Sam Altman wins power struggle, returns to OpenAI with new board
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I thought he acted rather classily through this whole thing. At least, his statements on social media were polite and not the insane fragile ego stuff we're used to seeing from certain people who've become big through social in recent times.
So, he's gone up in my estimations. That is, I still regard him as a terrifyingly extreme capitalist, but a polite one, at least.
So, he's gone up in my estimations. That is, I still regard him as a terrifyingly extreme capitalist, but a polite one, at least.
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If I were an employee and the board of my company was going to play games that threaten the existence of the company short term, I'd be sending out my resume.
I mean, imagine you've got a new CEO every day. Where the heck is this company even going?
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Let me get this straight. Sam Altman sets up a nonprofit which is charged with ending OpenAI if it thinks AI development is getting dangerous. They do, and fire him. Now he’s come back and fired the people doing the firing because he thinks AI development isn’t dangerous. We all get a long weekend of popcorn consumption followed by hoping AI development isn’t actually that dangerous despite the nonprofit board, who was supposed to be monitoring this, getting fired for thinking so.
What a bunch of unserious people. Just drop the nonprofit pretense, admit everyone involved here only cares about dying with the greatest number of zeros in their bank account and move on with unchecked capitalism as per currently accepted norms.
What a bunch of unserious people. Just drop the nonprofit pretense, admit everyone involved here only cares about dying with the greatest number of zeros in their bank account and move on with unchecked capitalism as per currently accepted norms.
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What hasn’t been said here is that strangely, Sam had no equity in the company. It’s very unusual for a founder to have no equity in the company he founded and that’s whether it’s a non profit or not. It’s why he was so easily fired.
the structure of the organization is equally odd, with the for profit company being under the control of the non profit. Having had two companies, I’m baffled as to how that was supposed to work as the two concepts are at odds with each other. And the employees of the for profit were under the control of the non profit as well.
the entire thing is almost set up for failure. And how anyone ever thought that the billions needed were going to be raised from investors who have no chance of making not only a profit, but even getting their initial investment back is absurd. We’re not taking about a political,campaign where many people give a little, and a few give a lot in the hopes of getting some,nebulous payback. We’re talking about a small number of supposedly sophisticated people and organizations putting vast amounts of capital into this, such as Microsoft, who want and expect to make a lot of money from it.
the structure of the organization is equally odd, with the for profit company being under the control of the non profit. Having had two companies, I’m baffled as to how that was supposed to work as the two concepts are at odds with each other. And the employees of the for profit were under the control of the non profit as well.
the entire thing is almost set up for failure. And how anyone ever thought that the billions needed were going to be raised from investors who have no chance of making not only a profit, but even getting their initial investment back is absurd. We’re not taking about a political,campaign where many people give a little, and a few give a lot in the hopes of getting some,nebulous payback. We’re talking about a small number of supposedly sophisticated people and organizations putting vast amounts of capital into this, such as Microsoft, who want and expect to make a lot of money from it.
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The clown king returns. Can't wait to see what's next for Worldcoin. Also can't wait to see the next marketing letter sent to Congress about how scary and amazing and world-ending his products are
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I think that's where a lot of the damage is going to come from, actually -- people are going to treat the current crop of AI Tools like AGI even though they're nowhere near at AGI levels. It's a voice of authority, and, even though that voice of authority has major limitations, there are plenty of people who are just going to take the AI at its word even in areas where you have ZERO business trusting an AI.
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Because Altman's ouster killed a tender offer for their stock options at an $86B valuation, closing in Dec. The board's decision cut them out of a generational payout
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There was zero reason for him to go unhinged. Virtually hours after his Impending departure was announced, people were throwing themselves at his feet.
He could do little but keep his mouth shut, as his detractors were getting pilloried.
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My thoughts exactly. I can only hope the eventual AI will use Larry Summers as a model of what's wrong in society.
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Musk did not invent any of those things. He created successful companies leveraging those inventions in a lot of cases. Although solar city is dubious in it's success, and mostly was a way of bailing out his family with Tesla investor money, and Starlink doesn't have any firm financials out yet about costs versus revenue.
He hasn't given the world shit. Everything was bought at market rate, there's no altruism, and his monkey murder company and his "fuck public transit" ventures are net negatives for humanity. You admire a monster.
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I could give you a decent list of humans operating at his level who would not have been remotely able to keep their mouths shut in the same situation.
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Yes...but it's sad that behavior is honestly unexpected considering
Do most of the employees have equity in the company though?
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I'm left more confused than ever. Isn't D'Angelo, the last surviving director, the one with a conflict of interest AND the one who was the ringleader for the ouster in the first place? How does he get to be the director that survives?
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This is what I'm curious about too. If my board fired my CEO I'd be like "okay whatever. GL to new guy."
Do OAI folks really like Sam, or did they see it as a sign of further damage?
Either way it sounds like the workers won one.
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It might all be worth it if I never have to see an advertisement with a malformed, AI generated image that is now stuck in my nightmares.
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I think we have so little information, and what information we do have is coming from people with incentive to make themselves look good, that its impossible to come to that conclusion.
The ouster was sudden, but Altman and the board were clearly working toward different ends. If as described by board representatives they were double checking everything Altman told them, The claims of a lack of candidness would suggest they found him lying, either by omission or by providing misleading answers (I'll assume they aren't softening an accusation of direct lies.)
If the board had a reason to believe Altman was not being 'candid', they genuinely could not do their job, and they have legal responsibilities they would be violating if they let Altman evade oversight.
One thing we don't know is how much they expressed their concerns to Altman. The idea they hadn't discussed concerns about honesty seems odd, but i wouldn't discount it. That said, if they thought he was being dishonest (to blow past the niceties of corporate statements) that's a red line that prevents them from doing their job. And investors were already publicly concerned about what was happening.
Their failure was to not appreciate how popular Altman was. How loyal the employees were to him and his personal mission, not the openAI project or the non-profit. And how damaging the profit motive would be. By letting the for-profit exist, they were always going to run into the problem of the OpenAI for-profit looking to grow coming into conflict with the mission of the non-profit. They have remained unprepared for this day. His actions, as described, was a red flag. They needed to throw up the red card, but they had not planned for its use.
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I mean, a previous article from Ars included the following: “But according to a person with direct knowledge of the negotiations, as of Monday night the board remained resolute and was prepared to test employees’ willingness to quit.”
I think it would have gone quite poorly for them, though I guess at least one board member would have pretended not to care.
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No, they still don't give a crap about the fact that openai has stolen massive amounts of data to build their company.
They care about the openai's IP that they generated on the stolen material. It's like when bootleggers get mad at other bootleggers for ripping them off.
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It seemed more like everyone was willing to quit rather than keep working for a handful of idiots who fired an unquestionably key executive with seemingly zero strategic planning and no visible continuity plan (assuming we ignore what they did with Brockman).
A teeny tiny board just announced they were commandeering the team's entire work product ... for reasons and purposes nobody understands. Employees all woke up one morning and their leadership's new business strategy was presented as:
Assert full control as a board.
Fire Sam and Greg
???
Profit.
Even now, nobody knows what the hell the board's actual thinking was ... or what their plan for post-Altman success would have looked like. Because they never articulated it. That is a huge leadership failure. You can't blame Employees for not wanting to follow.
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Agreed. After hearing the proposed hardware venture, I think there was some justification for the board. Stupid all around.
I think of it this way: OpenAI has some of the leading developers and researchers in the field, creating arguably the world's most sought-after software, and those in charge (Altman) want to divert attention and resources to hardware? As in: notoriously difficult to break into, taking years or decades to foster processes, with insurmountably entrenched competition, that hardware? I understand the potential upside of that gamble, but that seems a ballsy (stupid) maneuver given all the potential headwinds.
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Pretty much this.
If the board were actually doing what it claims to be doing, OpenAI's products already wouldn't look like OpenAI's products look. There are no good guys here. It's just a bunch of billionaires fighting over what they imagine to be massive power.
Their definition of "for the good for humanity" is fully warped ... and if there were any questions about that, look who they came up with as a consensus board to move things forward. Picking Larry friggin Summers says it all.
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If this is true, it actually makes me more sympathetic to the employees. The board couldn’t have put off their insanely misguided coup attempt long enough to not fuck every employee out of a share of wealth that their work created? I’m impressed that they weren’t getting threatened with a lot more than mass exodus, frankly.
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In fairness, Altman's chip thing had nothing to do with OpenAI and, superficially, doesn't seem to step on the toes of OpenAI's product line at all. In fact, if successful pushing the boundaries of hardware feels complimentary to the OpenAI mission. If that is a reason to question someone's participation in OpenAI leadership, it feels like there would be a bigger reason to question board members running a literally competitive service like Poe.
I think a big factor why this blew up on them is because the "reasons" given so far are all so transparently pretextual. They are clearly bullshit and don't add up. I have no idea what the real reasons for this power play were, but they sure as hell aren't the narrative everyone had been leaking to the press.
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That was a lot of motion but not a lot of movement. Probably the net result though is a huge victory for MSFT as the beneficiaries of this… idk what to call it… UNO reversi corporate counter coup??
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I still want to know why the board thought they could fire him with a vague excuse and not face repercussions. If he was doing something wrong they should’ve spelled it out. If not, how did they expect things to go?
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