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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 que

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.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > because the board tried to keep Greg at the company Aside from the fact that they didn't fire him as President and said he was staying on in the press release that went out without any consultation, I've seen no suggestion of any effort to keep him at the company.
  - kmlevitt 3y ago
    Right, but there was no effort to actually oust him either. Which you would expect them to do if they had to fire guilty parties for a massive wrongdoing that couldn’t be ignored Either he had no part in this hypothetical transgression and thinks the accusation is nonsense, or he was part of it and for some inexplicable reason wasn’t asked to leave Open AI despite that. But you have to choose.
    - dragonwriter 3y ago
      > Right, but there was no effort to actually oust him either. Reducing someone's responsibility significantly is well known to often be a mmechanism to oust them without explicitly firing, so I don't know that that is the case.
      - kmlevitt 3y ago
        Well, they still haven’t accused him of anything yet despite repeatedly being asked to explain their reasoning, so it seems fair to give him the benefit of the doubt until they do.
skygazer 3y ago
I think you may be hallucinating reasonable reasons to explain an inherently indefensible situation, patching up reality so it makes sense again. Sometimes people with puffed up egos are frustrated over trivial slights, and group think takes over, and nuking from orbit momentarily seems like a good idea. See, I’m doing it too, trying to rationalize. Usually when we’re stuck in an unsolvable loop like a SAT solver, we need to release one or more constraints. Maybe there was no good reason. Maybe there’s a bad reason — as in, the reasoning was faulty. They suffered Chernobyl level failure as a board of directors.
aiman3 3y ago
i do believe what they said about Altman "was not consistently candid in his communications with the board.", based on my understanding, altman did proved his dishonest behavior from he did to openai, turned non-profit into for-profit and open source model to closed-source one. and even worst, people seems totally accepted this type of personality, the danger is not the AI itself, is the AI will be built by AltmanS!
- vorticalbox 3y ago
  OpenAI, Inc. Is non profit but it's subsidiary OpenAI Global, LLC. Is for profit.
  - aiman3 3y ago
    what is end goal of having a for-profit subsidiary, make opanai more non-profit and make the model more open-source ?
    - MacsHeadroom 3y ago
      Ideally it is to have greater access to resources by taking investment money and paying for top talent with profit sharing agreements, in order to ultimately further the goals of the nonprofit.
      - aiman3 3y ago
        the outcome of this for-profit subsidiary is already showing in real-time, they just want to take everything from openai into for-profit for their own benefit, that is a fraud by definition, which means taking something is not theirs. one good example is Flash mob in LA, yours belongs to me, same culture, same behavior. to your "Ideally world", its very simple, Microsoft could simply just donate $10b to openai, they can share the open-sourced model.
- qwytw 3y ago
  > dishonest behavior from he did to openai, turned non-profit into for-profit and Yes and it's perfectly obvious that he did this without the consent of the board and behind their backs. A bit absurd don't you think? How would that even work? > will be built by AltmanS Why are you so certain most other people on the OpenAI board or their upper management are that different? Or hold very different views?
namocat 3y ago
This is what I suspect; that their silence is possibly not simply evidence of no underlying reason, but that the underlying reason is so sensitive that it cannot be revealed without doing further damage. Also the hastiness of it makes me suspect that whatever it was happened very recently (e.g. conversations or agreements made at APEC). Ilya backtracking puts a wrench in this wild speculation, so like everyone else, I’m left thinking “????????”.
awb 3y ago
The only thing akin to that would be an AI safety concern and the new CEO specifically said that wasn’t the issue. And if it was something concrete, Ilya would likely still be defending the firing, not regretting it. It seems like a simple power struggle where the board and employees were misaligned.

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.

dragonwriter 3y ago
> because the board tried to keep Greg at the company Aside from the fact that they didn't fire him as President and said he was staying on in the press release that went out without any consultation, I've seen no suggestion of any effort to keep him at the company.
- kmlevitt 3y ago
  Right, but there was no effort to actually oust him either. Which you would expect them to do if they had to fire guilty parties for a massive wrongdoing that couldn’t be ignored Either he had no part in this hypothetical transgression and thinks the accusation is nonsense, or he was part of it and for some inexplicable reason wasn’t asked to leave Open AI despite that. But you have to choose.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > Right, but there was no effort to actually oust him either. Reducing someone's responsibility significantly is well known to often be a mmechanism to oust them without explicitly firing, so I don't know that that is the case.
    - kmlevitt 3y ago
      Well, they still haven’t accused him of anything yet despite repeatedly being asked to explain their reasoning, so it seems fair to give him the benefit of the doubt until they do.

skygazer 3y ago

I think you may be hallucinating reasonable reasons to explain an inherently indefensible situation, patching up reality so it makes sense again. Sometimes people with puffed up egos are frustrated over trivial slights, and group think takes over, and nuking from orbit momentarily seems like a good idea. See, I’m doing it too, trying to rationalize. Usually when we’re stuck in an unsolvable loop like a SAT solver, we need to release one or more constraints. Maybe there was no good reason. Maybe there’s a bad reason — as in, the reasoning was faulty. They suffered Chernobyl level failure as a board of directors.

aiman3 3y ago

i do believe what they said about Altman "was not consistently candid in his communications with the board.", based on my understanding, altman did proved his dishonest behavior from he did to openai, turned non-profit into for-profit and open source model to closed-source one. and even worst, people seems totally accepted this type of personality, the danger is not the AI itself, is the AI will be built by AltmanS!

vorticalbox 3y ago
OpenAI, Inc. Is non profit but it's subsidiary OpenAI Global, LLC. Is for profit.
- aiman3 3y ago
  what is end goal of having a for-profit subsidiary, make opanai more non-profit and make the model more open-source ?
  - MacsHeadroom 3y ago
    Ideally it is to have greater access to resources by taking investment money and paying for top talent with profit sharing agreements, in order to ultimately further the goals of the nonprofit.
    - aiman3 3y ago
      the outcome of this for-profit subsidiary is already showing in real-time, they just want to take everything from openai into for-profit for their own benefit, that is a fraud by definition, which means taking something is not theirs. one good example is Flash mob in LA, yours belongs to me, same culture, same behavior. to your "Ideally world", its very simple, Microsoft could simply just donate $10b to openai, they can share the open-sourced model.
qwytw 3y ago
> dishonest behavior from he did to openai, turned non-profit into for-profit and Yes and it's perfectly obvious that he did this without the consent of the board and behind their backs. A bit absurd don't you think? How would that even work? > will be built by AltmanS Why are you so certain most other people on the OpenAI board or their upper management are that different? Or hold very different views?

namocat 3y ago

This is what I suspect; that their silence is possibly not simply evidence of no underlying reason, but that the underlying reason is so sensitive that it cannot be revealed without doing further damage. Also the hastiness of it makes me suspect that whatever it was happened very recently (e.g. conversations or agreements made at APEC). Ilya backtracking puts a wrench in this wild speculation, so like everyone else, I’m left thinking “????????”.

awb 3y ago

The only thing akin to that would be an AI safety concern and the new CEO specifically said that wasn’t the issue. And if it was something concrete, Ilya would likely still be defending the firing, not regretting it. It seems like a simple power struggle where the board and employees were misaligned.