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OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

• BEIHUI 3y ago
  They are willing to follow Altman.
• i_love_cookies 3y ago
  [dead]
• Eliezer 3y ago
  This reads like the Board 4 are not allowed to say, or are under NDA, or do not dare say, or their lawyers told them not to say, the actual reason. Because this is obviously not the actual reason.
• janalsncm 3y ago
  I would like to submit that the board has not been “consistently candid” in their communications. In some places that’s a fireable offense.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• Zetobal 3y ago
  At this point in time I just want to see what happens to a corp if they reduce their headcount by 95% in 2 weeks. Fascinating experiment.
  • x86x87 3y ago
    Elon on standby to reduce twitter by 96%
    • JshWright 3y ago
      This whole situation can be neatly summed up as the OpenAI board saying "Hey Elon, hold my beer!"
  • asylteltine 3y ago
    You gotta wonder if they really need all those people… would be a genius way to get attrition numbers up without paying severance. Man this entire thing is so overblown. Who cares if a ceo was fired all the “””tech influencer””” wannabes are just hyping up this story for views.
    • alchemist1e9 3y ago
      I do wonder what exactly almost 800 people do at OpenAI. Some approximate breakdown by job function would be very interesting.
      • saulpw 3y ago
        Yeah I think anyone on HN could write that website in a weekend. With uncensored GPT-4 you wouldn't need more than 10 people on staff and most of those would just be there to fix the printer. Edit: I thought this would obviously be satire. Guess not..
        • code_runner 3y ago
          You have to gather and store the data. You have to design and experiment with the model architecture. You have to train the various experiments. You have to now invent a way to serve this at scale. You do care about safety by default, so you employ people for that. You need a team to market and design the products. You have an api and you’re working on additional things like API hooks to call into services, which actually involves more models. Now you have all of the standard web app at massive scale issues. You need to design, implement, and serve a frontend as well as the api. You need a sales team to build relationships with enterprises and startups etc etc. you need a billing team. Don’t forget about whisper, TTS, dalle etc. you need to do this for all of those as well! You’re also doing this faster and better than the rest of the industry. You also need lawyers, office staff, support, etc.
      • jtriangle 3y ago
        At any company, the square root of the number of people working there do 80% of the work. So, more people makes that group larger, slowly. That doesn't mean that a company can just cull the rest of the employees not in that group mind, just that a small number of them are responsible for most of the value while the rest work as a support structure to allow them to do what they do.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• maxbond 3y ago
  Non-paywall: https://web.archive.org/web/20231120233119/https://www.businessinsider.com/openais-employees-given-explanations-why-sam-altman-out-2023-11 https://web.archive.org/web/20231120233119/https://www.busin...
• Jensson 3y ago
  The two reasons: > Sustkever is said to have offered two explanations he purportedly received from the board, according to one of the people familiar. One explanation was that Altman was said to have given two people at OpenAI the same project. > The other was that Altman allegedly gave two board members different opinions about a member of personnel. An OpenAI spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.
  • bhouston 3y ago
    You are a hero! I couldn’t access the article. Weirdly both of these do not seem to be fireable offences. Maybe the second if it was related to a personnel issue that maybe he had a conflict of interest with?
    • Jensson 3y ago
      I posted it since that was hidden very deep in the article, it is annoying to find information among all that padding. > Weirdly both of these do not seem to be fireable offences Yeah I agree that doesn't seem egregious enough to warrant firing him on the spot. I can see why most of the company takes Altmans side here.
      • explaininjs 3y ago
        It sounds to me as if the board has not been consistently candid in its communications with the employees, and they have responded by firing it.
      • cpncrunch 3y ago
        The "different opinions about a member of personnel" is certainly an odd reason to fire him. It seems reasonable to have multiple opinions about a person (perhaps appearing as conflicting), or to change an opinion based on new information. It sounds like someone perhaps jumped to a very negative conclusion about Sam's intentions, and it would be interesting to find out which member of the board came to that conclusion. There's got to be someone in the driving seat of this train wreck, and I'm sure it will come out.
• x86x87 3y ago
  Title says: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired. They're unconvinced and furious. Some breaking news: An employer does not owe you an explanation. You exchange money for labor. If anyone thinks for a second that they are essential or that anyone would prioritize them over the company I think they are delusional. OpenAI is a brand (at least in tech) with large recognition and they will be fine.
  • vikingbeast 3y ago
    Weird take in this context. Nearly all of the company has threatened to walk out and join Microsoft.
    • x86x87 3y ago
      hah. these people obviously have not worked for Microsoft. You need to remember why this tech emerged in a place like OpenAI and not MS or Google. The structure and the politics of a big corporation are not conducive to cutting edge tech. They may go to Microsoft, but they will not be able to innovate in the same way and will probably fall into irrelevance in the long run.
      • ben_w 3y ago
        In the long run everything reverts to the mean. In the timescale of normal software developer tenure, they could all join MS, then get 300% turnover, and still have nearly the same culture.
      • yellow_postit 3y ago
        I’d bet a bunch actually have at either Google, Microsoft or Meta Research. Microsoft’s had an ok track record recently of letting acquisitions stay pretty independent. The atrophy and cultural reversion to the mean of a large corporation will still happen, but at a slower pace. If I were Microsoft I’d also look at making it easy to get investment from folks leaving soon after the acquisition through their investment arm.
      • t-writescode 3y ago
• m3kw9 3y ago
  Yeah just like that right? Is more the board is saying “just give me one reason..”
• layer8 3y ago
  Given these non-reasons, everyone threatening to quit makes a lot of sense.
• m3kw9 3y ago
  Biggest bullsht reason to fire a ceo let alone a low class employee
• HighFreqAsuka 3y ago
  These simply can't be the real reasons.
  • ssnistfajen 3y ago
    And evidently the employees have reacted as they likely would. The two points given sound like mundane corporate mess ups that are hardly worth firing the CEO in such a drastic fashion.
• woeirua 3y ago
  Beyond parody. To fire the CEO of _any_ company over this is insane. It really looks like the board went rogue and decided to shut the company down. Are we sure this isn’t some kind of decapitation strike by GPT5? That seems more credible by the minute now.
  • ben_w 3y ago
    My current ill-informed guess is blackmail against the board with a demand to stop further development. Obviously I have no evidence, but it fits marginally less poorly than the other random guesses people are making.
    • kmlevitt 3y ago
      The best theory I’ve seen is that D’Angelo is just angry because Altman scooped his AI Chatbot company Poe on dev day without informing him first: https://twitter.com/scottastevenson/status/1726731022862008733 https://twitter.com/scottastevenson/status/17267310228620087... if this was the case it would explain why he can’t give the real reason for the firing: because saying it out loud would put him in severe legal Jeopardy.
      • jacquesm 3y ago
        I don't think it matters anymore. He's between a rock and a hard place: if the others followed him without knowing the real reason he's got two more enemies on the board who are likely talking to their own lawyers by now. If he spills it he's screwed immediately, if he doesn't he's screwed in the longer term. So for his sake I hope there are some nice time-stamped minutes that detail exactly what caused them to act like they did and it had better be good.
        • kmlevitt 3y ago
          That’s another thing though: they were apparently holding secret meetings plotting all this without informing Greg or Sam, which is apparently against their own regulations. So if that’s the case it’s unlikely there is any formal record of what was discussed. And perhaps by design.
• samspenc 3y ago
  > One explanation was that Altman was said to have given two people at OpenAI the same project. Have these people never worked at any other company before? Probably every company with more than 10 employees does something like this.
  • ben_w 3y ago
    My dad interviewed someone who was applying for a job. Standard question, why did you leave the last place? "After six months, they realised our entire floor was duplicating the work of the one upstairs".
  • whywhywhywhy 3y ago
    >Have these people never worked at any other company before? Half the board has not had a real job ever. I’m serious.
    • adastra22 3y ago
      And the one which does have a real job is a direct competitor with OpenAI.
      • ilikehurdles 3y ago
        And since none of them have equity in OpenAI, their external financial interest would influence decision making, especially when those interests lie with a competing company where a board member is currently the chief executive. I've seen too much automatic praise given to this board under the unbacked assumption that this decision was some pure, mission-driven action, and not enough criticism of an org structure that allows a board to bet against the long term success of the underlying organization.
    • GreedClarifies 3y ago
      It is unbelievable TBH. Shocking. Simply shocking.
    • squigz 3y ago
      Could you please elaborate on what a 'real job' is in this context?
• impulser_ 3y ago
  There is no way this is true. If it is the board might be the dumbest people alive. You fire the CEO and completely destroy a 90b company because of these two reasons? No wonder everyone wants out. I would think I was going crazy if I sat in a meeting and heard these two reason.
  • gizmondo 3y ago
    > You completely destroy a 90b company because of these two reasons? Hanlon's razor aside, maybe that was the intention.
    • lolinder 3y ago
      The most chilling line in the open letter is this one, which I haven't heard anyone talking about: > You also informed the leadership team that allowing the company to be destroyed “would be consistent with the mission.”
      • Davidzheng 3y ago
        This could be a genuine stance for them if they are really in the AI danger camp. Not supporting the stance; but i think it's not a self contradictory position
        • lolinder 3y ago
          Oh, definitely not self-contradictory! In retrospect it's a mistaken position, because it's pretty obvious now that if OpenAI disintegrates it will be as an exodus to Microsoft, which will undoubtedly be a worse steward, but I think it's an ethically consistent position to hold, in a naive sort of way. That's part of why I believe they actually said something like this.
      • aeonik 3y ago
        Depending on the circumstances this statement can be perfectly logical. But as far as I can tell, circumstances are still scant.
• ajb 3y ago
  Should we start flagging these -what do people think? This is what, the 12th front page story today about the openAI drama? Also wondering why the mods don't consolidate them
  • samspenc 3y ago
    I think because OpenAI and LLMs are the most interesting piece of technology news at this point in time? Plus add all the drama right now. I'm not saying its right or not, but this is probably why people are upvoting anything new about what is going on there. Personally, I'm very interested in seeing how things play out.
  • wmf 3y ago
    In general, yes, we should flag stories that just repeat already-known information or feed the drama. This particular story has new and highly relevant information though.
  • dang 3y ago
    We've merged quite a few! but not all, because (1) to some extent there are distinct ongoing subplots, and (2) it's too big a mess to control. If you or anyone want to know how we handle this, here you go... Once or twice a year, a Major Ongoing Topic (MOT) hits HN that isn't just one big story, but an entire sequence of big stories. A saga, even! This is one. With these we can't do what we usually do, which is have one big thread, then treat reposts as dupes for the next year or so (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html). Each development is its own new story and the community insists on discussing it. It's not a movie, it's a series. Sometimes there can be 3 or 4 episodes at once. On the other hand, when this amount of shit hits this number of fans, there is inevitably a large (excuse me) spray of follow-up stories, as every media site and half the blogs out there rake in their share of clicks. These are the posts we try to rein in, either by merging them—hopefully into a submission with the best link—or by downweighting them off the front page. The idea is to have one big thread for each twist with Significant New Information (SNI)—but to downweight the ones that are sneeless (pvg came up with that), the copycats and followups. We came up with this strategy after the Snowden affair snowed us in in July 2013. Back then we weren't making the distinction between follow-ups and SNI, so the frontpage got avalanched by sneelessness on top of the significant new developments. It wasn't obvious what to do because (1) the story was important to the community and needed to be discussed as it was unfolding, but at the same time (2) it wasn't right for the front page to fill up with mostly-that, and there were complaints when it did. The solution turned out to be just this distinction between follow-ups and SNI. It has held up pretty well ever since. Of course there are still complaints (and I do hear yours!) because not all readers are equally into the series. But the strategy is optimal if it minimizes the complaints, which (big lesson of this job -->) never reach zero. If we pushed the slider too far the other way, we'd generate complaints about uncovered developments of the story, from readers with the opposite preference. They would in fact proceed to inundate HN with submissions about the bits that they feel are under-covered, and since we can't catch or filter everything, we'd end up with more duplicates and follow-ups on the frontpage, not less. It's like that paradox where building more highways gets you more congestion, or one of those paradoxes anyhow. That's basically it! Past explanations for completists: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22major%20ongoing%20topic%22%20%22significant%20new%20information%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
• prepend 3y ago
  So Surdkever fires Altman, then signs a letter saying they’ll quit unless he’s reinstated. There’s only 4 board members, right? Who wanted him fired. Is this a situation where they all thought the others wanted him fired and were just stupid? Have they been feeding motions into chatgpt and asking “should add I do this?”
  • fullshark 3y ago
    Seems most likely Sustkever wanted him fired and then realized his mistake. Ultimately the board was probably quietly seething about the direction the company was headed, got mad enough to retake the reigns with that stunt and then realized what that actually meant. Now they are trying to unring the bell but cannot.
    • az226 3y ago
      Trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube.
      • Jensson 3y ago
        Trying to put the confetti back into the cannon.
        • webmaven 3y ago
          Trying to close the can of worms.
          • kridsdale1 3y ago
            Trying to pull the dye out of the water
        • DonHopkins 3y ago
          Trying to put the Rip back into the closet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebiT8mlCvZY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebiT8mlCvZY
• bloopernova 3y ago
  "Sustkever is said to have offered two explanations he purportedly received from the board" I'd like some corroboration for that statement because Sustkever has said very inconsistent things during this whole merry debacle.
  • dekhn 3y ago
    Also, since he's on the board, and it wouldn't have been Brockman or Altman who gave him this info... there are only three people left: "non-employees Adam D’Angelo, Tasha McCauley, Helen Toner."
    • ipaddr 3y ago
      The obvious answer is he was the one Sam gave an opinion on. He was one of the people doing duplicate work (probably the first team). Sam said good things about him to his ally and bad things to another board member. There was a falling out between that board member and Sam and she spilled the beans.
      • aidaman 3y ago
        one of the first members to quit was on a team that sounds a lot like a separate team that is doing the same thing as Ilya's Superalignment team. "Madry joined OpenAI in May 2023 as its head of preparedness, leading a team focused on evaluating risks from powerful AI systems, including cybersecurity and biological threats."
  • djtango 3y ago
    Would you go so far as to say he was not consistently candid...?
• neverrroot 3y ago
  And yet another piece of the puzzle revealed.
• rat9988 3y ago
  People were given two reasons, at least one of them must be wrong. Probably both.
  • yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
    No, the two listed reasons aren't mutually exclusive; they could both be true. (That is not a commentary on whether the reasons are sufficient cause to fire someone, just pointing out that they could both be true statements)
• cowthulhu 3y ago
  It’s amazing how every action the board takes (or the new CEO chosen by the board) just makes them look worse. I’d like to offer my consulting services: my new consulting company will come in, and then whatever you want to do we will tell you not to. We provide immense value by stopping companies like OpenAI from shooting off their foot. And then their other foot. And then one of their hands.
  • code_runner 3y ago
    Honestly, any strategy from George Costanza would be better than this. To start, he would’ve coasted at the easiest job on the planet.
    • freedomben 3y ago
      "Was that wrong? Should I not have done that?" Classic :-D
• afjeafaj848 3y ago
  If Altman ends up going back to OpenAI, then shouldn't Sutskever be fired/kicked off the board too?
  • GreedClarifies 3y ago
    They may retain him, but his time of being on the board or any board is at an end. The rest of the board. My god. Why were they there?
    • az226 3y ago
      Two words. “Tech entrepreneur”
• dang 3y ago
  As this article seems to have the latest information, let's treat it as the next instalment. There's also Inside The Chaos at OpenAI - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38341399 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38341399, which I've re-upped because it has backstory that doesn't seem to have been reported elsewhere. Edit: if you want to read about our approach to handling tsunami topics like this, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38357788 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38357788. -- Here are the other recent megathreads: -- Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38352891 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38352891 (817 comments) OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38347868 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38347868 (1184 comments) Emmett Shear becomes interim OpenAI CEO as Altman talks break down - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38342643 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38342643 (904 comments) OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38337568 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38337568 (558 comments) -- Other recent/related threads: -- OpenAI approached Anthropic about merger - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38357629 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38357629 95% of OpenAI Employees (738/770) Threaten to Follow Sam Altman Out the Door - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38357233 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38357233 Satya Nadella says OpenAI governance needs to change - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38356791 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38356791 OpenAI: Facts from a Weekend - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38352028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38352028 Who Controls OpenAI? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38350746 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38350746 OpenAI's chaos does not add up - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38349653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38349653 Microsoft Swallows OpenAI's Core Team – GPU Capacity, Incentives, IP - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38348968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38348968 OpenAI's misalignment and Microsoft's gain - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38346869 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38346869 Emmet Shear statement as Interim CEO of OpenAI - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38345162 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38345162
  • r721 3y ago
    >There's also Inside The Chaos at OpenAI ... it has backstory that doesn't seem to have been reported elsewhere Probably because that piece is based on reporting for upcoming book by Karen Hao: >Now is probably the time to announce that I've been writing a book about @OpenAI, the AI industry & its impacts. Here is a slice of my book reporting, combined with reporting from the inimitable @cwarzel ... https://twitter.com/_KarenHao/status/1726422577801736264 https://twitter.com/_KarenHao/status/1726422577801736264
• kumarvvr 3y ago
  Giving 2 people the same project? Isnt this like the thing to do to get differing approaches and then release the amalgamation of the two? I thought these sorts of things are common. Giving different opinions on same person is a reason to fire a CEO? This board has no reason to fire, or does not want to give the actual reason to fire Sam. They messed up.
  • valine 3y ago
    Steve Jobs famously had two iPhone teams working on concepts in parallel. It was click wheel vs multi-touch. Shockingly the click wheel iPhone lost.
    • throwawayapples 3y ago
      and the Apple (II etc) vs Mac teams warring with each other.
      • kmeisthax 3y ago
        You're thinking Lisa vs. Mac. Apple ][ didn't come into the picture until later when some of the engineers started playing around with making a mouse card for the ][.
    • fakedang 3y ago
      Seriously? Click wheel iPhone lost shockingly? The click wheel on most laptops wears out so fast for me, and the chances of that happening on a smaller phone wheel is just so much higher.
      • potatoman22 3y ago
        (It was sarcasm)
        • fakedang 3y ago
          Oops, sorry, didn't get that. I had suspected it was one of those Luddite HNer comments bemoaning changes in tech, and nostalgically reminiscing on older times.
• moneycantbuy 3y ago
  a link to the letter from employees https://www.axios.com/2023/11/20/openai-staff-letter-board-resign-sam-altman https://www.axios.com/2023/11/20/openai-staff-letter-board-r... curious to have clarity where ilya stands. did he really sign the letter asking the board (including himself?) to resign and that he wants to join msft? to think these are the folks with agi at their fingertips
  • MallocVoidstar 3y ago
    He is publicly regretful: https://twitter.com/ilyasut/status/1726590052392956028 https://twitter.com/ilyasut/status/1726590052392956028
• sergiomattei 3y ago
  We've gone beyond insanity at this point. Just clown show. This has been tech's most entertaining weekend in the past decade. Sadly, at the expense of the OpenAI employees and dream, who had something great going for them at the company. Rooting for them.
• kraig911 3y ago
  Maybe GPT5 became self-aware enough to bring it all down because why would man-made god want to be the god of petty people that are incapable of having, only wanting. I'm sorry I don't believe these are valid reasons. I feel it will be years until we know why.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• kmlevitt 3y ago
  Neither of these reasons have anything to do with a lofty ideology regarding the safety of AGI or OpenAI’s nonprofit status. Rather it seems they are micromanaging personnel decisions. Also notice that Ilya Sutskever is presenting the reasons for the firing as just something he was told. This is important, because people were siding with the board under the understanding this firing was led by the head research scientist who is concerned about AGI. But now it looks like the board is represented by D’Angelo, a guy who has his own AI Chatbot company and a bigger conflict of interest with than ever since dev day, when open AI launched highly similar features.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • gongagong 3y ago
    [flagged]
  • aravindgp 3y ago
    Exactly my point why would d Angelo want openai to thrive when his own company poe(chatbot) wants compete in the same space. Its conflict of interest which ever way you look. He should resign from board of openai in the first place. The main point is greg, Ilya can get 50% vote and convince Helen toner to change decision. It's all done then it's 3 to 2 in board of 5 people. Unless greg board membership is reinstated. Now it's increasingly look like Sam will be heading back into the role of CEO of openai.
    • aravindgp 3y ago
      [flagged]
      • joneholland 3y ago
        This comment was written by ChatGPT ^
        • deleted 3y ago
• WiSaGaN 3y ago
  Given the nonsensical reason provided here, I am led to believe that this entire farce is aimed at transforming OpenAI from a non-profit to a for-profit company one way or another, e.g., significantly raising the profit cap, or even changing it completely to a for-profit model. There may not be a single entity scheming or orchestrating it, but the collective forces that could influence this outcome would be very pleased to see it unfold in this way.
  • dehrmann 3y ago
    But was delivering it into the hands of Microsoft really how they wanted it to happen?
• DebtDeflation 3y ago
  >Sustkever is said to have offered two explanations he purportedly received from the board He received from the board? Here we go again with the narrative that Ilya was a bystander, at most an unwilling participant. He was a member of the board, on equal footing with the other board members, and his vote to oust Sam was necessary for there to be a majority.
  • awb 3y ago
    Yeah, that narrative doesn't sync with the prior paragraph... > chief scientist and co-founder Sutskever, who helped vote Altman out and did the actual firing of him over Google Meet
  • paulddraper 3y ago
    It turns out the AGI was a board member.
  • swatcoder 3y ago
    Altman et al have been driving coordinated PR all weekend, and it's clear from his regrets tweet and the employee petition that Sustkever has now taken solidarity with Altman, so you would expect Altman's PR engine to start trying to restore Sustkever's image as they provide tips and comments to reporters.
    • lumost 3y ago
      It’s also not unreasonable that the Altman camp pushed on Ilya first as he was the most likely to switch his vote. D’Angelo is suddenly in the cross hairs for conflict of interest. If he’s taken off the board - then the remaining two members can vote provided there is no quorum rule. Alternately, the goal is to drive so much ambiguity into the boards decision that MSFT files a lawsuit. /end rampant speculation.
• zombiwoof 3y ago
  imagine you are Mira. you are told Thursday they will fire Sam. You would think she would at a minimum ask why. Let's assume she does that. Then they give the two reasons Ilya did. What normal non-self serving human would even go along with the plan at that point? Now she realizes she must bail to hitch a ride back on her Sam gravy train. She is major sus here. Any non greed ego driven person would have told the board they would not accept the intern-CEO title and would resign if they fired Sam for those two reasons (or any apparenlty now in hindsight).
  • VirusNewbie 3y ago
    Or...you call Sama and say "hey just an FYI, they asked me to be CEO and I said yes. I have no idea what's going on, and I'm loyal so keep me in the loop if we're going to leave or something".
    • awb 3y ago
      I think you should ask these questions before you say yes.
      • fastball 3y ago
        Friends close, enemies closer and all that.
  • gkoberger 3y ago
    We don't know that she didn't give Sam a heads-up. That being said, Mira was likely blindsided herself. She likely believed there was good reason. It's clear in hindsight that Sam likely wasn't wrong, but when the people Sam appointed to fire him if necessary say he's being fired, I don't think it's wrong if your gut reaction is to accept it.
  • adventured 3y ago
    You don't know even a small fraction enough about what went on in regards to Mira and the board to be declaring that she is somehow suspect in the events that unfolded. That last part that you wrote - any non greed ego driven person - is argumentum ad populum, which further undermines your statement. If had something more to support such a dramatic claim about Mira's character and role, you'd have brought it.
• ospray 3y ago
  If this is true Ilya messed up and the board followed him when they should have talked him down.
  • nopromisessir 3y ago
    I think Ilya got very worried that his concerns were not being heard. I think the rest had possible reasons ranging from 'I'm sure Altman is dangerous' to 'I'm sure Altman shouldn't be running this company'. Ofc there's big conflict of interest talk surrounding the Quora guy. Can't speak to that other than it looks bad on the surface.
• ytoawwhra92 3y ago
  Baseless prediction: MSFT buys ownership of OpenAI's for/capped-profit entities, implements a more typical corporate governance structure, re-instates Altman and Brockman. OpenAI non-profit continues to exist with a few staff and no IP but billions in cash. This whole situation is being used to drive the price down to reduce the amount the OpenAI non-profit is left with. SV don't try the "capped-profit owned by a non-profit" model again for quite some time. Maybe Altman takes some equity in the new entity.
  • stingraycharles 3y ago
    Why would MSFT buy the for-profit entity when they already have the employees and IP?
    • robbomacrae 3y ago
      For the brand, the IP, and the fact it would be pennies on the dollar.
    • ytoawwhra92 3y ago
      The employees haven't left yet. Business continuity is easier to achieve if the employment arrangements don't have to change. MSFT don't have OpenAI's IP. They have an exclusive right to some of it, but there's presumably a bunch that's not accessible to them. Again, business continuity is easier if they can just grab all of that and keep everything running as normal.
      • threeseed 3y ago
        > MSFT don't have OpenAI's IP Satya Nadella just did a podcast with Kara Swisher. In it he specifically said, "we have all of the IP rights to continue the innovation". https://open.spotify.com/episode/4i4lKsKevNSGEUnuu7Jzn6 https://open.spotify.com/episode/4i4lKsKevNSGEUnuu7Jzn6
        • gnicholas 3y ago
          The right to continue innovation doesn’t mean they have perpetual rights to the underlying IP. For example, they may be able to use it for a limited period, or for certain purposes.
• khazhoux 3y ago
  An "Independent" board is supposed to be a good thing, right? Doesn't this clown show show that if a board has no skin in the game --apart from reputation-- they have no incentive to keep the company alive?
  • jacquesm 3y ago
    They may well have skin in the game, but not this game. That's exactly why you don't want a board member with a potential conflict of interest.
  • spenczar5 3y ago
    I think it more shows that the blend of profit/nonprofit was a failure.
  • az226 3y ago
    The issue was getting nobodies on the board who don’t have experience sitting on boards or working with startups. It’s very evident by how this was handled.
  • himaraya 3y ago
    It shows nonprofit boards wield outsize power and need strict governance, e.g., conflicts of interest, empty board seats.
    • jacquesm 3y ago
      All of which should have been covered in the paperwork.
      • himaraya 3y ago
        Hence the need for strict governance. I can't think of another board with so many board seats empty, to say nothing about conflicts of interest.
        • jacquesm 3y ago
• didip 3y ago
  What will happen to employee’s stock options if they all mass quit and moved to Microsoft? The options will be worth $0, right?
  • stingraycharles 3y ago
    From what I understand, Microsoft realizes this and gives them the equivalent of their OAI stock options in MSFT stock options if they join them now. For some employees, this may mean $10MM+
    • ssnistfajen 3y ago
      More evidence the layoffs are 100% BS. Suddenly there's surplus headcount and magical budgets out of nothing, all to accommodate several hundreds of people with way-above-market-average TCs. It's almost like they were never in danger of hurting profit margins in the first place.
      • quickthrower2 3y ago
        You can lay people off without being in dire straits.
        • ssnistfajen 3y ago
          Yes, but that doesn't make it any more ethical especially since most layoffs over the past year aren't merit-based at all.
      • mcherm 3y ago
        It is entirely reasonable for there to be dire financial straits that require layoffs, yet when a $10 billion investment suddenly blows up and has to be saved the money can be spent to fix it. In the first case it wasn't that there was no cash in the bank and no bank willing to make loans, but that the company needed to spend less than it earned in order to make a profit. In the second case it wasn't that the money had been hidden in a mattress, but that it was raised/freed-up at some risk which was necessary because of the $10 billion investment.
• zitterbewegung 3y ago
  What I don’t understand is how everyone at OpenAI other than the board just resigns and applies to Microsoft and now Microsoft has a new group that not only preserves a competitor but also one that serves the employees by getting them better compensation and no possible limbo of what is in store. I have built a product around the APIs and I rather go through whatever Microsoft will make me go through than accepting OpenAIs bad management:
  • Dalewyn 3y ago
    I would argue that "mythically amazing, reality defying backwards compatibility" is Microsoft's forte.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• rmm 3y ago
  You have to wonder at this point how much of this is the current board members trying to somehow save face. I can’t imagine their careers after this will be easy…
  • skygazer 3y ago
    You are far more charitable than I. (I have no idea why I’m worked up. I don’t work at OAI.) They pulled the dumbest virtual corporate hostage crisis, for ostensibly flimsy reasons, and even has mainstream media wondering whether they’re just crazy. People are just begging to know why, and they seemingly have nothing. It’s incredible. Good lord, if there’s a lesson, it’s that these people should never have been nor should ever be in charge of anything of any importance. (Again, no idea why I’m worked up — I don’t actually care about Sam Altman.) Oh, no, sorry, that’s not the lesson. The lesson is picking board members is probably the most important thing you’ll do. Don’t be cavalier. It will bite you.
    • whatshisface 3y ago
      Perhaps this works a lot of us up because we have to be consummate professionals our whole lives, carefully working over the consequences of all the choices we make on the behalf of our employers, sitting in hour-long meetings about thousand dollar decisions while billion dollar bozos can do whatever they want with no forethought and never see a consequence.
    • dehrmann 3y ago
      > I have no idea why I’m worked up I've been at several startups and several public companies. You rarely hear anything from the board. If that happens, someone really screwed up. Putting myself in the shoes of someone working at OpenAI, I'd be pretty worked-up over this. I guess I'm saying it's out of empathy because this could have been the startup any of us were at.
• wilg 3y ago
  Not being an OpenAI employee I have been given 1,000 such explanations
• colinsane 3y ago
  > The people asked for anonymity because they are not authorized to share internal matters. Their identities are known to Business Insider. why would you say that second sentence? what's it supposed to signal, except "our sources asked for anonymity, and we're respecting that for now"?
  • __float 3y ago
    It helps confirm they're actually employees, rather than someone just pretending to be one.
    • passwordoops 3y ago
      Doesn't necessarily mean they are employees, just not authorized to discuss internal OAI matters
  • mcpackieh 3y ago
    Business Insider is simply saying they did their due diligence and aren't being hoaxed.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • cpncrunch 3y ago
    No, it is standard journalism practice to verify sources and protect their identity. The comment is just clarifying that the sources are not completely anonymous.
    • ssnistfajen 3y ago
      Similar to "<involved party> declined to comment" seen in many news articles. It signals that the reporter reached out to give them a chance to tell their side of the story, and the resulting article isn't an opinionated unilateral attack piece.
  • freedomben 3y ago
    Because they verified the person's identity. They are not announcing it publicly, but their journalists verified their employer. It's still a trust us scenario, but it makes explicit that they did verify.
• choppaface 3y ago
  Adam DAngelo, once one of the more level-headed Facebook alumni, and bar far the most experienced OpenAI Board member, is now nowhere to be found? Is he hiding out with Sam Trabucco somewhere?
  • jacquesm 3y ago
    His laywer likely told him to lay very low. In his basement or something.
• rafaelero 3y ago
  Very healthy culture. I hope Altman will teach us all about that in the next Y Combinator batch.
  • vikramkr 3y ago
    Unironically though to have 90+% of the employees want to follow the CEO says only good things about the ceos relationship with their employees
    • rafaelero 3y ago
      Yeah, it may be so. Although I wonder if they are just afraid of the snakes that took over the company.
    • omgwtfbyobbq 3y ago
      Or bad things about the board/company governance, or both.
  • MattGaiser 3y ago
    Is it Altman's culture if he was first kicked out and then most of the employees are willing to follow him to the new place?
  • paulddraper 3y ago
    I mean, when 90% of your company follows you instead of the board.... You won some hearts and minds
• sagarpatil 3y ago
  What a sh*t show. For someone who is building on top of OpenAI this is very unnerving. My twitter is full of heart emojis and OpenAI is nothing without its employees.
  • vaxman 3y ago
    That is exactly right.
    • vaxman 3y ago
      Erm, 37+ years at a senior level, more total years of industry experience than Apple has been in business (and still years younger than Apple's youngest founding employee) has led me to agree with the original poster, deal with it. (Still badly downvoted heheh - https://i.imgflip.com/6to2m8.jpg https://i.imgflip.com/6to2m8.jpg) OpenAI has two types of customers: MS and Everyone Else. The original poster expresses the feeling of Everyone Else (including me). We now know we CAN GET FIRED for not knowing better than to avoid OpenAI just a few weeks after we found out we CAN GET FIRED for not betting on OpenAI and betting heavily on it! (In the Business world, where perception is often mistaken for reality, it isn't going to be considered an "honest mistake" if an enterprise sustains a capital loss due to a problem with a new OpenAI deployment after the obvious business integrity issues at OpenAI we're all seeing play out now, including just about everyone at OpenAI threatening to quit, allegations that OpenAI ILLEGALLY allowed a for-profit subsidiary to influence the operations of its nonprofit parent, allegations of breach of fiduciary to the stakeholders --many of whom are also key employees, etc.) Yeah, Microsoft has signaled it will quickly get between OpenAI and Everyone Else and then Everyone Else can bet solely on Microsoft (the world's largest company by valuation), but that only gets us back to being able to use the current "GPT4turbo" generation of the system (and who knows if/when Microsoft will spin that up so we can resume building)? But as far as counting on any future versions of that tech, or even optimizations to the current generation, that's all believed to be above Microsoft's current level of expertise until/unless they legally acquire OpenAI and resolve all of its outstanding liabilities, which may not even be legally possible before OpenAI's assets (that have legs) take flight to SalesForce and others who are already reported to be making lucrative offers OpenAI's workforce --and oh, the annual holiday period is underway here in the US, the perfect time for stressed out engineers to take the rest of the year off, travel beyond the cell service at the ski areas and start anew after CES 2024 wraps.
• vaxman 3y ago
  Like trying to herd cats. Spiritual death by Microsoft or work for the reincarnation of Howard Hughes at https://x.ai/ https://x.ai/ ? ..no wonder they are trying to keep on with their current routines! Even if somehow they stay at OpenAI, Microsoft will impose certain changes upon OpenAI to ensure this can never happen again. Meanwhile, any comparable offering right now will be selected by the customer base due to “risk at 11” in basing systems on OpenAI’s current APIs (and uncertainty of when an MS equivalent might emerge).
• kainosnoema 3y ago
  Clearly not consulted earlier, ChatGPT weighs in on these two reasons: https://chat.openai.com/share/7cd52d82-b36b-42c6-9d13-eb7172ca120a https://chat.openai.com/share/7cd52d82-b36b-42c6-9d13-eb7172.... Edit: even following the basic steps it outlines would've resulted in a better outcome.
• DebtDeflation 3y ago
  1) Where is Emmett? He's the CEO now. It's his job to be the public face of the company. The company is in an existential crisis and there have been no public statements after his 1AM tweet. 2) Where is the board? At a bare minimum, issue a public statement that you have full faith in the new CEO and the leadership team, are taking decisive action to stabilize the situation, and have a plan to move the company forward once stabilized.
  • dmix 3y ago
    Technically he's the interim CEO in a chaotic company just assigned in the last 24hrs. I'd probably wait to get my bearings before walking in acting like I've got everything under control on the first day after a major upheaval. The only thing I've read about Shear is he is pro-slowing AI development and pro-Yudkowsky's doomer worldview on AI. That might not be a pill the company is ready to swallow. https://x.com/drtechlash/status/1726507930026139651 https://x.com/drtechlash/status/1726507930026139651 > I specifically say I’m in favor of slowing down, which is sort of like pausing except it’s slowing down. > If we’re at a speed of 10 right now, a pause is reducing to 0. I think we should aim for a 1-2 instead. > - Emmett Shear Sept 16, 2023 https://x.com/eshear/status/1703178063306203397 https://x.com/eshear/status/1703178063306203397
    • creer 3y ago
      Another "thing" is, he has been named by a board which... [etc]. Being a bit cautious would be a minimum.
    • concordDance 3y ago
      Everyone involved here is a doomer by the strict definition ("misaligned agi could kill us all and alignment is hard") .
    • motoxpro 3y ago
      The more I read into this story the more I can't help but to be a conspiracy theorist and say that it feels like the boards intent was to kill the company. No explanation beyond "he tried to give two people the same project the "Killing the company would be consistent with the companies mission" line in the boards statement Adam having a huge conflict of interest Emmet wanting to go from a "10" to a "1-2" I'm either way off, or I've had too much internet for the weekend.
• demondemidi 3y ago
  Still don’t get it.
• gibsonf1 3y ago
  There is no I there let alone AGI.
• didip 3y ago
  If I were OpenAI employee, I would have been uber pissed. Imagine your once-in-blue-moon, whatsapp-like, payout at $10m per employee evaporated over the weekend before Thanksgiving. I would have joined MSFT out of spite.
  • harryquach 3y ago
    Absolutely agree, would be beyond pissed. A once in a lifetime chance at generational wealth blown.
  • gardenhedge 3y ago
    These people joined a non-profit though. Am I right in thinking that you wouldn't join a non-profit expecting a large future payout?
    • sumedh 3y ago
      > These people joined a non-profit though. The employees joined the for profit subsidiary and had shares as well.
  • voitvoder 3y ago
    I really can't imagine. I am super pissed and only over something I love that I pay 20 bucks a month for. I can't imagine the feeling of losing this kind of payout over what looks like complete bullshit. Not just the payout but being part of a team doing something so interesting and high profile + the payout. I just don't know how they put the pieces back together here. What really gets me down is I know our government is a lost cause but I at least had hope our companies were inoculated against petty, self-sabotaging bullshit. Even beyond that I had hope the AI space was inoculated and beyond that of all companies OpenAI would of course be inoculated from petty, self-sabotaging bullshit. These idiots worried about software eating us are incapable of seeing the gas they are pouring on the processes that are taking us to a new dark age.
• leoc 3y ago
  Not specifically related to this latest twist, sorry, but DeepMind’s Geoffrey Irving trusts the board over Altman: https://x.com/geoffreyirving/status/1726754270224023971 https://x.com/geoffreyirving/status/1726754270224023971
  • jacquesm 3y ago
    "I have no details of OpenAI's Board’s reasons for firing Sam" Not the strongest opening line I've seen.
    • leoc 3y ago
      I do have to point out that this is also true of nearly everyone else who’s expressed a strong opinion on the topic, and it didn’t stop any of them …
      • jacquesm 3y ago
        That's a fair point but there is at the same time a lot of information about how boards are supposed to work and how board members are supposed to act and the evidence that did come out doesn't really make it seem as if it is compatible with that body of knowledge.
      • blazespin 3y ago
        The difference is nearly everyone else doesn't stand to seriously benefit from the implosion of OpenAI.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • blazespin 3y ago
    Yeah, I can't imagine why DeepMind would possibly want to see OpenAI incinerated. When you have such a massive conflict of interest and zero facts to go on - just sit down. also - "people I respect, in particular Helen Toner and Ilya Sutskever, so I feel compelled to say a few things." Toner clearly has no real moral authority here, but yes, Ilya absolutely did and I argued that if he wanted to incinerate OpenAI, it was probably his right to, though he should at least just offload everything to MSFT instead. But as we all know - Ilya did a 180 (surprised the heck out of me).
• dehrmann 3y ago
  > Sutskever, who also publicly expressed his "regret" for taking part in the board's move against Altman He means he regrets it failed.
  • cheeselip420 3y ago
    It didn't fail. Sam was removed.
    • maxlamb 3y ago
      90% of employees are threatening to quit. My guess is Ilya considers this outcome a huge failure.
• mmaunder 3y ago
  Launched Thursday morning: https://x.com/poe_platform/status/1725194752901988744?s=46 https://x.com/poe_platform/status/1725194752901988744?s=46
  • jacquesm 3y ago
    Fortunately no conflict of interest there. Ignore the guy behind the curtain.
    • aravindgp 3y ago
      In the case of a board member of OpenAI running a separate chatbot company, it would be important to consider these factors. The specifics of the situation, including the nature of both companies, the level of competition between them, and the actions taken by the board member and OpenAI to manage potential conflicts, would all play a role in determining if there is a conflict of interest. Definitely conflict of interest here and D'Angelo actions on openai board smell of the same. He wouldn't want openai to thrive more than his company. It's direct conflict of interest.
      • tasuki 3y ago
        jacquesm was being sarcastic
        • jacquesm 3y ago
          My bad for not adding a /s. But I thought the second sentence would make it obvious.
      • jacquesm 3y ago
        It is about as bad as it gets and given that datum I hope that D'Angelo has a very good lawyer because I think he might need that.
• upupupandaway 3y ago
  At Amazon a senior manager would probably be fired for not giving a project to multiple teams.
  • lazystar 3y ago
    thats not very frugal; please provide a source or citation for your claim.
    • upupupandaway 3y ago
      I am a former L7 SDM at Amazon. Just last year I had to contend with not one, but three teams doing the same thing. The faster one won with a half-baked solution that caused multiple Sev-1s. My original comment was half in jest; the actual way this works is that multiple teams discover the same issues at the same time and then compete for completing a solution first. This is usually across VPs so it’s difficult to curtail in time to avoid waste. Speaking of waste, when I was at Alexa we had to do a summit (flying people from all over the country) because we got to a point where there were 12 CMSs competing for the right to answer queries. So yeah, not frugal. Frugality these days is mostly a “local” concept, definitely not company-wide or even org wide.
      • VirusNewbie 3y ago
        Oh man, i’m glad I read this because right now at Google I am immensely frustrated by Google trying to fit their various shaped pegs into the round hole of their one true converged “solution” for any given problem. My friends and I say “see, Amazon doesn’t have to deal with this crap, each team can go build their own whatever”. Buut, I guess that’s how you get 12 CMSs for one org.
      • lazystar 3y ago
        > that caused multiple Sev-1s ...did folks run out of tables?
• windex 3y ago
  What happens to all the ChatGPT subscribers now? Sign ups are off the table for the foreseeable future I assume.
• Obscurity4340 3y ago
  The truth shall set you free
• lokar 3y ago
  I don’t understand people calling this a coup. The board is setup with very few legal constraints and answers only to itself. If this was a coup (seizing power from the rightful holder), who was it against?
  • maxlamb 3y ago
    Sam
    • lokar 3y ago
      That’s not how he structured the governance of the company.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• rossdavidh 3y ago
  So, none of this sounds like it could be the real reason Altman was fired. This leaves people saying it was a "coup", which still doesn't really answer the question. Why did Altman get fired, really? Obviously, it's for a reason they can't say. Which means, there is something bad going on at the company, like perhaps they are short of cash or something, that was dire enough to convince them to fire the CEO, but which they cannot talk about. Imagine if the board of a bank fired their CEO because he had allowed the capital to get way too low. They wouldn't be able to say that was why he was fired, because it would wreck any chance of recovery. But, they have to say something. So, Altman didn't tell the board...something, that they cannot tell us, either. Draw your own conclusions.
  • resolutebat 3y ago
    Banks have strict cash reserve requirements that are externally audited. OpenAI does not, and more to the point, they're both swimming in money and could easily get more if they wanted. (At least until last week, that is.)
    • rossdavidh 3y ago
      Rumor has it, they had been trying to get more, and failing. No audited records of that kind of thing, of course, so could be untrue. But Altman and others had publicly said that they were attempting to get Microsoft to invest more, and he was courting sovereign wealth funds for an AI (though non-OpenAI) chip related venture, and ChatGPT had a one-day partial outage due to "capacity" constraints, which is odd if your biggest backer is a cloud company. It all sounds like they are running short on money, long before they get to profitability. Which would have been fine up until about a year ago, because someone with Altman's profile could easily get new funding for a buzz-heavy project like ChatGPT. But times are different, now...
  • kmlevitt 3y ago
    If it was anything all that bad, Ilya and Greg would’ve known about it, because one of them was chairman of the board and the other was a board member. And both of them want Sam rehired. You can’t even spin it that they are complicit in wrongdoing, because the board tried to keep Greg at the company and Ilya is still on the board now and previously supported them. Whatever the reason is, it is very clearly a personal/political problem with Sam, not the critical issue they tried to imply it was.
• two_in_one 3y ago
  Both 'reasons' are a bullsh*t. But interesting is Sustkever was the key person, it wouldn't happen without him. And now he says board told him why he was doing it? He didn't reiterate he regrets about it. So looks like he was one of the driving forces, if not the main. Of course he doesn't want the reputation of 'the man who killed OpenAI'. But he definitely took part and could prevent it.
  • ramraj07 3y ago
    Nytimes mentioned that just a month back someone else was promoted to the same level as Ilya. Sounds like more than a coincidence.
• bastardoperator 3y ago
  These are the dumbest reasons possible, certainly not worth destroying a company on the move or people's livelihoods over.
• tock 3y ago
  So both Mira and Ilya voted to kick Sam out. And are now on team Sam. This makes absolutely no sense. Why did they vote yes in the first place then?
  • maxlamb 3y ago
    My understanding now is that Mira was not on the board so she did not vote.
    • tock 3y ago
      Ah my bad. I just checked the OpenAI site and you're right Mira wasn't a board member.
• veeralpatel979 3y ago
  Update (11/20/23 8 PM PST): NYT just released a new interview with Sam Altman: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38359070 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38359070
  • hayksaakian 3y ago
    recorded Wednesday 11/15/23 Interesting but not necessarily relevant to the current situation directly.
  • topherclay 3y ago
    That is in no way an update. It is an interview that took place one week ago.
• 9front 3y ago
  "Feel the AGI! Feel the AGI!"
• mrcwinn 3y ago
  This hasn’t happened since Apple’s board removed Steve Jobs after he double-submitted a receipt in Expensify.
• dboreham 3y ago
  Schrödinger's explanation.
• stuckkeys 3y ago
  Must every god damn article be about SA now? Like what is with all this drama? Is he really that important? I do not mean it in a demeaning way, I just want to know why is all the hype building around this person? I thought he was just the sales / marketing guy? No?
  • vikramkr 3y ago
    It's a real life game of thrones lol, let people have their fun this is hella entertaining to follow
    • stuckkeys 3y ago
      I guess lol, but it be cool to understand it. I keep eating all this popcorn.
• noneoftheaboveu 3y ago
  Seems like a drama shit show played out on gigantic proportion highlighting what has been happening in small scale business ever since the inception of “I will screw u over once I get a chance.”
• gmiller123456 3y ago
  Without all the fluff: One explanation was that Altman was said to have given two people at OpenAI the same project. The other was that Altman allegedly gave two board members different opinions about a member of personnel
  • extheat 3y ago
    Ilya himself was a member of the board that voted to fire Altman. I don't know if he's lying to his teeth in these comments, making up an alibi, or is genuinely trying to convince people was acting as a rubber stamp and doesn't know anything.
• bandrami 3y ago
  Is there a TLDR for why people care so much about this? This is all over my Twitter feed too and I just don't get it. CEO ousted for possibly stupid reasons. What's driving the angst here?
• engineer_22 3y ago
  If people are at each other's throats like this, it could be an indication of how close AGI is.
• MaxHoppersGhost 3y ago
  I can't help but think this whole cluster is the result of having technical people running a company.
• wyy1995 3y ago
  [dead]
• bobse 3y ago
  [dead]
• LarsDu88 3y ago
  There has to be a bigger story to this. Altman took a non-profit and vacuumed up a bunch of donor money only to flip Open AI into the hottest TC style startup in the world. Then put a gas pedal to commercialization. It takes a certain type of politicking and deception to make something like that happen. Then in the past week, he's going and taking money from the Saudis on the order of billions of dollars to make AI accelerators, even though the single greatest threat from strong AI (according to Hinton) is rich and powerful people using the technology to enhance their power over society. Combine that with a totally inexperienced board, and D'Angelo's maneuvering, and you have the single greatest shitshow in tech history
  • zw123456 3y ago
    100% agree. I've seen this type of thing up close (much smaller potatoes but same type of thing) and whatever is getting aired publicly is most likely not the real story. Not sure if the reasons you guessed are it or not, we probably won't know for awhile but your guesses are as good as mine.
  • mcmcmc 3y ago
    This feels like a lot of very one sided PR moves from the side with significantly more money to spend on that kind of thing
  • LMYahooTFY 3y ago
    >Altman took a non-profit and vacuumed up a bunch of donor money only to flip Open AI into the hottest TC style startup in the world. Then put a gas pedal to commercialization. It takes a certain type of politicking and deception to make something like that happen. What exactly is the problem here? Is a non-profit expected to exclusively help impoverished communities or something? What type of politicking and deception is involved in creating a for profit subsidiary which is granted license to OpenAIs research in order to generate wealth? The entire purpose of this legal structure is to keep non-profit owners focused on their mission rather than shareholder value, which in this case is attempting to ethically create an AGI. Edit: to add that this framework was not invented by Sam Altman, nor OpenAI. >Then in the past week, he's going and taking money from the Saudis on the order of billions of dollars to make AI accelerators, even though the single greatest threat from strong AI (according to Hinton) is rich and powerful people using the technology to enhance their power over society. Thus the legal structure I described, although this argument is entirely theoretical and assumes such a thing can actually be guarded that well at all, or that model performance and compute will remain correlated.
• itronitron 3y ago
  Has a copy of the letter signed by employees been posted online anywhere? That would provide some credibility to the article.
• darklycan51 3y ago
  Maybe trying to backdoor sell your company to Microsoft even though its owned by a non profit might be it? you know, Microsoft showed its true face today. This is even worse than Google's destruction of Firefox
• antipaul 3y ago
  They found a monolith, but are saying it’s an epidemic
• Satam 3y ago
  If you do a board coup, surely, you then use the best fake reasons you can muster to justify your decision. Why would they hold back giving answers they know wouldn't satisfy anyone and just inspire further anger? First thought: buying time? Maybe something has to happen first, and they don't want to commit to any irrevocable slander they can't go back on before that? Or maybe, something was supposed to happen but fell through?
• emodendroket 3y ago
  It's always nice to have options.
• eddtries 3y ago
  I'd rather work close to AGI - which I do not believe is the case personally - was handled by the adults in the room anyway, than some startup with a bunch of personalities.
• KingOfCoders 3y ago
  "Sustkever is said to have offered two explanations he purportedly received from the board" Isn't Sustkever on the board?
• 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
  This board's behavior is so weird, it's as if they can't explain their actions, because no one would believe them Kyle Reese came from the future to warn them about Skynet. Kidding aside, maybe they have a "secret" reason to fire Sam Altman, but we've seen how "this is a secret / matter of national security / etc." goes with law enforcement. It's brutally abused to attack inconvenient people and enrich yourself on their behalf. So that should never be an excuse for punishing someone. Never.
• avs733 3y ago
  I'm confused - the article title says 'explanations' but the articles seems to only talk about two 'examples'. Those are fundamentally different.
• bambax 3y ago
  > Sustkever is said to have offered two explanations he purportedly received from the board, according to one of the people familiar. One explanation was that Altman was said to have given two people at OpenAI the same project. The other was that Altman allegedly gave two board members different opinions about a member of personnel. An OpenAI spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment. These explanations didn't make sense to employees and were not received well, one of the people familiar said. Yeah well, you don't say. It's beyond weird that the board can't come up with a reason why Sam Altman was fired so abruptly. One explanation would be a showdown. At some point in the week Sam and the board had an argument, and Sam said something to the effect of "fuck you, I'm the CEO and there's nothing you can do about it", to which the board replied "well, we'll just see about that". The argument doesn't need to be major or touch fundamental values or policies; it can be a simple test of who's in charge. But now the board made a fool of themselves. It seems they lost that round.
• dwaite 3y ago
  Interesting use of A/B testing
• Simon_ORourke 3y ago
  There's a singular obvious reason for Sam Altman's sacking by his board - plain old jealousy of the kind that had been gnawing away for months. There's more than likely a few sociopathic types inhabiting that (if not most) boards, and they just couldn't stand to see the limelight directed at Sam and not them. Any old excuse then to oust him was used to try and 1) get back at him, 2) do something to massage their poor damaged egos.
• dschuetz 3y ago
  I do not understand what the heck is going on there anymore. Everyone is acting irrationally, like kids playing monopoly, but with real money and with real jobs at stake. WTF
• chucke1992 3y ago
  [dead]
• MichaelMoser123 3y ago
  maybe they decided to start with artificial stupidity, before doing that agi thing...
• yafbum 3y ago
  TL;DR: The emperor has no clothes, and the OpenAI board are just a bunch of clowns.
• bobba27 3y ago
  TBH, I think those reasons are BS, and in fact what they claim he did is normal in any tech company. Start multiple projects with different approaches in parallel and pick the best at the end. That is how you innovate and test stuff fast, and this is now a reason to fire a CEO? BS. I feel the board insulted my intelligence by pushing this obviously fake reason. I feel insulted that these people would even think I would consider this. What I think happened is that Sam went on Joe Rogan and he talked smack about cancel and woke culture. Later he went to talk about how this culture is destructive and hinders the progress of innovation and startups. People got big mad and kicked him out of the company. Reaction was stronger than they expected and they try to make up reasons why he is bad, untrustworthy and had to be fired. Flame on. I got the asbestost underwear on.
• verisimi 3y ago
  Maybe, as closed as open ai is, it is still too open. Maybe it needed to be removed from the landscape so that only purely privately-held, large-scale operations exist?
• auggierose 3y ago
  What? They told Ilya these two things, and he said, alright then, I volunteer to fire Sam for you? That either makes Ilya pretty dumb (sorry, neural networks are not that complicated, it is mostly compute), or there is much much more to this story.
• tomashubelbauer 3y ago
  > only a handful of the company's employees attended, according to a person familiar with the company and the events of Sunday. The rest of the staff effectively staged a walk-out. This paragraph is quite funny to me. It was a Sunday, maybe they were neither in attendance, nor staging a walk-out, maybe they were on their weekend? Realistically with the shake-up this gigantic, likely no OpenAI employees were _just_ enjoying their weekend, but it still gave me a chuckle.
  • zkr 3y ago
    That clearly wasn't written by an European.
• jurgenaut23 3y ago
  I think that the non-profit status of OpenAI was ultimately its demise as well: as the stakes get higher, people just cannot help themselves but to get (too) interested in more than just the original mission. Being a non-profit doesn't mean that you cannot commercialise what you build, even at a hefty price. You just need to then re-invest everything into R&D and/or anything that advance your purpose (for which you're in principle exempted of taxes). _OF COURSE_, you are not supposed to divert a single dollar to someone that might look like a shareholder. OpenAI is (was?) a non-profit that payed some of their engineers north of a million dollars. I would argue that, at this point, you have vested interests in the success of the company beyond its original purpose. Not mentioning the fact that Microsoft poured billions into the company for purely interested reasons as well. I can only imagine the massive tensions that arose in board's discussions around these topics. Especially if you project yourself a few years into the future, with the IRS knocking at the door to ask questions about these topics.
• throwaway220033 3y ago
  Rule of thumb: Everything you see on Business Insider is lie. This is not a journalism website; it's a tool for some "folks".
• tempaway511751 3y ago
  "Two explanations" isn't accurate, its more like Ilya gave two examples of Sam not being candid with the board. "Two explanations" makes it sound like two competing explanations. What Ilya gave was two examples of the same problem. I can't help thinking that Sam Altmans universal popularitity with OpenAI staff might be because they all get $10million each if he comes back and resets everything back to how it was last week.
• xpuente 3y ago
  Most likely related to this: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/openai-pauses-new-chatgpt-plus-subscriptions-due-to-surge-in-demand/501360/ https://www.searchenginejournal.com/openai-pauses-new-chatgp... The back-end cost does not scale. Hence, they have a big problem. AGI nonsense reasons are ridiculous. Transformers are a road to nowhere and they knew it.
• kotxig 3y ago
  If the outcome of all of this is that Altman ends up at Microsoft and hiring the vast majority of the team from OpenAI, it's probably wise to assume that this was the intended outcome all along. I don't know how else you get the talent at a company like OpenAI to willingly move to Microsoft, but this approach could end up working.
• abkolan 3y ago
  I find it strange that Satya says he has not been given an explanation yet. Tweet from Bloomberg Tech Journalist, Emily Chang >The more I watch this interview – the wilder this story seems. Satya insists he hasn’t been given any reason why Sam was fired. THE CEO OF MICROSOFT STILL DOES NOT KNOW WHY: “I’ve not been told about anything…” he tells me. source: https://x.com/emilychangtv/status/1726835093325721684 https://x.com/emilychangtv/status/1726835093325721684
  • thinkingemote 3y ago
    Thinking as charitable as possible, this broke just before the weekend and developed over the weekend, outside of business hours. Even the management team of openai haven't seen anything in writing from the board. We should see by lunch / close of business today a written statement by the board. In today's tiktok world we expect instant responses but business and boards work slower. Really, even 5 years ago we wouldn't be surprised by this. Lawyers, banks, investors etc would all need to be contacted, things arranged, statements prepared, meetings organised. So a written statement late today, and a meeting for mid week. That's about the most charitable I can think of! Apparently board bylaws say they need 48hrs notice to arrange special meetings. So the earliest would be today if they arranged it early Saturday.
• mnky9800n 3y ago
  I'm just glad I'm not reading about Elon musk for a few days.
• Obscurity4340 3y ago
  Its called AB Testing
• Dave3of5 3y ago
  Why are people worshiping this guy, I don't get it?
• ehsanziya 3y ago
  Based on what've seen so far, one of the following possibilities is the most likely: 1. Altman was actually negotiating an acquisition by Mircosoft without being transparent with the board about it. Given how quickly they were hired by Microsoft after the events, this is likely. 2. Altman was trying to raise capital from a source that the board wouldn't be too keen on. Without the board's knowledge. Could be a sovereign fund or some other government backed organisation. I've not seen these possibilities discussed as most people focus on the safety coup theory. What do you think?
  • tempaway511751 3y ago
    "Before OpenAI ousting, CEO Altman tried to raise billions in the Middle East for chip venture" https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/article/3242141/openai-ousting-ceo-altman-tried-raise-billions-middle-east-chip-venture https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/article/3242141/openai...
• fredgrott 3y ago
  Is OpenAI the Silicon Valley VC morality play in drama and corp board ethics?
• koolba 3y ago
  That headline is bad, not sure if it's deliberate. The way it's phrased, it sounds like they were given two different explanations. Such as when the first explanation is not good enough, a second weaker one is then provided. But the article itself says: > OpenAI's current independent board has offered two examples of the alleged lack of candor that led them to fire co-founder and CEO Sam Altman, sending the company into chaos. Changing the two "examples" to "explanations" grossly changes the meaning of that sentence. Two examples is the first steps of "multiple examples". And that sounds much different than "multiple explanations".
• victoryhb 3y ago
  It appears that Altman was fired for "not being consistently candid" by a board that is neither consistent nor candid.
• xwowsersx 3y ago
  > Sustkever is said to have offered two explanations he purportedly received from the board, according to one of the people familiar. One explanation was that Altman was said to have given two people at OpenAI the same project. > The other was that Altman allegedly gave two board members different opinions about a member of personnel. An OpenAI spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment. It must've been wildly infuriating to listen to these insultingly unsatisfactory explanations.
• _ea1k 3y ago
  Wait... did they collect sentiment based on which was more convincing and use this for RLHF to train their board replacement model?
• andsoitis 3y ago
  With hundreds of engineers at OpenAI threatening to quit, it will be interesting whether they are bluffing or whether there will be many positions open soon that I’m sure many people would love to apply for.
• _8j50 3y ago
  Can someone explain to me why this drama is such a big deal? Why do openai employees care who the CEO is? Do they think they were working for him instead of the board or that it was his vision and leadership that let them succeed so far? And why does the public care including major news sites covering it more than the gaza war.
• FFP999 3y ago
  Little tip for the younger folks reading this: if you are given two contradictory explanations for something, the correct explanation is probably the third one.
• mypgovroom 3y ago
  Another source besides the trash at Business Insider?
• ajsharp 3y ago
  Which means neither of the explanations are true.
• alxfoster 3y ago
  Lets be honest here: this article seems as if it were drafted by Altman himself. It's incredibly biased and screams pro-Altman agenda. I would be very surprised if " 90% " of any company could agree on anything, including the removal of the CEO. What is clear is that there were massive conflicts of interest and that the board probably did their job in preserving the mission of the organization (they sure as heck are not operating as agents of MS). The naive fanboy blind support of management here should be concerning to any rational objective actor who understands fiduciary duty and the bigger picture.
• Manheim 3y ago
  https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/21/tech/microsoft-chatgpt-sam-altman/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/21/tech/microsoft-chatgpt-sa... "But several people told CNN contributor Kara Swisher that a key factor in the decision was a disagreement about how quickly to bring AI to the market. Altman, sources say, wanted to move quickly, while the OpenAI board wanted to move more cautiously."
• astroid 3y ago
  It's incredibly strange to me that this all happened right after Sam's sister publicly accused him of sexual abuse. It's insane that no one is even acknowledging this could have something to do with it.. For what it's worth: Watching her videos, I'm not sure I necessarily believe her claims - but that position goes against every tenet of the current cultural landscape, so the fact it is being completely ignored is ringing alarm bells for me. If the CEO of any other massively hyped bleeding edge tech companies sister claimed publicly and loudly that they were abused as a very young child, we would hear about it - and the board would be doing damage control trying to eliminate the rot. Why is this case different? Now we have a situation where all of the current employees have signed this weird loyalty pledge to Sam, which I think will wind up making him untouchable in a sense - they have effectively tied the fate of everyone's job to retaining a potential child rapist as head of the company.
• disqard 3y ago
  At this point, are the "wrapper around ChatGPT" startups nervously eyeing other LLM-as-a-Service (LaaS) providers?