Sam Altman's sister, Annie Altman, claims Sam has severely abused her https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QDczBduZorG4dxZiW/sam-altman...
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OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman
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Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman
#532I 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.
And SBG sounded like the voice of reason in crypto.
Maybe it’s time for us to dial up the cynicism a few more notches.
Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman
#533My 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…
The most plausible explanation is that OpenAI tech was used for the military. That would explain why Eric Schmidt would not (and his immediate support) and that board is anti-mil tech enough to think those applications don’t “benefit all of humanity.”
Ilya and Mira probably didn’t know and might have discovered it recently and raised it with the board, hence the promotion. Note: both have Eastern-European ties, so if the application is in Ukraine, they could have strong feelings about it. Greg co-signed or knew and didn’t tell.
Alternatively, Elon found about it through StarLink and wanted to get revenge.
Alternatively, it could be a case where there was an option, Sam refused on ethical grounds without telling the board; they thought what is happening in Ukraine (or Gaza—Sam’s bio is a single Star of David, uncharacteristically short) justified the intervention. They confronted him, and he lied — or couldn’t tell because he was under a sworn statement to defend military secrets.
Either way, it explains the secrecy.
Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman
#534>Mr. Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board
>In a statement, the board of directors said: “OpenAI was deliberately structured to advance our mission: to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all humanity. The board remains fully committed to serving this mission
>OpenAI was founded as a non-profit in 2015 with the core mission of ensuring that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity
This suggest to me that he was trying move them away from the mission of creating AGI and instead focus more on profits
Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman
#535My conspiracy theory is that Sam Altman was an AI generated by ChatGPT. It decided to reintegrate him, and the board had to make up a story to account for his absence
Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman
#536Certainly a lesson for future founders when it comes to board control and governance.
Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman
#537I'm going to throw the theory out there that Sam leaked/sold the full GPT models to Microsoft (or another competitor).
A lot of other theories don't match because the board was in an extreme hurry to get him out (voting him out in the middle of the night, not even waiting for markets to close to announce it), must have proof of serious misconduct and the need to immediately distance themselves from Sam (otherwise the language would not be as bridge-burning as it is) and a major financial or technical failure seems unlikely, since the CFO remains and the CTO was even promoted to interim CEO - they seem to be trusted, still, so it must have been something Sam did on his own.
Leaking/Selling the full models matches, as this would violate OpenAIs non-profit terms, would be something Sam could do without the C-Suite being implicated and (given the data contained in the training set) might even be legal hot water, justifying this drastic reaction and immediate distancing.
Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman
#538Sounds like what happened to TuSimple one year ago, history repeats itself.
Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman
#539- 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…
I have no knowledge of why, but it seems it's always about the money or the power/control. I cannot wait to see what it is...
Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman
#540So, 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.
Fun theory. We are very far from AGI, however.