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OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

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Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#411
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 -…

I'm trying to find the episode, but on the All in Podcast ~6 months ago, they made comments about how the corporate structure of OpenAI may have been a secret way for Sam Altman to hold a large stake in the company. I don't think this is privacy related, but that there was a shell game with the equity and the non profit status. If they were training on data like that, the board/people at the company would have known.

EDIT:

episode is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4spNsmlxWVQ,

"somebody has to own the residual value of the company, sam controls the non profit, and so the non profit after all equity gets paid out at lower valuations, owns the whole company. Sam altman controls all of open ai if its a trillion dollar valuation. Which if true would be a huge scandal"

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#412
post #312

Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google has this to say: https://x.com/ericschmidt/status/1725625144519909648?s=20 Sam Altman is a hero of mine. He built a company from nothing to $90 Billion in value, and changed our collective world forever. I can't wait to see what he does next. I, and billions of people, will benefit from his future work- it's going to be simply incredible. Thank you @sama for all you have done for al…

[flagged]

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#414
Whatever it is, it's serious enough to forego resignation and there's enough evidence for it to be self-evident. When the headlines talk about AI taking white-collar jobs, I wasn't expecting this.

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#415
post #328

There's a prediction market here about why he was fired: https://manifold.markets/sophiawisdom/why-was-sam-altman-fir...

Still too much in flux to even copy top contenders. Top 6 at this point:

Fundamental disagreement about OpenAI's safety approach

Negligence in Addressing AI Safety Concerns

Sexual misconduct

Conflict of Interest with Other Ventures

Defrauded OpenAI

Cash Flow problems

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#417
post #312

Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google has this to say: https://x.com/ericschmidt/status/1725625144519909648?s=20 Sam Altman is a hero of mine. He built a company from nothing to $90 Billion in value, and changed our collective world forever. I can't wait to see what he does next. I, and billions of people, will benefit from his future work- it's going to be simply incredible. Thank you @sama for all you have done for al…

I think OpenAI built something amazing with ChatGPT, but building a company from nothing is a little bit different from being

> initially funded by Altman, Greg Brockman, Elon Musk, Jessica Livingston, Peter Thiel, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Infosys, and YC Research. When OpenAI launched in 2015, it had raised $1 billion. (Wikipedia)

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#418
Can't say I saw this coming. This is deeply sad to me. OpenAI did so much life changing work so quickly. It has totally changed my life in terms of enabling an absolutely unprecedented increase in my own personal productivity and how ambitious I can be with my projects. And even though I know Sam didn't personally code the key things, I believe that it never would have happened the way it did without his instincts and talents. And I fear that without him at the helm, all the magic is going to quickly dissipate and OpenAI will be just another lumbering tech company without a rudder. The default state of things is stasis and dysfunction. Just look at how Google can't do anything anymore, and how bad Siri and Alexa are-- all despite having so much manpower, money, and market share at their disposal.

I also find it maddening how boards of directors rush to insulate themselves from any possible issue and are so quick to throw overboard the very people who enabled the success that they get to participate in. I'm thinking particularly of Travis at Uber and how he was thrown out of the thing that he built from scratch, which never would have worked without his extreme efforts. If I were on the OpenAI board, the bar for firing Sam would be so ridiculously high that he would have to have done something so outrageous, so illegal, etc., that I struggle to believe what he actually did could even remotely approach that standard.

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#420

- Cant be a personal scandal, press release would be worded much more differently - Board is mostly independent and those independent dont have equity - They talk about not being candid - this is legalese for “lying” The only major thing that could warrant something like this is Sam going behind the boards back to make a decision (or make progress on a decision) that is misaligned with the Charter. Thats the only fir…

Eric Schmidt calling Sam a hero also makes me think it isn't a personal scandal.
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