side. This is kind of like the leadership of the executive branch switching parties. You're not going to say "why would the staff immediately quit?" Especially since this is corporate America, and sama can have another "country" next week.
- steakscience 3y ago
  Every SV CEO has a "Sam Altman saved my butt during crucial incident X" story
  - Raptor22 3y ago
    What are some examples of these crucial incidents?
    - DonHopkins 3y ago
      It was a dark and stormy night off the coast of Maine. The winds were howling, the waves were monstrous, and there I was, stranded on my lobster fishing boat in the middle of a hurricane. The sea was a ferocious beast, tossing my vessel around like a toy. Just when all seemed lost, a figure appeared on the horizon. It was Sam Altman, riding a giant, neon-lit drone, battling the tempest with nothing but his bare hands and indomitable will. As he approached, lightning crackled around him, as if he was commanding the elements themselves. With a deft flick of his wrist, he sent a bolt of lightning to scare away a school of flying sharks that were drawn by the storm. Landing on the deck of my boat with the grace of a superhero, he surveyed the chaos. "Need a hand with those lobsters?" he quipped, as he single-handedly wrangled the crustaceans with an efficiency that would put any seasoned fisherman to shame. But Sam wasn't done yet. With a mere glance, he reprogrammed my malfunctioning GPS using his mind, charting a course to safety. As the boat rocked violently, a massive wave loomed over us, threatening to engulf everything. Sam, unfazed, simply turned to the wave and whispered a few unintelligible words. Incredibly, the wave halted in its tracks, parting around us like the Red Sea. He then casually conjured a gourmet meal from the lobsters, serving it with a fine wine that materialized out of thin air. Just as quickly as he had appeared, Sam mounted his drone once more. "Time to go innovate the weather," he said with a wink, before soaring off into the storm, leaving behind a trail of rainbows. As the skies cleared and the sea calmed, I realized that in the world of Silicon Valley CEOs, having a "Sam Altman saved my butt" story was more than just a rite of passage; it was a testament to the boundless, almost mythical capabilities of a man who defied the very laws of nature and business. And I, a humble lobster fisherman, had just become part of that legend.
mdekkers 3y ago
It is likely that wherever Altman goes next, @gdb would follow, and _he_ is deeply loved by many at OAI (but so is Altman). CEOs should be judged by their vision for the company, their ability to execute on that vision, bringing in funding, and building the best executive team for that job. That is what Altman brings to the table. You make it seem that wanting to make money is a zero-sum game, which is a narrow view to take - you can be heavily emotionally and intellectually invested in what you do for a living and wanting to be financially independent at the same time. You also appear to find it “disturbing” that people support someone that is doing a good job - there has always been a difference between marketing and operations, and it is rather weird you find that disturbing - and appreciate stability, or love working for a team that gets shit done. To address your initial strawman, why would workers quit when the boss leaves? Besides all the normal reasons listed above, they also might not like the remaining folks, or they may have lost faith in those folks, given the epic clusterfuck they turned this whole thing into. All other issues aside, if I would see my leadership team fuck up this badly, on so many levels, i’d be getting right out of dodge. These are all common sense, adult considerations for anyone that has an IQ and age above room temperature and that has held down a job that has to pay the bills, and combining that with your general tone of voice, I’m going to take a wild leap here and posit that you may not be asking these questions in good faith.
doomleika 3y ago
As much as @sama is not exactly "great" (World Coin is...ehem). The firing reeks political strife and anyone have enough days at any office knows what happens the next year at OpenAI will be anything but grandstanding for those "revolutionists" to stamp out any dissenting voice and fertile ground for the opportunists to use the chaos to make things worse. Most of the employee's prime objective will be navigating the political shitstorm than doing their job. The chance OpenAI stay as is before ChatGPT is little to none. Better run for the lifeboat before the ship hits the iceberg.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
AbrahamParangi 3y ago
This is worse than firing Jobs, at least when they fired him it was for poor performance not “doing too good a job”.
spoonjim 3y ago
He is the CEO! He sets the entire agenda for the company. Of course he is important - how could he not be?
ssnistfajen 3y ago
Based on Andrej Karpathy's comment on Twitter today, the board never explained any of this to the staff. So siding with Altman seems like a far better option since his return would mean a much higher likelihood of continuing business as usual. If Ilya & co. want the staff to side with them, they have to give a reason first. It doesn't necessarily have to be convincing, but not giving a reason at all will never be convincing.
- dmix 3y ago
  And the new CEO wants to slow down AI development and is a Yudkowsky fan which is another incentive to leave https://x.com/drtechlash/status/1726507930026139651?s=46&t= https://x.com/drtechlash/status/1726507930026139651?s=46&t=
  - ruszki 3y ago
    Making AI models safer is a type of AI development.
jstummbillig 3y ago
I am so confused by how this question is asked, and the reactions. It's "such a big deal" because he has been leading the company, and apparently some people really like how and they really don't like how it ended. Why would it require any other explanation? Are you asking what leaders do and why an employee would care about what they do...?
- bmitc 3y ago
  Do you understand why he was fired? The company had a charter, one the board is to help uphold. Altman and his crew were leading the company, and seemingly its employees, away from that charter. He was not open about how he was doing that. The board fired him. This is like a bunch of people joining a basketball team where the coach starts turning it into a soccer team, and then the GM fires the coach for doing this and everyone calls the GM crazy and stupid. If you want to play soccer, go play soccer! If you want to make a ton of money in a startup moving fast, how about don't setup a non-profit company spouting a bunch of humanitarian shit? It's even worse, because Altman very clearly did all this intentionally by playing the "I care about humanity card" just long enough while riding on the coattails of researchers where he could start up side processes to use his new AI profile to make the big bucks. But now people want to make him a martyr simply because the board called his bluff. It's bewildering.
  - ffgjgf1 3y ago
    But if the board seems to be doing everything they can to make sure that longterm OpenAI wouldn’t be able to execute anything in their charter in a meaningful way (assuming they end up being left behind technologically and not that relevant) does it really make that much sense?
    - rightbyte 3y ago
      What does a potential future scenario matter? The board have to follow the charter today.
  - jstummbillig 3y ago
3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
The new CEO, (Emmett, not Mura, who was CEO for two days I guess) has publicly stated on multiple occasions "we need to slow down from a 10 to a 1-2". Ilya is also in favor of dramatically "slowing down". That's who's left in this company, running it. In the field of AI, right now, "slowing down" is like deciding to stop the car and walk the track by foot in the middle of a Formula 1 race. It's like going backwards. Unless things change from the current status quo, OpenAI will be irrelevant in less than 2 years. And of course many will quit such a company and go work somewhere where the CEO wants to innovate, not slow down.
- ChatGTP 3y ago
  Well many of the top researches in the world seem keen for a slow down so I’m not sure you’re right. You can’t force people to work on things at a pace they’re uncomfortable with.
  - 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
    You'd find this hard to support with facts. We have a bunch of people talking about how worried they are and how we should slow down, and among them Sam Altman, and you see he was shipping fast. And Elon Musk, who also was concurrently working on his own AI startup while telling everyone how we should stop. There's no stopping this and any person of at least average intelligence is fully aware of this. If a "top researcher" is in favor of not researching, then they're not a researcher. If a researcher doesn't want to ship anything they research, they're also not a researcher. OpenAI has shipped nothing so far that is in any way suggesting the end of humanity or other such apocalyptic scenario. In total, these AI models have great potency in making our media, culture, civilization a mess of autogenerated content, and they can be very disruptive in a negative way. But no SINGLE COMPANY is in control of this. If it's not OpenAI, it'll be one of the other AI companies shipping comparable models right now. OpenAI simply had the chance to lead, and they just gave up on it. Now some other company will lead. That's all that happened. OpenAI slowing down won't slow down AI in general. It just makes OpenAI irrelevant in 1-2 years time max.
- rdedev 3y ago
colechristensen 3y ago
A poorly planned poorly executing of a CEO with such a high profile and so important to investors that the CEO of Microsoft is surprised, angry, and negotiating his return… is the kind of absolute chaos that I would like to avoid. I would definitely consider quitting in that circumstance. I would think to myself, what if management ever had a small disagreement with me? I quit a line cook job once in a very similar circumstance scaled down to a small restaurant. The inexperienced owners were making chaotic decisions and fired the chef and I quit the same day, not out of any kind of particular loyalty or anger, I just declined the chaos of the situation. Quitting before the chaos hurt me or my reputation by getting mixed up in it… to move on to other things.
4734573 3y ago
Professionals tend to value their work in the real way of assigning value to it. So I doubt it was desperation so much as having a sense of self worth and a belief that the structure of Open-AI was largely a matter of word games the lawyers came up with. As for Altman... I don't understand what's insignificant about raising money and resources from outside groups? Even if he wasn't working directly on the product itself, that role is still valuable in that it means he knows the amounts of resources that kind of project will require while also commanding some amount of familiarity with how to allocate them effectively. And on top of that he seems understand how to monetize the existent product a lot better than the Ilya who mostly came out of this looking like a giant hazard for anyone who isn't wearing rose tinted sci-fi goggles.
vaxman 3y ago
TBH, my primary concern is this will be the catalyst for another market crash by destroying the public trust in AI, which is currently benefiting from investor FOMO. Bear in mind that the cause of an equity market crash and its trigger are two different things. The 2000 crash in Tech was caused by market speculation in enthusiastic dot-com companies with poor management YES, but the trigger was simply the DOJ finally making Bill throw a chair (they had enough of being humiliated by him for decades as they struggled with old mainframe tech and limited staffing). If the dot-com crash trigger had not arrived for another 12-18 months, I’m sure the whole mess could have been swept under the rug by traders during the Black Swan event and the recovery of the healthy companies would have been 5-6 months, not 5-6 years (or 20 years in MSFT’s case).
TrackerFF 3y ago
OpenAI seems to be the product of two types of people: - The elite ML/AI researchers and engineers. - The elite SV/tech venture capitalists. These types come with their own followings - and I'm not saying that these two never intersect, but on one side you get a lot of brilliant researchers that truly are in it for the mission. They want to work there, because that's where ground zero is - both from the theoretical and applied point of view. It's the ML/AI equivalent of working at CERN - you could pay the researchers nothing, or everything, and many wouldn't care - as long as they get to work on the things they are passionate about, AND they get to work with some of the most talented and innovative colleagues in the world. For these, it is likely more important to have top ML/AI heads in the organization, than a commercially-oriented CEO like Sam. On the other side, you have the folks that are mostly chasing prestige and money. They see OpenAI as some sort of springboard into the elite world of top ML, where they'll spend a couple of years building cred, before launching startups, becoming VP/MD/etc. at big companies, etc. - all while making good money. For the latter group, losing commercial momentum could indeed affect their will to work there. Do you sit tight in the boat, or do you go all-in on the next big player - if OpenAI crumbles the next year? With that said, leadership conflicts and uncertainty is never good - whatever camp you're in.
tim333 3y ago
Jessica Livingston's tweet may give some idea: >The reason I was a founding donor to OpenAI in 2015 was not because I was interested in AI, but because I believed in Sam. So I hope the board can get its act together and bring Sam and Greg back. I guess other people joined for similar reasons. As regards the 'strange and disturbing' support, personally I thought OpenAI was doing cool stuff and it was a shame to break it because of internal politics.
- ruszki 3y ago
  This is classic startup PR nonsense. They just fear change for obvious reasons. It doesn’t mean that they will leave if OpenAI can work without Altman.
wyager 3y ago
Altman was fired because people who want to slow the progress of AI orchestrated his firing. Whether or not he works at the company is symbolic and indicative of who is in charge: the people who want to slow AI progress, or the people who want to speed it up.
jncfhnb 3y ago
I don’t get it either. Who gives two shits about a sv bigwig who’s playbook appears to have been promote open ai and then immediately try to pull up the ladder and lock it with regulatory action. This guy is a villain.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
endorphine 3y ago
I've been wondering the same since the beginning of this story. Couldn't have said it better myself. I start to believe these workers are mostly financially motivated and that's why they follow him.
rramadass 3y ago
> Through all of this, no one has cogently explained why Altman leaving is such a big deal. Pure f***g Greed. He is basically a front-man for a bunch of VCs/Angels/Influential Business Folks/Shady Investors/etc. who were betting on making big bucks through him. Unfortunately, Ilya and his philosophical/ethical/moral stance has gotten in their way and hence they have let loose their dogs in the media to play up Sam Altman's "indispensability" to OpenAI.

by bmitc 3y ago

lazystar 3y ago

stability.

bmitc 3y ago
But Altman, the ousted CEO, appears to have been adding to the instability. His firing seems like a step in getting back to a desired stability.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- mdekkers 3y ago
  Can you, you know, bring facts and data to this discussion, as opposed to vague handwaving of weird accusations? Altman has been doing an amazing job at running the business he co-founded, and “instability” isn’t something _anyone_ at any side of the discussion is accusing him of. What is this instability, in your view? And how is this “desired stability” going to come back?
  - bmitc 3y ago
    What discussion, specifically, as you're just joining in here? If a CEO of a non-profit is raising billions of dollars from foreign companies and states to create a product that he will then sell to the non-profit he is CEO of, I view that as adding instability to the non-profit given its original mission. Because that mission wasn't to create a market for the CEO to take advantage of for personal gain.

JanSt 3y ago

Seems like the board wants to slow down progress which pretty much means sitting there waiting for alignment instead of putting out the work you came for. Sam will let them work to progress I guess, plus a mountain of cash/equity for them.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

varjag 3y ago

A CEO typically builds up a network of his people within the org and if he falls hard they are next on the chopping block. Same deal as with dictators. "Dozens" sounds like about right amount for a large org.

mcv 3y ago
So having Altman's loyalists leave is probably exactly what Sutskever wants? Still, what do they actually want? It seems a bit overly dramatic for such an organisation.
- lucubratory 3y ago
  This is very short and explains exactly what they want: https://openai.com/charter https://openai.com/charter I think it's pretty obvious after reading it why people who were really committed to that Charter weren't happy with the direction that Sam was taking the company.
  - ric2b 3y ago
    It doesn't sound obvious to me, can you clarify on what Sam was doing that went against the charter?
    - ruszki 3y ago
      Looking on Windows 11 and Copilot, it’s easy to see that Microsoft deal violates “Broadly distributed benefits” on some level. But of course, who knows without an official statement.

alex_young 3y ago

Looks like they have about 700 employees. A handful quitting doesn’t seem like a mutiny.

zuppy 3y ago
yes, but although we can all be replaced in a company, some of the people can be replaced much harder. so, i wouldn’t say that the number is high but maybe (and i only speculate) some of them are key people.
redlampdesk 3y ago
More senior employees can easily know ~1000x more about the company than new employees. These employees are like lower branches on a tree, their knowledge crucially supporting many others. Key departures can sever entire branches.
code_runner 3y ago
far more than a handful are thinking of quitting, and the open invite from microsoft makes this a very different animal from a typical upheaval.

hobofan 3y ago

famouswaffles 3y ago
>why else would they bring a hyper-capitalist like Sam Altman on board They didn't "bring" a hyper capitalist. Sam Co-founded this entire thing lol. He was there from the beginning.
MattGaiser 3y ago
Who among the founders isn't a hyper-capitalist? Elon Musk? Peter Thiel? Reid Hoffman?
krystianantoni 3y ago
He is the one of two original founders :)

reissbaker 3y ago

The board fired Altman for shipping too fast compared to their safety-ist doom preferences. The new interim CEO has said that he wants to slow AI development down 80-90%. Why on earth would you stay, if you joined to build + ship technology? Of course, some employees may agree with the doom/safety board ideology, and will no doubt stay. But I highly doubt everyone will, especially the researchers who were working on new, powerful models — many of them view this as their life's work. Sam offers them the ability to continue. If you think this is about "the big bucks" or "fame," I think you don't understand the people on the other side of this argument at all.

BoorishBears 3y ago
Not enough people understand what OpenAI was actually built on. OpenAI would not exist if FAANG had been capable of getting out of it's own way and shipping things. The moment OpenAI starts acting like the companies these people left, it's a no brainer that they'll start looking for the door. I'm sure Ilya has 10 lifetimes more knowledge than me locked away in his mind on topics I don't even know exist... but the last 72 hours are the most brain dead actions I've ever seen out of the leadership of a company. This isn't even cutting your own nose of to spite the face: this is like slashing your own tires to avoid going in the wrong direction. The only possible justification would have been some jailable offense from Sam Altman, and ironically their initial release almost seemed to want to hint that before they were forced to explicitly state that wasn't the case. At the point where you're forced to admit you surprise fired your CEO for relatively benign reasons how much must have gone completely sideways to land you in that position?
- jonbell 3y ago
  It’s possible be extremely smart in one narrow way and a complete idiot when it comes to understanding leadership, people, politics, etc. For example, Elon Musk was smart enough to do some things … then he crashed and burned with Twitter because it’s about people and politics. He could not have done a worse job, despite being “smart.”
  - 3y ago

MattGaiser 3y ago

> Why would workers immediately quit their job when he has no other company It is Sam Altman. He will have one in a week. > It seems like half of the people working at the non-profit were not actually concerned about the mission but rather just waiting out their turn for big bucks and fame. I would imagine most employees at any organization are not really there because of corporate values, but their own interests. > What does Altman bring to the table besides raising money from foreign governments and states, apparently? And one of the world's largest tech corporations. If you are interested in the money side, that isn't something to take lightly. So I would bet it is just following the money, or at least the expected money. The new board also wants to slow development. That isn't very exciting either.

bayindirh 3y ago
> It is Sam Altman. He will have one in a week. Welcome to Cargo Cult AI.
- alsodumb 3y ago
  What's wrong with that statement though? It's the AI era - VCs are going crazy funding AI startups. What makes you think Greg and Sam would have a hard time raising millions/billions and starting a new company in a week if they want to?
  - bmitc 3y ago
    How will they come up with the idea? One is an investor and the other is an infrastructure software engineer.
    - alsodumb 3y ago
      What idea are you talking about? They are not your classic founders coming up with an idea to join Y combinator. They build OpenAI for many years, they know what to do. It won't be hard for them to hire researchers and engineers, from OpenAI or other places. Questions like this makes me wonder if you are a troll. I won't continue this thread.

fevangelou 3y ago

100% spot on. The world is filled with Sam Altmans, but surely not enough Ilya Sutskevers.

exitb 3y ago
Was Sutskever really that instrumental to OpenAI's success, if it was at all possible for him to be surprised at the direction the company is taking. It doesn't seem that he is that involved in the day-to-day operations.
- modeless 3y ago
  Is operations responsible for their success? Or is it rather their technology?
  - exitb 3y ago
    I understand that we was instrumental in the earlier days, but does it seem like he is involved in the day-to-day work on the technology, today? When the new CEO advocates for a near-pause in AI development, does he mean operations?
- fredoliveira 3y ago
  Anyone asking this question has never gone through Ilya's achievements. He is quite brilliant, and clearly instrumental here. And Sam is amazing in his own way too, for sure.
  - exitb 3y ago
    I understand his achievements, but is he involved right now? Does he, nowadays, provide to the company anything other than his oversight?
AbrahamParangi 3y ago
This is deeply wrong. Just because you don’t see what’s special about him doesn’t mean he isn’t a rare talent.

jmerz 3y ago

I think he's not as known in the outside world but it's really difficult to understate the amount of social capital sama has in the inner circles of Silicon Valley. It sounds like he did a good job instilling loyalty as a CEO as well, but the SV thing means that the more connected someone at the company is to the SV ecosystem, the more likely they like him/want to be on his good side. This is kind of like the leadership of the executive branch switching parties. You're not going to say "why would the staff immediately quit?" Especially since this is corporate America, and sama can have another "country" next week.

steakscience 3y ago
Every SV CEO has a "Sam Altman saved my butt during crucial incident X" story
- Raptor22 3y ago
  What are some examples of these crucial incidents?
  - DonHopkins 3y ago
    It was a dark and stormy night off the coast of Maine. The winds were howling, the waves were monstrous, and there I was, stranded on my lobster fishing boat in the middle of a hurricane. The sea was a ferocious beast, tossing my vessel around like a toy. Just when all seemed lost, a figure appeared on the horizon. It was Sam Altman, riding a giant, neon-lit drone, battling the tempest with nothing but his bare hands and indomitable will. As he approached, lightning crackled around him, as if he was commanding the elements themselves. With a deft flick of his wrist, he sent a bolt of lightning to scare away a school of flying sharks that were drawn by the storm. Landing on the deck of my boat with the grace of a superhero, he surveyed the chaos. "Need a hand with those lobsters?" he quipped, as he single-handedly wrangled the crustaceans with an efficiency that would put any seasoned fisherman to shame. But Sam wasn't done yet. With a mere glance, he reprogrammed my malfunctioning GPS using his mind, charting a course to safety. As the boat rocked violently, a massive wave loomed over us, threatening to engulf everything. Sam, unfazed, simply turned to the wave and whispered a few unintelligible words. Incredibly, the wave halted in its tracks, parting around us like the Red Sea. He then casually conjured a gourmet meal from the lobsters, serving it with a fine wine that materialized out of thin air. Just as quickly as he had appeared, Sam mounted his drone once more. "Time to go innovate the weather," he said with a wink, before soaring off into the storm, leaving behind a trail of rainbows. As the skies cleared and the sea calmed, I realized that in the world of Silicon Valley CEOs, having a "Sam Altman saved my butt" story was more than just a rite of passage; it was a testament to the boundless, almost mythical capabilities of a man who defied the very laws of nature and business. And I, a humble lobster fisherman, had just become part of that legend.

mdekkers 3y ago

It is likely that wherever Altman goes next, @gdb would follow, and _he_ is deeply loved by many at OAI (but so is Altman). CEOs should be judged by their vision for the company, their ability to execute on that vision, bringing in funding, and building the best executive team for that job. That is what Altman brings to the table. You make it seem that wanting to make money is a zero-sum game, which is a narrow view to take - you can be heavily emotionally and intellectually invested in what you do for a living and wanting to be financially independent at the same time. You also appear to find it “disturbing” that people support someone that is doing a good job - there has always been a difference between marketing and operations, and it is rather weird you find that disturbing - and appreciate stability, or love working for a team that gets shit done. To address your initial strawman, why would workers quit when the boss leaves? Besides all the normal reasons listed above, they also might not like the remaining folks, or they may have lost faith in those folks, given the epic clusterfuck they turned this whole thing into. All other issues aside, if I would see my leadership team fuck up this badly, on so many levels, i’d be getting right out of dodge. These are all common sense, adult considerations for anyone that has an IQ and age above room temperature and that has held down a job that has to pay the bills, and combining that with your general tone of voice, I’m going to take a wild leap here and posit that you may not be asking these questions in good faith.

doomleika 3y ago

As much as @sama is not exactly "great" (World Coin is...ehem). The firing reeks political strife and anyone have enough days at any office knows what happens the next year at OpenAI will be anything but grandstanding for those "revolutionists" to stamp out any dissenting voice and fertile ground for the opportunists to use the chaos to make things worse. Most of the employee's prime objective will be navigating the political shitstorm than doing their job. The chance OpenAI stay as is before ChatGPT is little to none. Better run for the lifeboat before the ship hits the iceberg.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

AbrahamParangi 3y ago

This is worse than firing Jobs, at least when they fired him it was for poor performance not “doing too good a job”.

spoonjim 3y ago

He is the CEO! He sets the entire agenda for the company. Of course he is important - how could he not be?

ssnistfajen 3y ago

Based on Andrej Karpathy's comment on Twitter today, the board never explained any of this to the staff. So siding with Altman seems like a far better option since his return would mean a much higher likelihood of continuing business as usual. If Ilya & co. want the staff to side with them, they have to give a reason first. It doesn't necessarily have to be convincing, but not giving a reason at all will never be convincing.

dmix 3y ago
And the new CEO wants to slow down AI development and is a Yudkowsky fan which is another incentive to leave https://x.com/drtechlash/status/1726507930026139651?s=46&t= https://x.com/drtechlash/status/1726507930026139651?s=46&t=
- ruszki 3y ago
  Making AI models safer is a type of AI development.

jstummbillig 3y ago

I am so confused by how this question is asked, and the reactions. It's "such a big deal" because he has been leading the company, and apparently some people really like how and they really don't like how it ended. Why would it require any other explanation? Are you asking what leaders do and why an employee would care about what they do...?

bmitc 3y ago
Do you understand why he was fired? The company had a charter, one the board is to help uphold. Altman and his crew were leading the company, and seemingly its employees, away from that charter. He was not open about how he was doing that. The board fired him. This is like a bunch of people joining a basketball team where the coach starts turning it into a soccer team, and then the GM fires the coach for doing this and everyone calls the GM crazy and stupid. If you want to play soccer, go play soccer! If you want to make a ton of money in a startup moving fast, how about don't setup a non-profit company spouting a bunch of humanitarian shit? It's even worse, because Altman very clearly did all this intentionally by playing the "I care about humanity card" just long enough while riding on the coattails of researchers where he could start up side processes to use his new AI profile to make the big bucks. But now people want to make him a martyr simply because the board called his bluff. It's bewildering.
- ffgjgf1 3y ago
  But if the board seems to be doing everything they can to make sure that longterm OpenAI wouldn’t be able to execute anything in their charter in a meaningful way (assuming they end up being left behind technologically and not that relevant) does it really make that much sense?
  - rightbyte 3y ago
    What does a potential future scenario matter? The board have to follow the charter today.
- jstummbillig 3y ago

3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago

The new CEO, (Emmett, not Mura, who was CEO for two days I guess) has publicly stated on multiple occasions "we need to slow down from a 10 to a 1-2". Ilya is also in favor of dramatically "slowing down". That's who's left in this company, running it. In the field of AI, right now, "slowing down" is like deciding to stop the car and walk the track by foot in the middle of a Formula 1 race. It's like going backwards. Unless things change from the current status quo, OpenAI will be irrelevant in less than 2 years. And of course many will quit such a company and go work somewhere where the CEO wants to innovate, not slow down.

ChatGTP 3y ago
Well many of the top researches in the world seem keen for a slow down so I’m not sure you’re right. You can’t force people to work on things at a pace they’re uncomfortable with.
- 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
  You'd find this hard to support with facts. We have a bunch of people talking about how worried they are and how we should slow down, and among them Sam Altman, and you see he was shipping fast. And Elon Musk, who also was concurrently working on his own AI startup while telling everyone how we should stop. There's no stopping this and any person of at least average intelligence is fully aware of this. If a "top researcher" is in favor of not researching, then they're not a researcher. If a researcher doesn't want to ship anything they research, they're also not a researcher. OpenAI has shipped nothing so far that is in any way suggesting the end of humanity or other such apocalyptic scenario. In total, these AI models have great potency in making our media, culture, civilization a mess of autogenerated content, and they can be very disruptive in a negative way. But no SINGLE COMPANY is in control of this. If it's not OpenAI, it'll be one of the other AI companies shipping comparable models right now. OpenAI simply had the chance to lead, and they just gave up on it. Now some other company will lead. That's all that happened. OpenAI slowing down won't slow down AI in general. It just makes OpenAI irrelevant in 1-2 years time max.
rdedev 3y ago

colechristensen 3y ago

A poorly planned poorly executing of a CEO with such a high profile and so important to investors that the CEO of Microsoft is surprised, angry, and negotiating his return… is the kind of absolute chaos that I would like to avoid. I would definitely consider quitting in that circumstance. I would think to myself, what if management ever had a small disagreement with me? I quit a line cook job once in a very similar circumstance scaled down to a small restaurant. The inexperienced owners were making chaotic decisions and fired the chef and I quit the same day, not out of any kind of particular loyalty or anger, I just declined the chaos of the situation. Quitting before the chaos hurt me or my reputation by getting mixed up in it… to move on to other things.

4734573 3y ago

Professionals tend to value their work in the real way of assigning value to it. So I doubt it was desperation so much as having a sense of self worth and a belief that the structure of Open-AI was largely a matter of word games the lawyers came up with. As for Altman... I don't understand what's insignificant about raising money and resources from outside groups? Even if he wasn't working directly on the product itself, that role is still valuable in that it means he knows the amounts of resources that kind of project will require while also commanding some amount of familiarity with how to allocate them effectively. And on top of that he seems understand how to monetize the existent product a lot better than the Ilya who mostly came out of this looking like a giant hazard for anyone who isn't wearing rose tinted sci-fi goggles.

vaxman 3y ago

TBH, my primary concern is this will be the catalyst for another market crash by destroying the public trust in AI, which is currently benefiting from investor FOMO. Bear in mind that the cause of an equity market crash and its trigger are two different things. The 2000 crash in Tech was caused by market speculation in enthusiastic dot-com companies with poor management YES, but the trigger was simply the DOJ finally making Bill throw a chair (they had enough of being humiliated by him for decades as they struggled with old mainframe tech and limited staffing). If the dot-com crash trigger had not arrived for another 12-18 months, I’m sure the whole mess could have been swept under the rug by traders during the Black Swan event and the recovery of the healthy companies would have been 5-6 months, not 5-6 years (or 20 years in MSFT’s case).

TrackerFF 3y ago

OpenAI seems to be the product of two types of people: - The elite ML/AI researchers and engineers. - The elite SV/tech venture capitalists. These types come with their own followings - and I'm not saying that these two never intersect, but on one side you get a lot of brilliant researchers that truly are in it for the mission. They want to work there, because that's where ground zero is - both from the theoretical and applied point of view. It's the ML/AI equivalent of working at CERN - you could pay the researchers nothing, or everything, and many wouldn't care - as long as they get to work on the things they are passionate about, AND they get to work with some of the most talented and innovative colleagues in the world. For these, it is likely more important to have top ML/AI heads in the organization, than a commercially-oriented CEO like Sam. On the other side, you have the folks that are mostly chasing prestige and money. They see OpenAI as some sort of springboard into the elite world of top ML, where they'll spend a couple of years building cred, before launching startups, becoming VP/MD/etc. at big companies, etc. - all while making good money. For the latter group, losing commercial momentum could indeed affect their will to work there. Do you sit tight in the boat, or do you go all-in on the next big player - if OpenAI crumbles the next year? With that said, leadership conflicts and uncertainty is never good - whatever camp you're in.

tim333 3y ago

Jessica Livingston's tweet may give some idea: >The reason I was a founding donor to OpenAI in 2015 was not because I was interested in AI, but because I believed in Sam. So I hope the board can get its act together and bring Sam and Greg back. I guess other people joined for similar reasons. As regards the 'strange and disturbing' support, personally I thought OpenAI was doing cool stuff and it was a shame to break it because of internal politics.

ruszki 3y ago
This is classic startup PR nonsense. They just fear change for obvious reasons. It doesn’t mean that they will leave if OpenAI can work without Altman.

wyager 3y ago

Altman was fired because people who want to slow the progress of AI orchestrated his firing. Whether or not he works at the company is symbolic and indicative of who is in charge: the people who want to slow AI progress, or the people who want to speed it up.

jncfhnb 3y ago

I don’t get it either. Who gives two shits about a sv bigwig who’s playbook appears to have been promote open ai and then immediately try to pull up the ladder and lock it with regulatory action. This guy is a villain.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

endorphine 3y ago

I've been wondering the same since the beginning of this story. Couldn't have said it better myself. I start to believe these workers are mostly financially motivated and that's why they follow him.

rramadass 3y ago

> Through all of this, no one has cogently explained why Altman leaving is such a big deal. Pure f***g Greed. He is basically a front-man for a bunch of VCs/Angels/Influential Business Folks/Shady Investors/etc. who were betting on making big bucks through him. Unfortunately, Ilya and his philosophical/ethical/moral stance has gotten in their way and hence they have let loose their dogs in the media to play up Sam Altman's "indispensability" to OpenAI.