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OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

openai.com

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Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#321

Post by kaycebasques »

My bet is that the last paragraph of the statement holds the key:

> OpenAI was founded as a non-profit in 2015 with the core mission of ensuring that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. In 2019, OpenAI restructured to ensure that the company could raise capital in pursuit of this mission, while preserving the nonprofit's mission, governance, and oversight. The majority of the board is independent, and the independent directors do not hold equity in OpenAI. While the company has experienced dramatic growth, it remains the fundamental governance responsibility of the board to advance OpenAI’s mission and preserve the principles of its Charter.

This prompted me to actually read up on the charter: https://openai.com/charter

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#322

Post by vonnik »

gkoberger wrote: post #27

I know I won't get a lot of love for this, but Sam is a really good person. I don't know him well, but I've known him since long before OpenAI. He's not perfect, but behind the scenes he's a genuine and upstanding person. I've met lots of wealthy smart people, and he's the only exception. He was the only person I trusted in this situation, and I'm genuinely nervous that he's no longer running OpenAI.

I second this. As someone who's operated in the startup and YC ecosystems for years, I've seen Sam help a lot of people with no clear upside for himself. He's a net plus to Silicon Valley and SF by a long shot.

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#324

Post by leobg »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #106

Sorry to be off topic, but I am curious what he will be doing in the very near future. He has been running OpenAI for many years, and no matter what the reason for his leaving, I think he deserves some serious down time to do a personal refresh. He is a major investor in a few high profile startups, like Humana’s AI Pin, so either he just wants new challenges, or there is some form of scandal (let’s all hope not), or…

He’s a major investor in that AI pin thing? If that is so, maybe something like this is the cause for him being fired.

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#325

Post by iLoveOncall »

I feel like most of the people hypothesizing here in the comments haven't read the full statement.

With such an insistence on the fact that OpenAI is supposed to be non-profit and open for all of humanity, it's pretty clear that the board doesn't like the direction that the company has taken, both in its search of profit and its political lobbying to restrict innovation.

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#327

Post by [deleted] »

nicklevin wrote: post #272

Pure speculation and just trying to connect dots... I wonder if they realized they are losing a lot of money on ChatGPT Plus subscriptions. Sam tweeted about pausing sign-ups just a few days ago: https://twitter.com/sama/status/1724626002595471740 Lots more signups recently + OpenAI losing $X for each user = Accelerating losses the board wasn't aware of ?

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