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OpenAI's board approached Anthropic CEO about top job and merger
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoSolution: an AI replaces the board. Can't do much worse.
- rapsey 3y agoThese people are going to get sued into oblivion.
- throw_pm23 3y agoAlmost every story we get seems to point in the direction of the board being erratic and incompetent. I feel like either that has to be the obvious truth, or I am being gaslighted by a concerted effort from the other side.
- olalonde 3y agoI also noticed an unusually high amount of throwaway accounts on OpenAI threads lately. I am not sure whether it's a concerted effort but Altman does seem to have a lot of fans.
- siva7 3y agoRather than putting up a conspiracy theory the much more plausible explanation is that this board evidently pissed off a lot of customers, powerful people in tech and almost all employees of openai.
- olalonde 3y agoIf we are to believe media reports. But why do customers and employees care that much about having Sam Altman as CEO? Sam was just at the right place at the right time. He is no doubt competent but not some kind of irreplaceable AI or management prodigy. OpenAI's true strength lies in its AI research team and their groundbreaking models. The C-suite is just a sideshow.
- redserk 3y agoThis is what I’m confused about. There are plenty of product people who would have been chomping at the bit to release ChatGPT if they knew their organization had the tech. I’m not sure what makes him unique here.
- brookst 3y agoHe is a known quantity who has been successful leading the company. But of course he could be replaced and there are others that could be equally, maybe more successful. The problem is not that Sam has some totally unique DNA. Customers are reacting to 1) the board’s apparent rejection of the existing products and business model, and 2) the capricious and incompetent way the board handled this. Companies are making huge bets, and a seemingly stable and industry-leading supplier just turned out to be unreliable. Of course people are angry and hesitant to keep doing business with OpenAI.
- siva7 3y agoI'm sure this question can be answered better by the employees themselves and they voted very clearly that they don't want a leadership unter the current board that ousted Sam and Greg. As for why customers care about who the CEO is, i'm not even sure if you're seriously asking these questions.
- olalonde 3y agoI see your point, but I am somewhat skeptical about leaks. I'm open to being convinced about how Sam's leadership played a pivotal role in OpenAI's success, or why finding a suitable replacement might be difficult. Are there specific instances where his decisions clearly influenced the course of events? Observing from the outside, it feels like the bulk of the credit goes to their AI team and that Sam was just there to make sure the machine was well oiled. Maybe he was really good at that, I don't know. Their productization of models wasn't that great, starting with the name, "ChatGPT". IMO, the real driving force has been the unparalleled capabilities of their models rather than branding or marketing.
- dacryn 3y agomakes sense. It seems this was a coup of Microsoft together with Altman to go full force ahead with the commercial upscaling. In the past there was already a small uprising, and all who didn't like the Altman cult ran off to anthropic. So all that's left in openai are huge fans of Altman. So it only makes sense that you piss off almost all remaining employees, its survivor bias at work.
- upwardbound 3y agoSome people on Twitter, notably @HackingButLegal, have been collecting examples of possible paid astroturfing accounts which she believes belong to a reputation management firm hired by Sam to suppress his sister Annie's accusations that Sam sexually abused her as a child. https://twitter.com/HackingButLegal/status/1726841008477110463 https://twitter.com/HackingButLegal/status/17268410084771104... https://twitter.com/HackingButLegal/status/1726839512905732235 https://twitter.com/HackingButLegal/status/17268395129057322...
- xvector 3y agoHave you actually read the sister's accusations? They read like the rantings of a paranoid schizophrenic. One or two things, I could believe, but the sheer volume of ridiculously extreme accusations is impossible to believe.
- upwardbound 3y agoHer core accusation is that Sam would always read her bedtime stories (he was almost a decade older) while laying in bed with her, and that sometimes while they were in bed he would cuddle her inappropriately. And that at some point she started asking him not to get in the bed and he ignored her “no” and kept up the nightly ritual. This seems well within the realm of possibility. She probably does have mental health issues (maybe paranoid schizophrenia), but that could be an effect of the childhood sexual trauma. I had a 40-something-year-old aunt who committed suicide due to being raped as a child. :( Early trauma like that can fuck you up in ways that make you permanently unstable.
- bigbillheck 3y agoGetting abused will mess you up in all sorts of ways. And in any case, someone as rich as Sam Altman letting a close relative live in poverty like that is by itself a pretty damning inditement of his character.
- tucnak 3y agoWould you feel better had he locked her up in premier upclass mental institution?
- kareaa 3y agoI feel called out - I have created a HN account recently in order to comment on this matter. I consider the recent events as crucial to the future of whole industry. I follow them extensively and I am greatly interested in participating in a conversation with informed people. What better venues are there? Twitter? Reddit? Those two platforms are sadly full of uninformed trolls.
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- Tenoke 3y agoWhat's erratic here? If they are likely to lose most of their employees and resources then merging with the most aligned other company is not only reasonable but exactly what it says they'll do in their charter.
- throw_pm23 3y agoI don't know, I have no independent means of verifying whether the story is true or not in the first place.
- KaoruAoiShiho 3y agoI think it comes across that way because they actually take the non-profit original mission and ethics more seriously than the for-profit business, which is an incomprehensible shock to most capitalists. However, it makes sense if Anthropic left in the first place because they didn't agree with sama's direction of the company, and this is just round 2 of the OAI civil war in regards to whether OAI's original non-profit mission ACTUALLY matters or not.
- thinkingemote 3y agoThe board has bylaws governing how it works. One of them says that it has to have 48 hours notice before a meeting (to, e.g. agenda, minutes, resolutions, actions ). I think a board member cannot speak officially before that. We might be an announcement today or tomorrow. Perhaps they have had to have a meeting to get legal advice before an announcement? I think the board is just being as slow as any board is. But they didn't plan for the somewhat foreseeable response and we are impatient. This is as charitable as I could think of.
- roflyear 3y agoNot to get too conspiracy, but remember where you get your news from: HN, maybe reddit? Guess which platforms have deep ties to Altman?
- infecto 3y agoThis will be a fun book to read after it's all done. As its happening I had no idea what is going on though. Surely the board can not be this incompetent? Who kicks out a current CEO without having found a replacement or at the very least a shortlist. No evidence has come out that sama did anything egregious against OpenAI. Truly one of the most bizarre sequence of events I have ever witnessed.
- csunbird 3y agoI believe they had a shortlist, but no one stepped up to take the job.
- natdempk 3y agoEven then, that “shortlist” was clearly built in a total scramble after their first interim CEO sided with Sam.
- csunbird 3y agoThere has to be a good reason on why this was rushed, it has to be a "now or never" kind of situation for this outcome. I presume the candidates on the shortlist were skeptical to accept the job until the smoke clears on the situation, they do not want to be on the bad side of this affair until it is known that accepting the job is not a career and network suicide.
- infecto 3y agoWhich is at least good to hear but typically you would think there would have been feelers out there to gauge temperature. Perhaps this is indicative of a board that does not have as much business professional experience. Still hilarious that Emmett Shear was not only offered the role but accepted. Amusing to see the individual who said we need to severely slow down AI work to now be heading up the leading company in the space. Edit: I guess the true measure is that nobody read the room from employees and went ahead with this whole fiasco.
- thiscatis 3y agoI’m voting for Dan McCrum, Elliott Brown, Maureen Farrell, Duncan Mavin and Bethany McLean to team up and write the book to end all books about corporate stupidity.
- borissk 3y agoThe board is desperate. A $90B company turned overnight into a lemon nobody wants, despite having amazing tech and APIs. They need to find a way to keep at least 20% of the employees from leaving, as that will allow them to continue running the services that have paying customers.
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- robg 3y agoLooking more and more like the dev day nuking of D’Angelo’s Poe led to this outcome. I’m surprised that connection has escaped close scrutiny - it was a conflict of interest AND now Poe is viable again as intended. For a minor player in AI he’s managed to maximize his interests and while serving on a non-profit board.
- upwardbound 3y agoThis theory is endorsed by OpenAI's Head of Applied Research, Dr. Boris Power, who retweeted a Robert Scoble tweet saying this. See his twitter timeline here https://twitter.com/borismpower?lang=en https://twitter.com/borismpower?lang=en
- gwd 3y agoFor those not logged in, Power said the following was "an interesting thread, maybe too speculative": https://nitter.net/scottastevenson/status/1726731022862008733#m https://nitter.net/scottastevenson/status/172673102286200873...
- upwardbound 3y agoCorrect, and Dr. Power also retweeted a tweet from @Scobleizer that says: Who held the gun that killed OpenAI? Hey @adamdangelo all evidence points at you. Wanna come on my show?
- robg 3y agoBeing spun as deeply ideological seems about right - the 3 non-profit oriented board members seem like they were already open about their views in that direction, so just took one vote to flip - D’Angelo.
- drexlspivey 3y agoI see stuff like this spreading in social media and it’s always people speculating without any evidence. On Saturday it was a coup by Ilya, on Sunday it was a coup by effective altruists/decelerationists on the board, today is D’Angelo’s Poe getting eaten up tomorrow it will be something else. Your theory collapses in the slightest amount of scrutiny, if D’Angelo tries to destroy the company due to his own company losing value why would the other 3 board members be on board with that? You’re not doing anyone any good speculating stuff like this just adding more noise.
- jimsimmons 3y agoSome journalists on X are claiming that this story is fabricated
- dongping 3y agoMaybe some links please? I also don't want to share a fabricated story.
- wyy1995 3y agoJudging from the current situation, openai's board of directors are all shameless people. If they still have dignity, they should resign immediately. They were unqualified and incapable of managing one of the most important technology companies in the world, and they destroyed a shining company, a great product, and the dreams of countless people. I will never use Poe and Quora again, and I will boycott any product related to Adam D'Angelo. Adam D'Angelo is an asshole.He doesn't have any shares in OpenAI, so he doesn't care about destroying OpenAI at all.Absolutely ridiculous, the only reason I can think of is that he's extremely jealous of Sam.
- matthewfelgate 3y agoNetflix should hire whoever is writing the script for this drama. It's gripping!
- DotaFan 3y agoA lot of gaslighting, as OpenAI findings are a subject of national security.
- siva7 3y agoThis could be counted as a felony against individual board members as there were clear conflict of interests among them with such a merger. I'm sure there will be lawsuits from the investors.
- marban 3y agoThis looks more and more like the UBA merger in The Morning Show.
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- alecco 3y agodupe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38357629 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38357629
- mihaic 3y agoI tried not to have an opinion until now, but so far Altman seems like a greedy asshole, and D'Angelo seems like a greedier asshole. That clash ended up terribly, since neither of them care about anything else than their best interests.
- hyperfuturism 3y agoHow is Altman a greedy asshole? He's been at OpenAI since founding date, he's taken zero economic upside in this venture, and he's now being kicked out - what exactly makes him an asshole?
- replwoacause 3y agoZero economic upside for being the OpenAI CEO? That is difficult to believe.
- mihaic 3y agoI got this picture from other dirt revealed during this whole debacle: the fact that he wanted to raise billions to run a chip company for AI (obvious conflict of interests), how he lies and manipulates people, even sexual abuse allegations by his sister. Brockman sounds great, but not sure why the tech world wants to praise someone like Altman. Maybe more people that I would expect what to be like him, even if it means doing some lying and manipulation from time to time.
- dnissley 3y agoA writer for wired says they have reason to believe this story is a fabrication (although doesn't explain why): https://twitter.com/willknight/status/1726793735143621058 https://twitter.com/willknight/status/1726793735143621058
- siva7 3y agoThe only difference: the informer is a respected publication while wired is wired and you're not gonna make it better with a claim and then not follow-up with any kind of evidence. But at this point it could be all fabrication. Journalism is mostly a joke at this point.
- dnissley 3y agoIs The Information actually a higher quality source? I can't say I know much about them. Why do you think that?
- upwardbound 3y agoReposting what dnissley said that got downvoted: Will Knight, a writer for Wired, is stating “I have reason to believe that the OpenAI Anthropic merger story is a complete fabrication” https://twitter.com/willknight/status/1726793735143621058 https://twitter.com/willknight/status/1726793735143621058
- dang 3y ago> Reposting what dnissley said that got downvoted: Please don't do this. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38363524 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38363524 isn't even downvoted now.
- diamondfist25 3y agoThis thread just shows why people in tech have 0 social intelligence and instead follows the trending mob fashion of the time.
- throw-tinfoil 3y ago[flagged]
- pr07ecH70r 3y agoThis whole thing becomes more and more like a Schooby and the Gang case. Let's see who's under the mask at the end. :D *Gonna need some popcorn.