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These people are really delusional. > “There was something appealing about going to work at Microsoft with [OpenAI President Greg Brockman] on a pure AI resear

These people are really delusional. > “There was something appealing about going to work at Microsoft with [OpenAI President Greg Brockman] on a pure AI research effort,” Altman testified. How would Altman contribute to a pure AI research effort, he doesn't know anything about AI.

mrandish 5mo ago
I found this claim by Altman to be very puzzling. He's not a researcher nor does he have any experience as the direct manager of research groups. Satya Nadella's very public employment offer to Altman was obviously coordinated as one part of Altman and MSFT's strategy to force OpenAI's board to back down - and everyone knew this at the time. It was carefully timed to happen within hours of the vast majority of OpenAI's key personnel threatening to resign. The clear threat being that Microsoft would essentially rebuild OpenAI inside Microsoft with Altman recruiting the newly resigned employees, leaving OAI as a shell with products and patents but no key people. This would certainly have nerfed the expected ~$150B valuation of the imminent OAI private placement, which was the only near-term path to liquidity for OAI's "paper multi-millionaire" employees. Over the prior 24 hours, Altman and Brockman had turned Altman's house into their 'war room' and had been working the phones non-stop convincing key employees that Altman remaining CEO and Microsoft's ongoing partnership were both essential to preserving the private placement. That's why so many key employees signed the resignation threat letter (and pressured other employees to sign). And the MSFT threat couldn't be discounted as just bluster because MSFT was uniquely positioned due to having already secured long-term, non-exclusive access to OAI's products and IP. All they lacked was the people. While the OpenAI board was probably correct that removing Altman was part of their duty to preserve the non-profit's charter, they realized it too late and totally bungled the execution. For example, they should never have fired Altman but instead changed his role (which would have restricted his ability to coordinate with MSFT), appointed a credible new CEO the same day, and ensured that CEO was prepared to brief employees that the private placement was still on track without Altman. If Musk's lawyers let Altman portray such obvious gun-to-the-head, hardball as him planning to "just take a research job at Microsoft", they're shockingly incompetent.

mrandish 5mo ago

I found this claim by Altman to be very puzzling. He's not a researcher nor does he have any experience as the direct manager of research groups. Satya Nadella's very public employment offer to Altman was obviously coordinated as one part of Altman and MSFT's strategy to force OpenAI's board to back down - and everyone knew this at the time. It was carefully timed to happen within hours of the vast majority of OpenAI's key personnel threatening to resign. The clear threat being that Microsoft would essentially rebuild OpenAI inside Microsoft with Altman recruiting the newly resigned employees, leaving OAI as a shell with products and patents but no key people. This would certainly have nerfed the expected ~$150B valuation of the imminent OAI private placement, which was the only near-term path to liquidity for OAI's "paper multi-millionaire" employees. Over the prior 24 hours, Altman and Brockman had turned Altman's house into their 'war room' and had been working the phones non-stop convincing key employees that Altman remaining CEO and Microsoft's ongoing partnership were both essential to preserving the private placement. That's why so many key employees signed the resignation threat letter (and pressured other employees to sign). And the MSFT threat couldn't be discounted as just bluster because MSFT was uniquely positioned due to having already secured long-term, non-exclusive access to OAI's products and IP. All they lacked was the people. While the OpenAI board was probably correct that removing Altman was part of their duty to preserve the non-profit's charter, they realized it too late and totally bungled the execution. For example, they should never have fired Altman but instead changed his role (which would have restricted his ability to coordinate with MSFT), appointed a credible new CEO the same day, and ensured that CEO was prepared to brief employees that the private placement was still on track without Altman. If Musk's lawyers let Altman portray such obvious gun-to-the-head, hardball as him planning to "just take a research job at Microsoft", they're shockingly incompetent.