8 ms·

With Sam coming back as CEO, hasn't OpenAI board proven that it has lost its function? Regardless of who is in the board, they won't be able to exercise one of

With Sam coming back as CEO, hasn't OpenAI board proven that it has lost its function? Regardless of who is in the board, they won't be able to exercise one of the most fundamental of their rights, firing the CEO, because Sam has proven that he is unfireable. Now, Sam can do however he pleases, whether it is lying, not reporting, etc. To be clear, I don't claim that Sam did, or will, lie, or misbehave.

isitmadeofglass 3y ago
[dead]
kmlevitt 3y ago
This is a better deal for the board and a worse one for Sam than people realize. Sam and Greg and even Ilya are both off the board, D'Angelo gets to stay on despite his outrageous actions, and he gets veto power over who the new board members will be and a big say in who gets voted on to the board next. Everybody's guard is going to be up around Sam from now on. He'll have much less leverage over this board than he did over the previous one (before the other three of nine quit). I think eventually he will prevail because he has the charm and social skills to win over the other independent members. But he will have to reign in his own behavior a lot in order to keep them on his side versus D'Angelo
- JSavageOne 3y ago
  I'd be shocked if D'Angelo doesn't get kicked off. Even before this debacle his AI competitor app poe.com is an obvious conflict of interest with OpenAI.
  - himaraya 3y ago
    If he survived to this point, I doubt he will go any time soon.
    - yeck 3y ago
      Depends who gets onto the board. There are probably a lot of forces interested in ousting him now, so he'd need to do an amazing job vetting the new board members. My guess is that he has less than a year, based on the my assumption that there will be constant pressure placed on the board to oust him.
      - himaraya 3y ago
        He has his network and technical credibility, so I wouldn't underestimate him. Board composition remains hard to predict now.
        WendyTheWillow 3y ago
        What surprises me is how much regard the valley has for this guy. Doesn’t Quora suck terribly? I’m for sure its target demographic and I cannot for the life of me pull value from it. I have tried!
        himaraya 3y ago
        His claim to fame comes from scaling FB. Quora shows he has questionable product nous, but nobody questions his technical chops.
        JSavageOne 3y ago
        Quora is an embarrassment and died years ago when marketers took it over
  - murakamiiq84 3y ago
    I think it was only a competitor app after GPTs came out. A conspiracy theorist might say that Altman wanted to get him off the board and engineered GPTs as a pretext first, in the same way that he used some random paper coauthored by Toner that nobody read to kick Toner out.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- jnwatson 3y ago
  This board's sole job is to pick the new board. The new board will have Sam.
  - himaraya 3y ago
    Conditioned on the outcome of the internal investigation, which seems up for grabs.
- madeofpalk 3y ago
  (Sam Altman was never on the board to begin with)
  - ketzo 3y ago
    He was. OpenAI board as of last Thursday was Altman, Sutskever, Brockman, D'Angelo, Macaulay, Toner.
random_cynic 3y ago
No that hasn't at all been the case. The board acted like the most incompetent group of individuals who've even handed any responsibility. If they went through due process, notified their employees and investors, and put out a statement of why they're firing the CEO instead of doing it over a 15 min Google meet and then going completely silent, none of this outrage would have taken place.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- maxlin 3y ago
  Exactly. 3 CEO switches in a week is ridiculous
  - abkolan 3y ago
    Four CEO changes in five days to be precise. Sam -> Mira -> Emmet -> Sam
    - Hendrikto 3y ago
      That are three changes. Every arrow is one.
      - physicles 3y ago
        Classic fence post error.
      - nonethewiser 3y ago
        And technically 2 new CEOs
    - qup 3y ago
      The three hard problems: naming things and off-by-one errors
      - 3y ago
altpaddle 3y ago
Time will tell. Hopefully the new board will still be mostly independent of Sam/MSFT/VC influence. I really hope they continue as an org that tries its best to uphold their charter vs just being another startup.
low_tech_love 3y ago
Yes, but on the other hand, this whole thing has shown that OpenAI is not running smooth anymore, and probably never will again. You can't cut the head of the snake then attach it back later and expect it to move on slithering. Even if Sam stays, he won't be able to just do whatever he wants because in an organization as complex as OpenAI, there are thousands of unwritten rules and relationships and hidden processes that need to go smooth without the CEO's direct intervention (the CEO cannot be everywhere all the time). So, what this says to me (Sam being re-hired) is that the future OpenAI is now a watered-down, mere shadow of its former self. I personally think it's weird if he really settles back in, especially given the other guys who resigned after the fact. There must be lots of other super exciting new things for him to do out there, and some pretty amazing leadership job offers from other companies. I'm not saying OpenAI will die out or anything, but surely it has shown a weak side.
- throwuwu 3y ago
  This couldn’t be more wrong. The big thing we learned from this episode is that Sam and Greg have the loyalty and respect of almost every single employee at OpenAI. Morale is high and they’re ready to fight for what they believe in. They didn’t “cut the head off” and the only snake here is D’Angelo, he tried to kill OpenAI and failed miserably. Now he appears to be desperately trying to hold on to some semblance of power by agreeing to Sam and Greg coming back instead of losing all control with the whole team joining Microsoft.
  - alephnan 3y ago
    > Morale is high and they’re ready to fight for what they believe in. Money.
  - 37394748 3y ago
    I don't think Ilya should get off so easily. Him not havinh a say in the formation of the new board speaks volumes about his role in things if you ask me. I hope people keep saying his name too so nobody forgets his place in this mess.
    - 3y ago
lysecret 3y ago
No the board is just one instance. It doesn’t and shouldn’t have absolute power. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. There ist the board the investors the employees the senior management. All other parties aligned against it and thus it couldn’t act. If only Sam would have rebelled. Or even just Sam and the investors (without the employees) nothing would have happened.
strikelaserclaw 3y ago
The board can still fire sam provided they get all the key stakeholders onboard with that firing. It made no sense to fire someone doing a good job at their role without any justification, that seems to have been the key issue. Ultimately, we all know this non profit thing is for show and will never work out.
stetrain 3y ago
Imagine if the board of Apple fired Tim Cook with no warning right after he went on stage and announced their new developer platform updates for the year alongside record growth and sales, refused to elaborate as to the reasons or provide any useful communications to investors over several days, and replaced their first interim CEO with another interim CEO from a completely different kind of business in that same weekend. If you don't think there would be a shareholder revolt against the board, for simply exercising their most fundamental right to fire the CEO, I think you're missing part the picture.
- hackernewds 3y ago
  It is prudent to recall that enhancing shareholder value and delivering record growth and sales are NOT the mission of the company or Board. But now it appears that it will have to be.
  - ketzo 3y ago
    Yeah, but they also didn't elaborate in the slightest about how they were serving the charter with their actions. If they were super-duper worried about how Sam was going to cause a global extinction event with AI, or even just that he was driving the company in too commercial of a direction, they should have said that to everyone! The idea that they could fire the CEO with a super vague, one-paragraph statement, and then expect 800 employees who respect that CEO to just... be totally fine with that is absolutely fucking insane, regardless of the board's fiduciary responsibilities. They're board members, not gods.
    - NanoYohaneTSU 3y ago
      They don't have to elaborate. As many have pointed out, most people have been given advice to not say anything at all when SHTF. If they did say something there would still be drama. It's best to keep these details internal. I still believe in the theory that Altman was going hard after profits. Both McCauley and Toner are focused on the altruistic aspects of AGI and safety. Altman shouldn't be at OpenAI and neither should D’Angelo.
mkagenius 3y ago
None of the theories by HNers on day 1 of this drama was right - not a single one and it had 1 million comments. So, lets not guess anymore and just sit back.
baby 3y ago
How did you get there? The board did fire him, they exercised their right.
- eksapsy 3y ago
  because people like the developers within the company did not like that decision and its also within their right to disagree with the board's decision and not to want to work under a different leadership. They're not slaves, they're employees who rented their time for a specific purpose under a specific leader. As it's within the board's rights to hire or fire people like Sam or the developers.
Quentincestino 3y ago
OpenAI workers has shown their plain support to their CEO by threatening to follow him wherever he wants, I personaly think their collective judgement on him is worth more than any rumors
- BOOSTERHIDROGEN 3y ago
  Money indeed is worth more, also the only thing that is easy to measure during crisis.
6gvONxR4sf7o 3y ago
Looks like all the naysayers from the original “were making a for-profit but it won’t change us” post ended up correct: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19359928 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19359928

isitmadeofglass 3y ago

[dead]

kmlevitt 3y ago

This is a better deal for the board and a worse one for Sam than people realize. Sam and Greg and even Ilya are both off the board, D'Angelo gets to stay on despite his outrageous actions, and he gets veto power over who the new board members will be and a big say in who gets voted on to the board next. Everybody's guard is going to be up around Sam from now on. He'll have much less leverage over this board than he did over the previous one (before the other three of nine quit). I think eventually he will prevail because he has the charm and social skills to win over the other independent members. But he will have to reign in his own behavior a lot in order to keep them on his side versus D'Angelo

JSavageOne 3y ago
I'd be shocked if D'Angelo doesn't get kicked off. Even before this debacle his AI competitor app poe.com is an obvious conflict of interest with OpenAI.
- himaraya 3y ago
  If he survived to this point, I doubt he will go any time soon.
  - yeck 3y ago
    Depends who gets onto the board. There are probably a lot of forces interested in ousting him now, so he'd need to do an amazing job vetting the new board members. My guess is that he has less than a year, based on the my assumption that there will be constant pressure placed on the board to oust him.
    - himaraya 3y ago
      He has his network and technical credibility, so I wouldn't underestimate him. Board composition remains hard to predict now.
      - WendyTheWillow 3y ago
        What surprises me is how much regard the valley has for this guy. Doesn’t Quora suck terribly? I’m for sure its target demographic and I cannot for the life of me pull value from it. I have tried!
        himaraya 3y ago
        His claim to fame comes from scaling FB. Quora shows he has questionable product nous, but nobody questions his technical chops.
        JSavageOne 3y ago
        Quora is an embarrassment and died years ago when marketers took it over
- murakamiiq84 3y ago
  I think it was only a competitor app after GPTs came out. A conspiracy theorist might say that Altman wanted to get him off the board and engineered GPTs as a pretext first, in the same way that he used some random paper coauthored by Toner that nobody read to kick Toner out.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jnwatson 3y ago
This board's sole job is to pick the new board. The new board will have Sam.
- himaraya 3y ago
  Conditioned on the outcome of the internal investigation, which seems up for grabs.
madeofpalk 3y ago
(Sam Altman was never on the board to begin with)
- ketzo 3y ago
  He was. OpenAI board as of last Thursday was Altman, Sutskever, Brockman, D'Angelo, Macaulay, Toner.

random_cynic 3y ago

No that hasn't at all been the case. The board acted like the most incompetent group of individuals who've even handed any responsibility. If they went through due process, notified their employees and investors, and put out a statement of why they're firing the CEO instead of doing it over a 15 min Google meet and then going completely silent, none of this outrage would have taken place.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
maxlin 3y ago
Exactly. 3 CEO switches in a week is ridiculous
- abkolan 3y ago
  Four CEO changes in five days to be precise. Sam -> Mira -> Emmet -> Sam
  - Hendrikto 3y ago
    That are three changes. Every arrow is one.
    - physicles 3y ago
      Classic fence post error.
    - nonethewiser 3y ago
      And technically 2 new CEOs
  - qup 3y ago
    The three hard problems: naming things and off-by-one errors
    - 3y ago

altpaddle 3y ago

Time will tell. Hopefully the new board will still be mostly independent of Sam/MSFT/VC influence. I really hope they continue as an org that tries its best to uphold their charter vs just being another startup.

low_tech_love 3y ago

Yes, but on the other hand, this whole thing has shown that OpenAI is not running smooth anymore, and probably never will again. You can't cut the head of the snake then attach it back later and expect it to move on slithering. Even if Sam stays, he won't be able to just do whatever he wants because in an organization as complex as OpenAI, there are thousands of unwritten rules and relationships and hidden processes that need to go smooth without the CEO's direct intervention (the CEO cannot be everywhere all the time). So, what this says to me (Sam being re-hired) is that the future OpenAI is now a watered-down, mere shadow of its former self. I personally think it's weird if he really settles back in, especially given the other guys who resigned after the fact. There must be lots of other super exciting new things for him to do out there, and some pretty amazing leadership job offers from other companies. I'm not saying OpenAI will die out or anything, but surely it has shown a weak side.

throwuwu 3y ago
This couldn’t be more wrong. The big thing we learned from this episode is that Sam and Greg have the loyalty and respect of almost every single employee at OpenAI. Morale is high and they’re ready to fight for what they believe in. They didn’t “cut the head off” and the only snake here is D’Angelo, he tried to kill OpenAI and failed miserably. Now he appears to be desperately trying to hold on to some semblance of power by agreeing to Sam and Greg coming back instead of losing all control with the whole team joining Microsoft.
- alephnan 3y ago
  > Morale is high and they’re ready to fight for what they believe in. Money.
- 37394748 3y ago
  I don't think Ilya should get off so easily. Him not havinh a say in the formation of the new board speaks volumes about his role in things if you ask me. I hope people keep saying his name too so nobody forgets his place in this mess.
  - 3y ago

lysecret 3y ago

No the board is just one instance. It doesn’t and shouldn’t have absolute power. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. There ist the board the investors the employees the senior management. All other parties aligned against it and thus it couldn’t act. If only Sam would have rebelled. Or even just Sam and the investors (without the employees) nothing would have happened.

strikelaserclaw 3y ago

The board can still fire sam provided they get all the key stakeholders onboard with that firing. It made no sense to fire someone doing a good job at their role without any justification, that seems to have been the key issue. Ultimately, we all know this non profit thing is for show and will never work out.

stetrain 3y ago

Imagine if the board of Apple fired Tim Cook with no warning right after he went on stage and announced their new developer platform updates for the year alongside record growth and sales, refused to elaborate as to the reasons or provide any useful communications to investors over several days, and replaced their first interim CEO with another interim CEO from a completely different kind of business in that same weekend. If you don't think there would be a shareholder revolt against the board, for simply exercising their most fundamental right to fire the CEO, I think you're missing part the picture.

hackernewds 3y ago
It is prudent to recall that enhancing shareholder value and delivering record growth and sales are NOT the mission of the company or Board. But now it appears that it will have to be.
- ketzo 3y ago
  Yeah, but they also didn't elaborate in the slightest about how they were serving the charter with their actions. If they were super-duper worried about how Sam was going to cause a global extinction event with AI, or even just that he was driving the company in too commercial of a direction, they should have said that to everyone! The idea that they could fire the CEO with a super vague, one-paragraph statement, and then expect 800 employees who respect that CEO to just... be totally fine with that is absolutely fucking insane, regardless of the board's fiduciary responsibilities. They're board members, not gods.
  - NanoYohaneTSU 3y ago
    They don't have to elaborate. As many have pointed out, most people have been given advice to not say anything at all when SHTF. If they did say something there would still be drama. It's best to keep these details internal. I still believe in the theory that Altman was going hard after profits. Both McCauley and Toner are focused on the altruistic aspects of AGI and safety. Altman shouldn't be at OpenAI and neither should D’Angelo.

mkagenius 3y ago

None of the theories by HNers on day 1 of this drama was right - not a single one and it had 1 million comments. So, lets not guess anymore and just sit back.

baby 3y ago

How did you get there? The board did fire him, they exercised their right.

eksapsy 3y ago
because people like the developers within the company did not like that decision and its also within their right to disagree with the board's decision and not to want to work under a different leadership. They're not slaves, they're employees who rented their time for a specific purpose under a specific leader. As it's within the board's rights to hire or fire people like Sam or the developers.

Quentincestino 3y ago

OpenAI workers has shown their plain support to their CEO by threatening to follow him wherever he wants, I personaly think their collective judgement on him is worth more than any rumors

BOOSTERHIDROGEN 3y ago
Money indeed is worth more, also the only thing that is easy to measure during crisis.

6gvONxR4sf7o 3y ago

Looks like all the naysayers from the original “were making a for-profit but it won’t change us” post ended up correct: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19359928 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19359928