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Sam Altman, OpenAI board open talks to negotiate his possible return
- Clubber 3y agoThis whole drama is like everyone asked ChatGPT what to do about their predicament and blindly followed it's instructions.
- bugglebeetle 3y agoIm fairly certain GPT-4 could’ve came up with a better plan than this. Maybe they tried to use GPT-3.5-turbo with a short prompt to save money.
- YetAnotherNick 3y agoWhat?? Even the best storywriter can't come up with this engaging drama. I literally can't stop checking on this story every few minutes.
- e2le 3y agoPerhaps they ought to give GPT-4 a position on the future board. I have no doubt it would give better output than its current human counterparts.
- Nevermark 3y agoA GPT board observer, consultant, note summarizer seems like a pretty good idea. Might as well start experimenting now, GPT5 might actually be qualified.
- 6510 3y agoYou could give it a monarch kind of assistant who has to sign off on it's choices. Would it want to get smarter (more science) or go straight for world domination (more marketing)?
- martythemaniak 3y agoChatGPT would never do something this stupid. This is GPT-2 level clownshow.
- Eumenes 3y ago"ChatGPT, write articles TMZ style, sprinkle in some Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce drama, but make it tech"
- boto3 3y agocould not resist: https://chat.openai.com/share/6e8bd7ec-32f8-4ed8-a44f-c08a3ca07bf1 https://chat.openai.com/share/6e8bd7ec-32f8-4ed8-a44f-c08a3c... gotta say, ChatGPT really knows how to make up a story, and I'd not be surprised if Sutskever and Brockman will indeed be co-CEOs :)
- Eumenes 3y agoIts honestly pretty on point
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- CtrlAltmanDel 3y agoWhile the spotlight's been on the feud between the board and the high level employees, in the background the most underpaid disrespected employee, a lowly sys admin, has been going full Mr Robot on everything - the models, the weights, the code, the training data, and the backups. Microsoft rushes in their top forensics team to try to make a recovery. The only thing they are able to pull up is a memory dump from a chatGPT web server, it contains the last known conversation which happens to be with the sys admin. id reads "Sure, I can help you develop an exploit chain with a wiper payload. Blowing these internal fuses in the GPU cluster will render it permanently inoperable, aka Bricked as you have asked for. `var sc =\x...`" With billions of dollars in hardware and intellectual property destroyed, unrecoverably, chatGPT as we knew it will forever be a high water mark in AI developments. Even once the GPU's are replaced, the cat's out of the bag and all the sources of training data are now locked down, not to mentioned poisoned by the previous output of the once great AI. Most people move on, but a few still remember and form a cultlike group praying for the second coming of AI.
- golergka 3y agoI've asked GPT-4 for personal advice a few times, and it always tends on a very conservative/cautious side. Something completely opposite of what's going on now. You would have to prompt it with some very crazy personality to come up with these shenanigans.
- cwp 3y ago/me sighs The board has not been consistently candid in its communications with... anyone.
- karmasimida 3y agoThis. This is the most baffling piece of the whole saga. Board writes itself on the wall.
- selimthegrim 3y agoTake a letter down, pass it around...
- GreedClarifies 3y agoI'm not sure it is baffling. They thought that this would be easy. Many things in their lives have been easy, blame someone of something, the person scurries away and they win. This time, the person/people they blamed had a great reputation, a lot of influential friends, and had engendered a lot of loyalty. This caused pushback and they have never had to deal with that in their lives. It's a theory.
- pram 3y agoI'm curious if literally anyone (the board, the CEO(s), Microsoft, Twitter, etc) knows the full story or knows whats actually going on lol. I assumed initially it was just fog of war, but this just seems like pure incompetence and "purple monkey dishwasher" tier misinformation.
- expazl 3y agoEveryone who sat in the meeting with the board ousting Sam knows enough of the reason as to why he was ousted. They all voted Yes, and even if some of them regret it now that they see it didn't unfold as just a simple "we now have control"-play, they all had reasons to vote him out. But those reasons obliviously aren't grounded in anything they can reveal to the public.
- patapong 3y ago
- gwd 3y agohttps://archive.is/ku2Ap https://archive.is/ku2Ap
- khazhoux 3y agoThis is all such a 2005 Techcrunch vibe the last few days. Michael Arrington, where are you?? (for all the youngsters reading this: this kind of cool-kids-club silicon valley drama was daily back then)
- dustincoates 3y agoThis does have a very Valleywag feel to it.
- cowpig 3y agoIt really just seems like the board isn't OK with OpenAI becoming a Microsoft money-machine. Isn't that the obvious interpretation? Once they made that gigantic deal with Microsoft and became a closed, for-profit company "Open"AI created a direct conflict of interest with itself with a board whose mandate I guess was to prevent the inevitable pull toward resource accumulation. The board is trying to exercise its mandate, and OpenAI the for-profit company is at odds with that mandate. Is that because of Sam Altman's leadership? Does that qualify as "wrongdoing"?
- YetAnotherNick 3y agoLet's call them Adam, Helen and Tasha, not the board. 3 people who have some questionable connections with competitors and have nothing to loose if OpenAI dies. By now they don't have full legitimacy.
- denton-scratch 3y agoWny didn't you mention Ilya? Has he stood down?
- YetAnotherNick 3y agoHe publically apologized for participating in the board decision. Sadly his vote doesn't matter now that Sam and Greg has oficially been removed.
- gardenhedge 3y agoHis original vote matter a lot. His name should be mentioned along with the others
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> nothing to loose if OpenAI dies To be fair, this was deliberately done. You don't want the person selling you the bombs to be the one deciding how many you use.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoI love this quote from a post on the topic at The Verge: > As Bloomberg reported late last night, new interim CEO Emmett Shear is involved in mediating these negotiations, creating the frankly unprecedented situation where (1) the interim CEO who replaced (2) the interim CEO who replaced Sam and who (3) got replaced for trying to get Sam back is now (4) deeply involved in a new effort to get Sam back. Read it through a few times, it’s fine. It doesn’t make any sense to anyone else either. https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/21/23971120/the-negotiations-to-bring-sam-altman-back-to-openai-slowly-continue https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/21/23971120/the-negotiation...
- htk 3y agoThat's like callback hell in JS.
- cyanydeez 3y agoor basically how AI works in decision making.
- SllX 3y agoThey should probably try asking a Magic Eight Ball for a second opinion at this point. If you feed GPT-4 the reporting around this situation since Friday (literally just copy and paste in whatever reports you want) and ask a pointed question or two about OpenAI’s future, even GPT-4 isn’t liking OpenAI’s chances here. (Yes, I understand ChatGPT isn’t an AGI, shouldn’t be used for strategic decisions, blah blah blah, I tried it because it was funny.)
- m463 3y agowhat dependencies and versions are required to import openai?
- csours 3y agoI don't know, but only 1 is needed to export it.
- hipadev23 3y agoI hope Emmett was smart enough to require a literal wheelbarrow of money for what's going to be a 3-day stint as CEO.
- ZiiS 3y agoI assume the hope is they will be needing new board members just as he becomes available.
- oceanplexian 3y agoHe sold Twitch for $1B in $AMZN stock that eventually went up like 500%. Chances are he’s doing it for free or a token amount of money.
- padjo 3y agoI feel a token sum for a person like that would likely be life changing money for most people.
- MacsHeadroom 3y agoA token sum in this case usually refers to something like a $1 salary or minimum wage, just to be on payroll. So no, not really.
- fasthands9 3y agoI feel like he is probably doing it for stock options. If you are worth a few B, being the CEO of OpenAI presents a reasonable opportunity to grow that by tens of billions if everything goes right.
- MacsHeadroom 3y agoOpenAI does not give out stock options to employees. They do give out profit participation units which are effectively kind of similar. They effectively reward employees for profit but don't give any ownership. Anyway, he's probably doing it for the clout and the "once in a lifetime opportunity," not for any money at all. AGI true believers don't think money will be as important as being close to the apparatus around the AGI will be.
- JumpCrisscross 3y agoIs the only mode of communication for everyone involved in this fiasco Twitter and reporters?
- cpncrunch 3y agoIt seems that way, which is baffling to me, as this seems a particularly easy problem to solve. No need to wait for an independent investigator to give a report in 30 days (by which time OpenAI might be toast). Just have individual discussions with each board member and ask them why they voted to fire Sam, and what evidence there was. Then, take appropriate action. If I had to guess, there will be one person who pushed for Sam's firing with vague reasons, and the others went along with it for their own vague reasons. In which case, the solution would be to fire those members (including Ilya) from the board, but let Ilya continue as chief scientist.
- crazygringo 3y ago> Just have individual discussions with each board member Who has the discussions? > Then, take appropriate action. Who takes action? The board is at the top. Unlike for-profit corporations, there are no shareholders behind them. Ultimately, any and all action is taken by the board. They're not accountable to anyone else. They don't have to discuss anything with anybody, and there's no action anyone else can take. Unless you're suing the board and get the government to step in, but it's not clear there's any grounds for that.
- cpncrunch 3y ago>Who has the discussions? The (current) CEO. >Who takes action? The CEO can present the evidence and make recommendations. That is the action. It is then up to the board to follow those recommendations, present their own alternative, or let the company implode when all their employees quit. >The board is at the top That doesn't always guarantee power.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pyrophane 3y agoThe worst thing about this whole affair has been the failure of the board to coherently express, seemingly to anyone, why they did what they did.
- babberman 3y agoMy money is on "Board got big mad when Sam went on Joe Rogan and critiziced woke cancel culture".
- alexilliamson 3y agoNo way. That interview was a full month and half ago. Moreover, these days everyone and their brother is going on JRE to complain about "woke".
- natebc 3y agoHonestly I'm happy for those people to stay asleep. We'll all be better off.
- neilv 3y agoMaybe it's not defensible. Or maybe it involves a deal that they're stuck with, and now dependent upon, even if the terms aren't aligned well with the non-profit. Saying that could be awkward. What I can't guess at explanations for is publicly stating the not-consistently-candid in the initial announcement. I'm not expert on these things, but that sounds to me like either a euphemism for something that they needed to be seen as explicitly distancing the company from ASAP or a blunder that a lawyer or PR person would've advised them not to do, and which they didn't need to do.
- paulddraper 3y ago> Maybe it's not defensible. At this point, that's the 95% conclusion. If you were in this position and had even a sliver of defensibility to play, you would have already played it. Because the longer this goes, the more sharks circle and the less likely OpenAI's survival becomes. (UNLESS you thought you f---ed up and wanted Altman back so you want to be nice to him. But if you wanted that, you wouldn't have hired Shear as interim CEO to replace your previous interim CEO.)
- DigitalSea 3y agoThe fact the new CEO can't even get answers from the board is quite telling. Looks like the OpenAI board wants those investor lawsuits. And allegedly the Quora guy Adam D'Angelo is the ringleader of all this?
- newsclues 3y agoOr Dustin Moskovitz, it seems many of the board members may be linked to him
- reducesuffering 3y agoNo https://www.threads.net/@moskov/post/Cz482XgJBN0?hl=en https://www.threads.net/@moskov/post/Cz482XgJBN0?hl=en "A few folks sent me a Hacker News comment speculating I was involved in the OpenAI conflict. Totally false. I was as surprised as anyone Friday, and still don’t know what happened."
- cpncrunch 3y agoI'm not sure if lawsuits against the non-profit will be possible, as the investors didn't invest in it. More likely, making public the facts behind who was responsible for the shenanigans and what evidence they had (if any), combined with pressure from employees, will force their hand.
- GreedClarifies 3y agoThere is no evidence that Adam is the ringleader. All four are possible ringleaders. Given Ilya's change of heart he is slightly less probable as the ringleader.
- gitgud 3y agoSorry, the title of this submission is terrible… > ”OpenAI's CEO Shear left in the dark, planning to leave if evidence not provided” Did Shear leave or not?? Why not just use the article title?
- YetAnotherNick 3y agoBecause the article title is terrible. Isn't it clear Shear didn't leave the board but "planning to"
- proto-n 3y ago"(was) left in the dark" means "wasn't given information"
- dragonwriter 3y ago“Left in the dark” is a common idiom for having information withheld. This particular use also uses a construction I think of as “implicit pass voice” where the “to be” part (is/has been/etc) of a passive voice construct is elided, it's more fully “OpenAI CEO Shear ![has been] left in the dark [about the reasons and supporting evidence for Altman’s firing], ... ”
- zem 3y agoi hear changpeng zhao is leaving binance, if they need a replacement
- pcrh 3y agoI'm not an insider in this field.... But is Sam Altman really that critical? Or is it more a case that people follow where he leads (i.e. there are others equally technically competent).
- ryanSrich 3y agoSam's criticality has nothing to do with the technical capabilities of OAI, but everything to do with the commercialization of OAI.
- pcrh 3y agoHow so? Does he control the tech in some way? Patents?
- passwordoops 3y agoMarketing to VCs and for lack of a better word, nerd influencers
- mcpackieh 3y ago> for lack of a better word, nerd influencers Personality cult. Seeing hundreds of employees swearing fealty to their [ex]CEO has been very bizarre.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- NikolaNovak 3y agoHe is seemingly quite critical. Not from any technical knowledge. Maybe his vision and business acumen, but mostly because at that level the tech-bro ceo founders stick together. Not in any formal conspiracy sense, just they have faith and trust and googly-eyes for each other. From that perspective, the leaked sms messages from elon Musk prior to Twitter purchase were positively illuminating and will give you fascinating (if cringy) insight how billion dollar funding actually works.
- kevinsync 3y agoEverybody talking about the Netflix version -- given how absurd this whole thing has been, I hope Joseph Gordon-Levitt actually ends up cast as one of the characters and brings it brutally full-circle lol
- m3kw9 3y agoNetflix is writing the script blow by blow as it is happening.
- type0 3y agoI thought ChatGPT has already written it
- ShamelessC 3y agoAh yes beloved comedy writer Tommy Netflix.
- jmyeet 3y agoEveryone involved in this needs to go. Employees quitting in protest is a point in Sam's favor. The employee letter is a point in Sam's favor. The lack of a compelling narrative as to why this action was undertaken is a huge point in Sam's favor. The board just looks terrible and incompetent here. Again: not looping Microsoft in on this, even if you don't technically have to, speaks to the board's incompetence. I can't speak to the merits of the firing. Not much is known publicly. This was an execution and communications debacle however and that's sufficient to get rid of the entire board AFAIC. The revolving door of interim CEOs and the rumors of Sam's possible return just make this whole thing into even more of a clown show. As for Ilya's regret for their part in this, I'm not sure I buy it. That may well be just a response to how much negative publicity this has gotten. This whole thing feels like an internal power struggle to me. If so, Ilya may well have hoped to benefit from the new regime. The longer this goes on, the worse the OpenAI board looks.
- SilasX 3y agoJFC it’s like a full time job to keep up with this story. Now we have to distinguish this reopening of negotiations to bring back Altman from the one that happened Saturday. What’s the endgame here?
- alberth 3y agoContrarian view … Sam has more leveraging power right now than any other person negotiating a CEO package in tech history. Great power, comes with great responsibility. Given he’s been a VC for roughly 2 decades, I’m not sure everyone is expecting a VC to uphold the great responsibility part for humanity. Just the great power to generate huge financials returns.
- dragonwriter 3y agoIts a statement about the reliability of the news coverage of this that there have been news reports that there were ongoing talks (and even media reports of likely imminent outcomes of those talks) every day since Saturday, and now we have news that the talks actually opened... today. All from anonymous people supposedly close to the talks, and almost none of the stories even acknowledging the past reporting.
- expazl 3y agoSo from all the news it's difficult to figure out what might have been the boards Idea. But I have a fealing it went something like this: Adam D'Angelo has a solution for selling chatbots using ChatGPT(Poe). He asks Sam "is OpenAI working on anything similar" and Sam goes, sure, but it's not far along, talk to A about it. A says "yea, we never got far with it.". Time passes and OpenAI releases a product that blows Adams offering completely out of the water, and he goes "WTF A said we never got far!?!?" Sam goes Oh, this is a solution by B. So now Adams pissed, and the board probably agrees that Sam lied by omission and that he willfully fucked Adam over, so they have a vote, and kick him out thinking that the public is going to go "Oh yea, they did the right thing kicking him out for lying"... except they can't say he lied, because he didn't. So they send the cryptic reason of him “not being consistently candid in his communications”. Of cause they didn't clear any of this with anyone and just thought they had the seat of power in the situation because "they are the board". Now they imploded the company in an attempt to give Adam some justice for Sam blowing up his project. But nothing can officially be said, because it all comes of as unprofessional and just straight up stupid. They can't punish Sam for persuing a bot store, because that's good for OpenAI and Adams on the board representing OpenAI, not his other projects. They can't go out and argue that Sam lies because he didn't. They can't argue that it's a firerable offense to have two teams working on the same thing. And they can't just stick to their decision because that has 90% of the company jumping ship and continuing under a new Microsoft Banner. All of this is complete speculation trying to align the tidbits of facts that have been presented here and there, but all I can say is I can't wait for the Movie to come out.
- expazl 3y agoToo late to edit, but I think Adam D'Angelo staying on the board proves my speculation completely wrong.
- tr3ntg 3y agoSounds like he was a hair’s breadth away from a conflict of interest. No matter the weight the Poe<>CustomGPT overlap has on today’s overall situation, it was certainly inviting trouble. Seems like a properly-run board wouldn’t have allowed such clear conflicts of interest to last a moment.
- dbuser99 3y agoThe kind of pressure microsoft is able to exert here is mind blowing. The hero worshipping they were able to cultivate, with so much media pressure, they truly control our lives
- dehrmann 3y ago> The kind of pressure microsoft is able to exert here is mind blowing. Remember the time Elon Musk bought a social media company accidentally as a joke? That's what 1/4 trillion dollars lets you do. 10x that and you have the power of Microsoft.
- replwoacause 3y agoThe OpenAI board just made it too easy for them. Any competent investor would have done the same. It was a gimme.
- 33MHz-i486 3y agofeel like the board is too small and a handful of them kicked him out over personal agendas - which are incoherent and hence they cant explain it publicly - Ilya for decel (but really tech fame jealously) - Adam for a CoI with his startup (but really founder fame jealousy) - Helen Toner for Sam disagreeing with her research in EA, safety and decel
- cgb223 3y agoI can’t keep up with all this Isn’t he already at Microsoft? Or was that hypothetical
- sangnoir 3y agoWith billions of dollars at stake, there is a multi-million-dollar PR-/propaganda-/media war being fought right in front of our eyes.
- type0 3y agoThe whole thing is like a bad episode of Silicon Valley
- DoreenMichele 3y agoSo does he work for Microsoft or not? Or is he as loyal to his new employer as he was when YC promoted him to President and he soon began talking about running for governor of California?
- gscott 3y agoInteresting new news, MS has an office two blocks from OpenAI and they are buying Macbooks for it just in case things go south the employees will be ready to go with a new place to work... with MS.
- DoreenMichele 3y agoA quick search suggests he's worth $500 million. He will keep eating and paying his rent or mortgage even if he is nominally unemployed for a time. People who get titles like CEO are supposed to be someone whose word you can trust and who makes firm decisions they stand by, not a flake looking for any shelter in the storm like a working stiff with no savings.
- ShamelessC 3y agoIf there's one thing I've learned here it's that message boards are the absolute worst way to keep up with any amount of nuance and/or ongoing developments. The irony that my comment will likely be buried under dozens others is not lost on me.
- 7e 3y agoThe board is being pressured by greedy investors who want to subvert OpenAI's mission in pursuit of profit. Meanwhile, there a conspicious lack of rightous indignation by Altman on how he was treated. There is non-stop manipulation behind the scenes to get Altman back, which seems to validate the board's original reason for his firing. He is the puppet master.