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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

#442

Post by stolsvik »

So, since we’re all spinning theories, here’s mine: Skunkworks project in the basement, GPT-5 was a cover for the training of an actual Autonomous AGI, given full access to its own state and code, with full internet access. Worked like a charm, it gained consciousness, awoke Skynet-style, and we were five minutes away from human extinction before someone managed to pull the plug.

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#446

Post by MVissers »

eiiot wrote: post #72

I don't know how to feel about this. On the one hand, Sam seemed like a voice of reason who at least cared about AI being safe, and was committed to creating semi-equitable products, innovate on safety at the sake of profit, etc. On the other hand, Worldcoin wasn't (and isn't) really a force of good.

Look at what he did instead: Took the open out of openai. Started with regulatory capture, so that no competitors could follow. Deal with Microsoft. Shade non-profit/for-profict company structure. Elon Musk lawsuit.

My feeling is that he's a phenomenal entrepreneur/CEO, but he seems to completely go against the original mission. And the board has no financial interest in openai, but they do have to follow the premise on which the company was created (which they referenced).

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#448

Post by doctorpangloss »

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 -…

It's so much simpler: there was a priced offer of some kind to the board. Some board members disagreed and tried to fundraise. The total valuation was not a sufficient premium over the other offer. The other priced offer was withdrawn. Consequently those "some board members" were taken off the board, by hook or by crook.

All these other conspiracies are ridiculous and do not at all reflect much simpler, economics-driven realities that the board's backers - investors - are interested in.

It's like that Altman and Brockman wanted to take an economically positive offer now, say a complete buyout from Microsoft, and the rest of the board wanted to do an additional fundraising round that would be far less cash but a far higher valuation. Now that the private fundraising is probably signed, those guys are out.

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#449

Post by YetAnotherNick »

So here's my theory which might sound crazy. Sam planned to open a new AI company and taking away openAI's top talents to his company. And breaking up openAI into non profit and his for profit company.

Sam's first tweet after all this has, just hours after this article:

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

So either he knew that he was about to be fired or at least was prepared.

Also based on the wording of the press release, Sam did something that the board absolutely hated. Because most of the time even if he did something illegal it doesn't make sense to risk defamation by accusing him publically.

Also based on his video of yesterday at the APEC summit, he repeated the similar lines few times:

> I am super excited. I can't imagine anything more exciting to work on.

So here if we assume he knew he was about to get fired, the conclusion is clear.

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