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Emmet Shear statement as Interim CEO of OpenAI
- floor_ 3y agoShengjia Zhao's deleted tweet: https://i.imgur.com/yrpXvt9.png https://i.imgur.com/yrpXvt9.png
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sakex 3y agoWHy aren't they promoting from within?
- tucnak 3y agoThey did try that first but Mira had already betrayed them within 24 hours lol.
- shmde 3y agoWhat did she do ?
- tucnak 3y agoBased on Bloomberg reporting, she aimed to rehire Sam Altman and Greg Brockman.
- orwin 3y agoI don't know her or the situation (and don't really care), but that is exactly the kind of sass I respect and like.
- throwaway382275 3y agoOver the weekend, she posted a heart emoji on Twitter. - https://twitter.com/miramurati/status/1726126391626985793 https://twitter.com/miramurati/status/1726126391626985793 The Verge reported "that the action was meant to signal to the board who would leave OpenAI to follow Altman to a new company." - https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/19/23968027/why-openai-employees-were-posting-all-those-heart-emojis https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/19/23968027/why-openai-empl...
- Mistletoe 3y agoThis is so weird, like a warrant canary but with heart emojis on what we used to call Twitter, but is now called X. I'm living in such an unexpected timeline. >She served as chief technology officer of OpenAI since 2018 and as interim chief executive officer of OpenAI over the weekend from November 17, 2023 - November 19, 2023. -Her wiki
- gramakri2 3y ago> This is so weird, like a warrant canary but with heart emojis on what we used to call Twitter, but is now called X. I'm living in such an unexpected timeline. not sure why you got downvoted, but I am with you. I find all this is hilarious.
- FrustratedMonky 3y agoThat is a lot to read into a single heart emoji. Is there any other evidence that she was also defecting?
- JCharante 3y agoEvery other pro Sam worker posted a heart emoji as a retweet to the same tweet within the same time
- blackoil 3y agoShows how out of out of touch board was. Hiring an external CEO as interim. In 30 days OpenAI will bleed heavily and they'll have a shell of a potential centicorn.
- Satam 3y agoThey will bleed what exactly? The product will keep on working as well as it did, and in the upcoming future, the general public will not give a single fuck about what has happened here.
- throwaway5959 3y agoTalent. It’s already happening.
- dageshi 3y agoWill it? Doesn't it rely on processing power from MS who they've just royally pissed off and who's in the process of grabbing all the exiting talent to presumably build a competitor?
- icelancer 3y ago> The product will keep on working as well as it did... It will? Microsoft is their GPU provider, and ChatGPT is already rate-limited. GTM team is openly lamenting the Custom GPT product as dead in the water and they're still employed by OpenAI.
- suslik 3y agoI suspect all other potential GPU providers are sweating right now to get in bed with OpenAI and their tech. I'm sure they can land a good deal if they tried.
- toomuchtodo 3y agoOpenAI tech is licensed exclusively to Microsoft until pre AGI. OpenAI threw themselves in the river with their hands tied. https://stratechery.com/2023/openais-misalignment-and-microsofts-gain/ https://stratechery.com/2023/openais-misalignment-and-micros... Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38348010 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38348010 | https://twitter.com/karaswisher/status/1726598360277356775 https://twitter.com/karaswisher/status/1726598360277356775 (550 of 700 Employees OpenAI tell the board to resign)
- dgellow 3y agoReading between the lines, what I see is that even the interim CEO is communicating that the board created a massive mess for petty reasons. Hopefully the report will be public.
- npinsker 3y agoI don't get that at all. It seems like a very diplomatic note, expertly phrased; calling out "the process and communications around Sam’s removal" placates both parties without implicating the board too directly.
- dgellow 3y agoWhat you quoted is a polite, diplomatic way to say that the board fucked up
- 15457345234 3y agoI have to point out here that "the process and communications around Sam’s removal" could just as easily refer to whatever 'process and communications' resulted in the guy being able to get back into the office and take selfies. It's pretty basic that when you fire someone abruptly they _do not_ get to come back into the damn office.
- ignoramous 3y agoFuck up? Too early to judge. Dario Amodei (Anthropic) and Elon Musk (xAI) already were casualties of previous struggles, but OpenAI did just fine. Remains to be seen, if it can withstand the current cycle of self-inflicted turmoil. Ilya of course is confident enough that this painful fork in the road is for the better. I mean, who else would you rather make such calls? I must say though, going by his tweets, Andrej Karpathy isn't all too impressed with the Board. So, that's there too.
- tsimionescu 3y agoI think it's already unquestionable that the board fucked up. That's not to say this has to be the end of OpenAI or anything so drastic. But announcing you're suddenly firing your CEO for lying to his board, without discussing it with the President of the Board who you are also side-lining, then having your interim-CEO start negotiations to bring the lying CEO back, then firing this interim CEO to bring on a new interim CEO - all in the span of a few hours - is ridiculous behavior. I very much doubt anyone will take the actions of this board seriously in the future, and I very much doubt they will remain in power if OpenAI does continue.
- _giorgio_ 3y ago"- Hire an independent investigator to dig into the entire process leading up to this point and generate a full report." Your Board Sucks.
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- dannyw 3y agoGood on him for making a candid statement, but this seems to be more about putting out fires, than assuring companies and partners that OpenAI has a bright future ahead.
- losthubble 3y agoSigh OpenAI employees probably take the biggest loss. Have to chose between this shitshow or joining Microsoft. Crazy how fast things can change. 1AM twitter post, restructurings by an interim ceo only for it to happen again once they get a permanent one. Crazy how fast things can change
- sebzim4500 3y agoI doubt OpenAI employees will take much of a loss, Sam Altman will probably get MSFT to match their salaries, and they will still have a licence to use most of the OpenAI IP including GPT-4 weights. The real loss is taken by the other OpenAI investors.
- rvnx 3y agoAn interesting side-effect, is that Sam and others could use their influence to push internal people at OpenAI to release their models and weights, so other companies can build upon them.
- andrewstuart 3y agoWe’ll best wishes to him sounds like a tough gig.
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- rutierut 3y ago> I was happily avoiding full time employment. I took this job because I believe that OpenAI is one of the most important companies currently in existence. When the board shared the situation and asked me to take the role, I did not make the decision lightly. Ultimately I felt that I had a duty to help if I could. An external CEO that's stepping in not because they want to but because they feel they "need" to doesn't sound like a recipe for success.
- layer8 3y agoIt's interim for a reason, on such short notice.
- cthalupa 3y agoHe's an 'AGI potentially poses an existential threat' guy. He's given his p(doom) as being somewhere between 5 and 50 percent. If the people in charge of potentially making a thing you think could have up to a 50% chance of wiping out humanity are asking you if you can help, you're probably going to offer whatever help you can.
- RandomLensman 3y agoWith his probability estimates that high, he should probably do everything in his power to stop all development.
- xvector 3y agoHe has already indicated that he intends to slow development by over 90%.
- BoiledCabbage 3y agoDo you have a reference for that? I'd like to read / view it.
- lsiclait 3y ago
- whywhywhywhy 3y agoOnce again I'm convinced that the concept of non-profit is incompatible with moving software and technology forwards. In any real situation with accountability this group would be disbanded before Friday had been through, insane damage they've caused to OpenAI and the recent deals and depending on how this plays out they may have cost themselves market dominance. How many more times in my life am I going to have to sit and watch a non-profit board destroy a piece of software, stagnate a piece of software or fumble a market dominance position, you'd have think we'd have learnt from Mozilla that it just doesn't seem to work. Vision, talent and accountability to success builds real change in technology, not the sort of at best navel gazing academics and at worst outright leeches who are attracted to non-profit boards.
- ah765 3y agoIf for-profits were so good, then they probably would've implemented the software you like and you would never need to use any nonprofit stuff. Not to say that nonprofits are flawless, but they do seem to turn out stuff that's pretty important sometimes even when surrounded by for-profit competitors.
- fnordsensei 3y agoIs there any reason to think that non-profit governance somehow makes this more likely? It seems that there are plenty of well-functioning non-profit software around. Heck, the world runs on Linux, doesn’t it? The specific mix of profit and non-profit motives in this particular organization is confusing though, looking at it from the outside.
- cameldrv 3y agoYes. This is getting at it. But accountability to what? A for-profit corporation has accountability to its shareholders. If you're a shareholder, you can sell your shares. If enough people are willing to sell their shares at a low enough price, someone will come long and buy a majority of the shares and take over the company, maybe liquidating it. If something egregious enough happens, you might even be able to sue the company or the officers for a breach of fiduciary duty. Either way, the way to stay employed is to make money. If you make enough money, purely money-interested people will be willing to buy the shares of those who have other interests for a high price. For-profit corporations have an incentive to be as good as possible at making money. A not-for-profit theoretically has accountability to the board, who aren't really accountable to anyone. They can be sued, but only if they do an extremely and formally bad job. The only thing that weeds out bad non-profits is donors. It seems like there needs to be another type of organization, that can have objectives other than making money, where market forces still cause it to do as good a job as possible at that mission.
- DebtDeflation 3y agoOdds on Mira announcing she's joining Sam and Greg at MS by the end of the week?
- Shank 3y agoMira tweeted the same thing everyone else that @sama has hearted: "OpenAI is nothing without its people". I'm guessing everyone doing this is resigning/following. https://twitter.com/sama/status/1726543026846351702 https://twitter.com/sama/status/1726543026846351702
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Zolde 3y agoHeaven's Gate is nothing without its people.
- polrjoy 3y agoOdds on Emmet announcing he's joining Sam and Greg at MS by the end of the month?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- reisse 3y ago> - Hire an independent investigator to dig into the entire process leading up to this point and generate a full report. This is very interesting. You wouldn't normally hire an investigator to dig into a corporate shitshow. Firing of Sam Altman was a huge mess, but if there was a serious reason to do that (like, frauding the board), and that reason would be backed by investigation report, it'll suddenly make board actions much more justifiable. And it'll put Microsoft into a tough spot, because they hired Altman back without any considerations whatsoever...
- ahmedhosssam 3y agoThat was a very good decision because I think the majority don't understand well what has happened, even inside OpenAI itself, and that's very weird.
- Joeri 3y agoIt could also just be that there are different stories of the situation that led up to this thing blowing up, and nobody inside OpenAI could be trusted to impartially do fact finding in matching up those narratives. People confabulate just like AI does. Just because the stories don’t add up doesn’t mean somebody deliberately lied.
- pas 3y agoit's probably even more prosaic than that. new CEO should not spend his attention on going through days or weeks worth of he-said-she-said. (he will find out who he can work with, who is hostile to him, soon enough - if not he's useless as CEO.) but of course the question captivates the peanut gallery so there's a certain importance to it. so making this empty promise costs nothing, hence it's there.
- sillysaurusx 3y agoI’ll eat my hat if Sam did something to justify the board’s response. Satya certainly knew the reason, as he was at the center of the negotiations to get Sam and Greg back to OpenAI. Emmet is just doing the smartest thing to salvage the situation.
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- alsodumb 3y agoTop talent will leave OpenAI soon, it already started on twitter: https://twitter.com/shengjia_zhao/status/1726543423824675154 https://twitter.com/shengjia_zhao/status/1726543423824675154
- firtoz 3y agoWow, that's some harsh words coming from within the company...
- upwardbound 3y agoDr. 赵 is probably a good guy and everything, but he himself doesn't claim to be "top talent", since I think he's pretty junior. His title on LinkedIn is just "Member of Technical Staff". https://www.linkedin.com/in/shengjia-zhao/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/shengjia-zhao/
- alsodumb 3y agoThat was an example, more than 700/770 staff OpenAI has threatened to leave now. Also, just because he is a recent grad doesn't mean he is not top talent. Age matters much less in AI/learning community than other areas.
- lysecret 3y agoI mean I really like Emmet. But they have essentially replaced a product person with fairly deep AI knowledge with another product person with much less AI knowledge? Really sounds to me like he was just the only one available on a short notice. They should have picked Elon for extra meme points at least.
- wruza 3y agoElon couldn’t even run a python script written for an area of his interest. At least these two have a firm CS background.
- layer8 3y agoWhere are you getting from that Altman has "fairly deep AI knowledge"? He dropped out of college after just a year and is mostly a business person. Shear at least has a BSc in CS.
- phillipsmg 3y agoA pretty reasonable statement to start an incredibly tough gig. I don't see how he can turn this around, but kudos for trying and communicating openly about the short term plan.
- seydor 3y ago> I'm not crazy enough to take this job without board support for commercializing our awesome models but ...
- crotchfire 3y ago> I have spent today drinking Not off to a good start.
- vampiresdoexist 3y ago“I have spent today drinking from the firehose as much as possible, speaking with the board, a small number of major partners, and listening to employees.”
- dschuetz 3y agoto be fair, it's a bit out of context - however, it shows that they are somewhat overwhelmed with the whole situation
- optimalsolver 3y agoOut of context but still hilarious.
- dschuetz 3y agoThe board of directors trying to get Altman back after firing him effective immediately, failing, and giving the job to their second choice underscores the level of incompetence and lack of professionalism at OpenAI. They seem to be in a bit over their heads with a company that is supposedly worth 80bln dollars. Not with that board it's worth that much.
- pas 3y agowait, wait, how do we know this? where are the receipts? so far it's just heavy duty PR artillery. he was fired, then allegedly there was a negotiation (with some strange already-passed "5PM deadline"), but we have no idea who initiated that and why (allegedly Satya), etc.
- skywhopper 3y agoNah, I would suspect all the press about “Altman being begged to come back” was likely planted, if not by Altman himself, then by investors seeking to pressure the board.
- karmasimida 3y agoThe board trying to get Sam back might be a smoking screen, reading Bloomerg's report: > Was game of chicken until the very end. Only constant was board talking to just about no one. https://twitter.com/ashleevance/status/1726469367565619590 https://twitter.com/ashleevance/status/1726469367565619590 They called Sam bluff, using the talk to bring him back just to get enough time to replace Mira. They made the decision to sacrifice OpenAI as it once was.
- upwardbound 3y agoLike skywhopper (see sibling comment below), I think that the news coverage of the situation was probably heavily biased by parties favorable to Altman who wanted to influence the negotiation. There is no evidence that the board tried to get Sam back. I suspect that the true extent of discussion on this topic was probably limited to the attempt to hire sam back by Mira Murati, who is not on the board.
- DalasNoin 3y ago
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]
- PeterStuer 3y agoThx for the lol, realy on point @elonmusk .
- Woodi 3y ago> I'm not crazy enough to take this job without board support for commercializing our awesome models. Sure, sure... But some general state of mind around all that AI's is strange. So WE-MUST... The AGI !!1 Money, yeah, some, but for did we do the same with eg. cars ? Public hearings, regulations, push AI chips into everybody phones before it is even working or phone companies have their own AI systems ? And just some strange feeling: is OpenAI roleplaing Silicon Valley movie ? Even names are similiar, in places :)