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

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#591

Post by Manouchehri » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 11:47 PM UTC

Sebb767 wrote: post #537

I'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…

Microsoft already has the GPT models, that's how Azure OpenAI is a thing from what I understand.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/legal/cognitive-services/o...

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#592

Post by ignoramous » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 11:48 PM UTC

baidifnaoxi wrote: post #405

- 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…

Kara Swisher just tweeted that MSFT knew about it merely minutes before the statement went out: https://twitter.com/karaswisher/status/1725657068575592617

Folks like Schmidt, Levchin, Chesky, Conrad have twitter posts up that weirdly read like obituaries.

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#593

Post by r0s » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 11:48 PM UTC

stolsvik wrote: post #442

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.

Sentient AGI has just as likely a chance to pull the plug on itself.

Unpopular, non-doomer opinion but I stand by it.

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#594

Post by bertil » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 11:49 PM UTC

kingofheroes wrote: post #527

Personal conspiracy theory: HIPAA data was, or possibly is, being loaded into ChatGPT without the legally required safeguards. The recent "security concerns" that caused Microsoft to cut its employees access was this information leaking out (and the leaking is possibly getting worse). Someone, possibly Ilya, found out and informed the board.

Hipaa definitely was in there, but you don’t fire people rapidly for that, unless it was deliberate, and I can't see Sam surprising people with that.

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#595

Post by saxelsen » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 11:50 PM UTC

2023 is a bad year for CEOs of hype-companies named Sam.

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#596

Post by chubot » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 11:50 PM UTC

pbadams wrote: post #507

baidifnaoxi wrote: post #405

- 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…

Altman has claimed before that he doesn't hold equity in OpenAI. He could have some kind of more opaque arrangement that gives him a material stake in the financial success of OpenAI, and downplayed it or didn't disclose it to the board. Who knows, though -- I'm sure we'll find out more in the next few weeks, but it's fun to guess.

Yeah that's my guess too. The claim that he doesn't hold equity always struck me as suspect. It's a little like SBF driving around in the Toyota Corolla while buying tens of millions of dollars of real estate for himself and his family.

It's better to claim your stake in a forthright way, than to have some kind of lucrative side deal, off the books.

For a non-profit, there was too much secrecy about the company structure (the shift to being closed rather than Open), the source of training data, and the financial arrangements with Microsoft. And a few years ago a whole bunch of employees left to start a different company/non-profit, etc.

It feels like a ton of stuff was simmering below the surface.

(I should add that I have no idea why someone who was wealthy before OpenAI would want to do such a thing, but it's the only reason I can imagine for this abrupt firing. There are staggering amounts of money at play, so there's room for portions of it to be un-noticed.)

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#597

Post by mikhael28 » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 11:50 PM UTC

It doesn't take a genius to figure out they are losing stupid amounts of money, with no major plan to recoup their investments.

Board probably took a look at updated burn-rate projections, saw that they have 6 months of runway, saw that they don't have enough GPUs, saw that Llama and Mistral and whatever other open-source models are awesome and run on personal computers, and thought to themselves - why the hell are we spending so much God damn money? For $20 a month memberships? For bots to be able to auto-signup for accounts, not prepay, burn compute, and skip the bill?

Then Grok gets released on Twitter, and they are left wondering - what exactly is it that we do, that is so much better, that we are spending 100x of what cheapo Musk is?

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#598

Post by smolder » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 11:52 PM UTC

SheinhardtWigCo wrote: post #485

baidifnaoxi wrote: post #405

- 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…

Or, not commercial, but military/gov.

Yeah. OpenAI is valuable not just commercially, but to the worlds governments, some of which can probably find ways to force out leadership they don't get along with.

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#599

Post by kazinator » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 11:52 PM UTC

JohnFen wrote: post #568

baidifnaoxi wrote: post #405

- 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…

> would have violated the “open” nature of the company What's "open" about OpenAI?

Probably about the same thing as what is open about The Open Group (formed when X/Open merged with The Open Software Foundation), the Open Look graphical interface, and such abuses of "open". OpenGL, OpenMax, ...

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#600

Post by ak_111 » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 11:52 PM UTC

He seems a very ambitious person and if you take him for his word he has 0% equity in openAI which must irratate him at some level.

So since we are all speculating could it be something like wanting to "download" entire chatgpt pass it to some friends, then start his own rival company where he has 100% equity? But then he got caught by CTO?