4 ms·
> Altman began approaching other board members, individually, about replacing [Toner]. When these members compared notes about the conversations, some felt that
by 6gvONxR4sf7o 3y ago
> Altman began approaching other board members, individually, about replacing [Toner]. When these members compared notes about the conversations, some felt that Altman had misrepresented them as supporting Toner’s removal. “He’d play them off against each other by lying about what other people thought,” the person familiar with the board’s discussions told me. “Things like that had been happening for years.”
> ... [Altman's] tactical skills were so feared that, when four members of the board—Toner, D’Angelo, Sutskever, and Tasha McCauley—began discussing his removal, they were determined to guarantee that he would be caught by surprise. “It was clear that, as soon as Sam knew, he’d do anything he could to undermine the board,” the person familiar with those discussions said.
> The person familiar with [Altman's] perspective said that he and the board had engaged in “very normal and healthy boardroom debate,” but that some board members were unversed in business norms and daunted by their responsibilities.
> [Re: the board's silence after firing Altman] Two people familiar with the board’s thinking say that the members felt bound to silence by confidentiality constraints.
This seems to be the most concrete information about what he did since it happened. Sounds like he lied for years and justified it as "business norms."
- 3cats-in-a-coat 3y agoI haven't heard anything yet that presents Helen Toner as someone who was useful on the board. She'd write dramatic papers about the dangers of AI which put her own company (I mean whose board she was on) in a bad light, and was unreceptive to feedback from Altman about the optics of the entire situation. Maybe she thought she's doing the right thing, I'm sure all those people think they're doing their earnest version of "the right thing". Yet the company she praised, Anthropic, is clearly dysfunctional, with users complaining all over the Internet that Claude refuses to perform basic tasks out of misguided "safety concerns" ("I can't help you kill Linux processes, as this is unethical"), making their subscriptions useless. That's the Helen Toner model. See, people who deal with security often like to put the spotlight on themselves by proclaiming grave danger is imminent and then position themselves as the experts who can save us from this danger. This is such a common pattern and sometimes it's not even consciously done, but extremely toxic regardless. Everyone wants to be important and regarded, so they lean on behaviors that achieve that outcome. Sam Altman is your typical startup entrepreneur sleezeball. And yes, here he was trying to manufacture consent within a board that was largely complacent through "divide and conquer". The details of his behavior can be nauseating, but still... I can't deny on the total he did make countless correct leadership decisions at OpenAI, and getting Helen Toner off the board... for all we know so far... feels like one of those correct leadership decisions. So I can't feel too bad about it. The only thing I feel bad about it is Ilya Sutskever. I hope he and Altman can find a productive and dignified way to continue their partnership.
- sdwr 3y agoTry looking at it from the perspective of reality TV, where attention is everything and there is no actual product. An inflammatory post about the dangers of AI increases awareness and emotional engagement. Especially paired with a calm and steady press release. It's the same pattern as an abusive relationship - cause the pain, then alleviate it. I'm not saying its an explicit manipulation, just a unconscious tactic that opens up when people really care about the mission.
- 3cats-in-a-coat 3y agoIf there's no singularity after the commercial break, I'd be super annoyed ;-)
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 3y agoYour comment prompted me to actually read Toner’s paper, and you’re seriously mischaracterizing it. And, not that it matters so much, but she’s third author on it.
- swyx 3y agolink to paper please? cant find it based on the info from the article
- henry_viii 3y agohttps://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/CSET-Decoding-Intentions.pdf https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/CSET-Decoding... From: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38486394#38494079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38486394#38494079
- 7e 3y agoSam Altman sounds like a prick; scheming to replace a board member who is dutifully performing their oversight role.