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What the hell? So far, I underestood the chaos as a matter of principle - yes it was messy but necessary to fix the company culture that Ilya's camp envisioned
by preommr 3y ago
What the hell?
So far, I underestood the chaos as a matter of principle - yes it was messy but necessary to fix the company culture that Ilya's camp envisioned.
If you're going to make a move, at least stand by it. This tweet somehow makes the context of the situation 10x worse.
- Jensson 3y agoNormal people can't take being at the center of a large controversy, the amount of negativity and hate you have to face is massive. That is enough to make almost anyone backtrack just to make it stop.
- selcuka 3y agoNormal people don't burn a multi billion dollar company to the ground with a spontaneous decision either. They plan for the backlash.
- Jensson 3y ago> They plan for the backlash You can't plan for something you have never experienced. Being hated by a large group of people is a very different feeling from getting hated by an individual, you don't know if you can handle it until it happens to you.
- anonylizard 3y agoYou can plan for something you've never experienced. You read, or learn from other people's experiences. Normal people know not to burn a $80 billion company to the ground in a weekend. Ilya was doing something unprecedented in corporate history, and astounding he wasn't prepared to face the world's fury over it.
- Jensson 3y ago> You can plan for something you've never experienced. You read, or learn from other people's experiences. Text doesn't convey emotions, and our empathy doesn't work well for emotions we have never experienced. You can see a guy that got kicked in the balls got hurt, but that doesn't mean you are prepared to endure the pain of getting kicked in your balls or that you even understand how painful it is. Also watching politicians it looks like you can just brush it off, because that is what they do. But that requires a lot of experience, not anyone can do it, it is like watching a boxing match and think you can easily stand after a hard punch in your stomach.
- selcuka 3y ago> You can see a guy that got kicked in the balls got hurt, but that doesn't mean you are prepared to endure the pain of getting kicked in your balls or that you even understand how painful it is. Sure, but you do your best not to be kicked in the balls.
- SilasX 3y agoYep. Or, if you're running an immense, well-funded organization that is gauging the consequences of a plan that involves being kicked in the balls, you take a tiny sliver of those funds and get some advisors to appraise you of what to expect when being kicked in the balls, not just wing it/"fake it till you make it". (As it turns out, faking not being in severe pain is tricky.)
- gemstones 3y agoIlya torched peoples' retirements by signaling that it would be very hard to cash out in OpenAI as it is now. You don't have to be emotional to understand the consequence of that action, just logical. You have to think beyond your own narrow perspective for a minute.
- rrr_oh_man 3y agoWhere did he do that? Genuine question.
- endtime 3y ago> You read, or learn from other people's experiences...Ilya was doing something unprecedented in corporate history So whose experiences was he supposed to read about?
- CamperBob2 3y agoYevgeny Prigozhin's?
- b112 3y agoHe hasn't ever posted to reddit?
- ChainOfFools 3y agoIs it possible that someone in Ilya's position can be unaware of just how staggeringly enormous a phenomenon he is sitting on top of ( and thus have no idea how to evaluate the scale of the backlash that would result?) I would say the answer is, demonstrably yes: https://techcrunch.com/2010/09/29/google-excite/ https://techcrunch.com/2010/09/29/google-excite/
- b112 3y agoThis is fair, but understand, Google bought would probably not be Google we have. To think it would grow just as fast, or in the ways it did? Acquires are seldom left alone to do magic.
- asdfasdfsadf22 3y agoHave you ever had a bad day? The consequences for people in power is about 1 million times bigger and more public. Sutskever didn't get on the board by cunning politicking and schmoozing like most businesspeople with that sort of position. He's an outstanding engineer without upper management skills. Every meet one of those?
- geodel 3y agoOutstandingly clueless seems more appropriate. I haven't people any reasonably intelligent person so unaware of real world that they can berate a colleague so publicly and officially and think "Hey! I am sorry man" will do the trick.
- razodactyl 3y agoClueless is a word to use... I think Ilya got screwed over by corporate swindling and made a mistake that's all. As a smart idiot I can resonate with the guy - you don't make that mistake twice. I like to believe the push for prosperity is still a mutual goal and the board drama is an unfortunate setback to overcome.
- throw555chip 3y agoThere were plenty of hyped crypto coin companies supposedly worth billions too and we found out otherwise.
- eli_gottlieb 3y agoNormal people don't have multi-billion dollar companies to burn because they back off in the face of haters long before they get to that stage.
- mcphage 3y ago> Normal people don't burn a multi billion dollar company to the ground with a spontaneous decision either. Has OpenAI been burnt to the ground?
- Turing_Machine 3y agoThree CEOs in as many days, founders departing, and more than 600 employees out of 770 signing an open letter threatening to quit seems pretty burny. And it's just Monday afternoon.
- mcphage 3y ago600 employees quitting would be burny. 600 employees signing a letter saying they’re going to quit isn’t quite there. 3 CEOs in 3 days, isn’t burny, either. There’s the guy they fired, the person they had take on the role so they have someone in the role, and then someone they hired to be CEO. I guess they could have gotten that down to 2 by jumping immediately to their intended replacement, but not having them ready to start immediately doesn’t seem odd. And yeah, it’s just Monday afternoon. If in the next few days, a sizable chunk of those who threatened to quit do so, then that would be burny. But we ain’t there yet.
- anoy8888 3y agoSo is Adam D'Angelo the true villain who is still insisting on the bad decision? I am confused, to be honest .
- TheOtherHobbes 3y agoEveryone is confused. It's impressively operatic. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it.
- x0x0 3y agoThe inability to clearly and publicly -- or even if not publicly, to the OpenAI employees! -- explain a rationale for this is simply astounding.
- tarsinge 3y agoI think they underestimated the hate of an internet crowd post crypto and meme stocks, now completely blindsided by the investment angle especially in the current AI hype. Like why do people now care so much about Microsoft seriously? Or Altman? I can see why Ilya only focused on the real mission could miss how the crowd could perceive a threat to their future investment opportunities, or worse threatening the whole AI hype.
- appplication 3y agoI think you’re right about all of this, but this was doomed from the start. Everybody wants to invest in OpenAI because they see the rocket and want to ride, but the company is fundamentally structured to disallow typical frothy investment mentality.
- theamk 3y agoI think the interest is because ChatGPT is so famous, even in non-tech circles. "Terraform raised prices, losing customers"? whatever, I never heard about it. "ChatGPT's creators have internal disagreement, losing talent"? OH NO what if ChatGPT dies, who is going to answer my questions?? panic panic hate hate...
- AniseAbyss 3y ago[dead]
- stcredzero 3y agoNormal people can't take being at the center of a large controversy, the amount of negativity and hate you have to face is massive. That is enough to make almost anyone backtrack just to make it stop. This is the cheapest and most cost-effective way to run things as an authoritarian -- at least in the short term. If one is not "made of sterner stuff" -- to the point where one is willing to endure scorn for the sake of the truth: - Then what are you doing in a startup, if working in one - One doesn't have enough integrity to be my friend
- wslh 3y agoYes, I cannot believe smart people of that caliber is sending too much Noise. It reminds me of my friend at a Mensa meeting where they cannot agree at basic organization points like in a department consortium.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- aleph_minus_one 3y ago> Yes, I cannot believe smart people of that caliber is sending too much Noise. Being smart and/or being a great researcher does not mean that the respective person is a good "politician". Quite some great researchers are bad at company politics, and quite some people who do great research leave academia because they became crushed by academic politics.
- AniseAbyss 3y ago[dead]
- herval 3y agodifferent kinds of smarts. Ilya is allegedly a brilliant scientist. Doesn't make him a brilliant business person automatically
- fl7305 3y agoAs illustrated in Breaking Bad when they carry a barrel instead of rolling it. Book smarts versus street smarts.
- eastbound 3y agoManaging a large org requires a lot of mundane techniques, and probably a personal-brand manager and personal advisers. It’s extremely boring and mundane and political and insulting to anyone’s humanity. People who haven’t dedicated their life to economics, such as researchers and idealists, will have a hard time.
- 3y ago
- bagofsand 3y agoSerious psychological denial here. The board isn't some anonymous institution that somehow tricked and pulled him into this situation. Come on Ilya, step up and own it, as well as the consequences. Don't be a weasel.
- concinds 3y agoWhere did he say he was "tricked"? And what's with the anonymous insult?
- FireBeyond 3y agoHe doesn't say that, but to me he does use a little weasel wording, the whole passive voice "regret my participation in", when to all accounts so far, it seems that he was one of the instigators, and quite possibly the actual instigator of all this. "regret my participation" sounds much more like "going along with it".
- burnished 3y agoWhat is he supposed to say?
- malfist 3y agoI'd hate to live in a world where learning from your mistakes is being "a weasel"
- infecto 3y agoIs this learning from your mistakes though? "Deeply regret" is one of those statements that does not really mean much. There are what something like 6 board members? Three of which are employees, two of those that got removed from the board. He was the only voting board member who is also an employee and part of the original founding team if you will. These are assumptions on my part but I don't really suspect the other board members orchestrated this event. Its possible and I may be wrong but it is improbable. So lets work off the narrative that he orchestrated the event. He now "Deeply regret" its, not a "I made a mistake" and I am sorry. But he regrets the participation and how it plays out.
- Paul-Craft 3y agoIt's pretty simple, isn't it? He made a move. It went bad. Now he's trying to dodge the blast. He just doesn't understand that if he just shut the fuck up, after everything else that's gone on (seriously, 2 interim CEOs in 2 days?), nobody would be talking about him today. The truth is, this is about the only thing about the whole clown show that makes any sense right now.
- foobarian 3y ago> 2 interim CEOs in 2 days Wait what? Did Murati get booted?
- johanj 3y agoThey hired the Emmett Shear (Twitch co-founder) as a new interim CEO: https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/20/23968848/openai-new-ceo-emmett-shear-twitch-co-founder-hiring https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/20/23968848/openai-new-ceo-...
- zyang 3y agoA scab ceo is not something I expected. This timeline is strange.
- tedivm 3y agoShe didn't get booted from the company, but they did find a new interim CEO (the former twitch CEO).
- dpkirchner 3y agoToday's OpenAI CEO is Emmett Shear (former CEO of Twitch).
- ethbr1 3y agoThat this is a legitimate comment thread about something fairly important is mind boggling. What odds would you have had to offer at the beginning of last week on a bet that this is where we'd be on Monday?
- tarruda 3y agoSeems like he's completely emotion driven at this point. I doubt anyone advising rationally would agree with sending this tweet
- hfjjbf 3y ago[dead]
- linuxftw 3y agoThe board destroyed the company in one fell swoop. He's right to feel regret. Personally, I don't think that Altman was that big of an impact, he was all business, no code, and the world is acting like the business side is the true enabler. But, the market has spoken, and the move has driven the actual engineers to side with Altman.
- hannofcart 3y agoSorry, but how has the market spoken? Not sure how that would be possible considering that OpenAI is a private company. If anyone is speaking up it's the OpenAI team.
- rockemsockem 3y agoTalent exists in a market too
- dylan604 3y agoRight, the job market has spoken and it now looks like nobody wants to be part of OAI and much rather be part of MSFT
- somethingor 3y agoHow does it look like that?
- dylan604 3y agoThe fact that an overwhelming number of employees signed a letter of intent to quit and would join MSFT instead? How does it not look like that?
- somethingor 3y agoThanks, wasn’t aware of that context
- hackerlight 3y ago> If you're going to make a move, at least stand by it. Why would you stand by unintended consequences?
- felipellrocha 3y agoWhen you watch Survivor (yes, the tv show), sometimes a player does a bad play, gets publicly caught, and has to go on a "I'm sorry" tour the next days. Came to mind after reading this tweet. He is not sorry for what he's done. He is sorry for getting caught.
- soderfoo 3y agoWatching this all unfold in the public is unprecedented (I think). There has never been a company like OpenAI, in terms or governance and product, so I guess it makes sense that their drama leads us in to unchartered territory.
- dylan604 3y agorecently, we've seen the 3D gaming engine company fall flat on its face and back pedal. We've seen Apple be wishy washy about CSAM scanning. We saw a major bank collapse in real time. I just wish there was a virtual popcorn company to invest in using some crypto.
- crispyambulance 3y agoThey're just human beings, a small number of them, with little time and very little to go on as far as precedent goes. That's not a big deal for a small company, but this one has billions at stake and arguably critical consequences for humanity in general.
- phreeza 3y agoHard to know what is really going on, but I think one possibility is that the entire narrative around Ilyas "camp" was not what actually went down, and was just what the social media hive mind hallucinated to make sense of things based on very little evidence.
- throwaway4aday 3y agoYes, I think there are a lot of assumptions based on the fact that Ilya was the one that contacted Sam and Greg but he may have just done that as the person on the board who worked closely with them. He for sure voted for whatever idiot plan got this ball rolling but we don't know what promises were made to him to get his backing.
- loaph 3y agoIt's interesting how LLMs are prone to similar kinds of hallucinations
- belter 3y agoWhen a situation becomes so absurd and complex that it defies understanding or logical explanation, you should...get more popcorn...
- jacquesm 3y agoHehe, I didn't see that twist at the end coming :)
- bgirard 3y ago> If you're going to make a move, at least stand by it. I see this is the popular opinion and that I'm going against it. But I've made decisions that I though were good at the time, and later I got more perspective and realize it was a terrible decision. I think being able to admit you messed up, when you messed up is a great trait. Standing by your mistake isn't something I admire.
- corethree 3y agoNo this isn't what's going on. Even when you admit your mistakes it's good to elucidate the reasoning behind why and what led up to the mistake in the first place. Such a short vague statement isn't characteristic of a normal human who is genuinely remorseful of his prior decisions. This statement is more characteristic of a person with a gun to his head getting forced to say something. This is more likely what is going on. Powerful people are forcing this situation to occur.
- allarm 3y agoSo when C level acts like a robot you don't like it and when they act like human beings you don't like it either. It's difficult to be a C-level I guess.
- geodel 3y agoWell yeah it is. Maybe its good point to remember when people ask Why in the world these C-level executives get paid so much?
- corethree 3y agoIt's obvious. The guy is making the statement with a gun pointed to his head. He has no opportunity to defend himself. Those guns are metaphorical of course but this is essentially what is going on: Someone with a lot of power and influence is making him say this.
- hfjjbf 3y ago[dead]
- nostromo 3y agoI don’t believe it was ever about principles for Ilya. It sure seems like it was always his ego and a power grab, even if he's not aware of that himself. When a board is unhappy with a highly-performing CEO’s direction, you have many meetings about it and you work towards a resolution over many months. If you can’t resolve things you announce a transition period. You don’t fire them out of the blue.
- politelemon 3y ago> you announce a transition period Aaah that just explained a lot of departures I've seen at the past at some of my partner companies. There's always a bit of fluffy talk around them leaving. That makes a lot more sense.
- manasdaruka 3y agoI feel he just wanted to scare the person standing at the edge of the cliff, but the board actually pushed the person.
- barkingcat 3y agothis kind of thinking is avoiding responsibility. He is part of the board, so he acted to bring this about.
- panda888888 3y agoI'm going to get downvoted for this, but I do wonder if Sam's firing wasn't Ilya's doing, hence the failure to take responsibility. OpenAI's board has been surprisingly quiet, aside from the first press release. So it's possible (although unlikely) that this wasn't driven by Ilya.
- leadingthenet 3y agoIt wouldn't have gone through without his vote.
- panda888888 3y agoMy point is that it's possible that Ilya was not the driving force behind Sam's firing, even if he ultimately voted for it. If this is the case, it makes Ilya's non-apology apology a lot less weird.
- kyle_grove 3y agoIt's possible, although contradicted by Brockman's statement, that Ilya voted merely to remove Brockman's board seat, and then was in the minority on the Altman vote. I doubt this is what happened, but the reporting that Brockman was ousted from his board seat after Altman, and wasn't present in the board meeting that ousted Altman, doesn't make much sense either.