OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman • Hacker News Board

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#351

Post by nopinsight » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 9:54 PM UTC

nikcub wrote: post #301

Put the pieces together: Nov 6 - OpenAI devday, with new features of build-your-own ChatGPT and more Nov 9 - Microsoft cuts employees off from ChatGPT due to "security concerns" [0] Nov 9 - OpenAI experiences severe downtime the company attributes to a "DDoS" (not the correct term for 'excess usage') [3] Nov 15 - OpenAI announce no new ChatGPT plus upgrades [1] but still allow regular signups (and still do) Nov 17 -…

OpenAI’s board previously consisted of 6 people, incl Sam Altman and Greg Brockman. Two of them are more involved in technical matters at OpenAI than Sam. Now there are only four members on the board.

At least one of them must jointly make this decision with the three outside board members. I’d say it’s more likely to be business related. (In addition, the CTO is appointed as the interim CEO.) (Edit: But obviously we currently don’t really know. I think the whistleblower theory below is possible too.)

The announcement: https://openai.com/blog/openai-announces-leadership-transiti...

“OpenAI’s board of directors consists of OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, independent directors Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo, technology entrepreneur Tasha McCauley, and Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology’s Helen Toner. …..

As a part of this transition, Greg Brockman will be stepping down as chairman of the board and will remain in his role at the company, reporting to the CEO.“

Previous members: https://openai.com/our-structure

“Our board OpenAI is governed by the board of the OpenAI Nonprofit, comprised of OpenAI Global, LLC employees Greg Brockman (Chairman & President), Ilya Sutskever (Chief Scientist), and Sam Altman (CEO), and non-employees Adam D’Angelo, Tasha McCauley, Helen Toner.”

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#352

Post by hyperthesis » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 9:55 PM UTC

kaycebasques wrote: post #321

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 independen…

A tricky conflict. Legal issues cause strange decisions. Maybe even Sam recommended his sacking, for optimal damage control.

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#353

Post by lavp » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 9:56 PM UTC

Sam Altman’s latest tweet 9 minutes ago:

i loved my time at openai. it was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. most of all i loved working with such talented people.

will have more to say about what’s next later.

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#354

Post by odood » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 9:56 PM UTC

Pure speculation warning.

Piping all data submitted to OpenAI straight to his buddy's Palantir would definitely not support the mission to "benefit all of humanity".

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#355

Post by UncleOxidant » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 9:56 PM UTC

nlh wrote: post #50

For a company that's executing so well (at least from an outside perspective), shipping so fast, growing so fast, and so ahead of the curve in arguably the hottest segment of the tech market, at this moment, to do this right now, means this must be REALLY bad.

If OpenAI is somehow a scam there's going to be a lot of tech stocks crashing next week.

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#356

Post by reset2023 » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 9:57 PM UTC

This is exactly what Elon Musk had told CNBC that would happen to Open Ai once in control of Microsoft.

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#357

Post by roskelld » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 9:57 PM UTC

maxdoop wrote: post #154

If you Google Sam, the search result showing his Twitter handle says, "I am running for president in 2024 as a Democrat". Is this why?

Already proven to be fake as shown in another post.

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#358

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 9:57 PM UTC

eachro wrote: post #49

This seems like a terrible decision by OpenAI. How does this benefit them?

[deleted]

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#359

Post by marsupial » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 9:57 PM UTC

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.

[flagged]

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#360

Post by atemerev » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 9:57 PM UTC

superfrank wrote: post #145

I can't wait for the revel that GPT-4 is just a chat application connecting you to a the worlds biggest center in India. Joking aside, this feels massive. Both that it happened so suddenly and that the announcement doesn't mince words. The fact that the CTO is now CEO makes me think it's probably not a lie about their tech. It wouldn't make sense to say "we've been lying about our capabilities" and then appoint the c…

> I can't wait for the revel that GPT-4 is just a chat application connecting you to a the worlds biggest center in India.

Tempting, but you can launch Mistral-7B on your laptop and see the same coherent responses and reasoning from a 8GB model file. The magic is really there.