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Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

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Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#311

Post by mark_l_watson »

ldargin wrote: post #73

This suggests that a real schism is occurring at OpenAI. I anticipate hearing of two different philosophies at play.

It would be interesting if Altman and Brockman, assuming that they want accelerated development, ended up in some high level roles at Microsoft. That seems like a win-win-win all the way around since OpenAI could follow their new path, Microsoft and Google could build new things fast, and the open model proponents can keep up their good work.

Except for a clumsy fast press release, this doesn’t really have to end badly for anyone.

Even though I have been an OpenAI fan every since I used their earliest public APIs, I am also very happpy that there is such a rich ecosystem, other commercial players like Anthropic, open model support from Meta and Hugging Face, and the increasingly wonderful small models like Mistral that can be easily run at home.

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#312

Post by strikelaserclaw »

jumploops wrote: post #10

Greg is the one who announced GPT-4. Sam enabled Greg and vice-versa. The next AI winter may have just begun...

Yea cause Steve Jobs dying stopped apple from becoming a juggernaut. People need to stop idolizing the fact that one or two people are "indispensable". Humanity moves forward eventually, even if Einstein wasn't born, someone would have figured out general relativity.

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#313

Post by throwaway4aday »

cowl wrote: post #252
robswc wrote: post #213

Can a super smart business-y person educate this engineer on how this even happens. So, if there's 6 board members and they're looking to "take down" 2... that means those 2 can't really participate, right? Or at the very least, they have to "recuse" themselves on votes regarding them? Do the 4 members have to organize and communicate "in secret"? Is there any reason 3 members can't hold a vote to oust 1, making it a…

Could have been only Sam that was under Vote and Greg being forced to step down after he voted in his favour maybe in a second vote later.

Why would Greg have said "after learning today's news" if he took part in the vote? If he decided to quit immediately after the vote then why would the board issue a statement saying he was going to stay on? I don't think he took part, the others probably convened a meeting and cast a unanimous vote, issued the statement and then contacted Greg and Sam. The whole thing seems rushed so that's probably how it would have played out.

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#314

Post by cthalupa »

dougmwne wrote: post #87
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Usually they just vote their friends on You actually think that for-profit corporate boards are significantly different, especially in the startup/early IPO phase?

Sure, the investors own the company and the board answers to them. Nonprofits are significantly disconnected from their own financial incentives. I have witnessed it at every nonprofit I have worked for.

> Sure, the investors own the company and the board answers to them.

Huh? Plenty of startups in the stage being referenced are still majority owned by the founders.

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#315

Post by matwood »

robswc wrote: post #255
0xDEF wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Can a super smart business-y person educate this engineer on how this even happens. There is nothing business-y about this. As a non-profit OpenAI can do whatever they want.

Well, there has to be some sort of framework in which they operate, no? OpenAI isn't a single person, so decisions like firing the CEO have to be made somehow. I'm wondering about how that framework actually works.

You'd have to read the company charter and by-laws.

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#316

Post by ssnistfajen »

fragmede wrote: post #268
dragonwriter wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-dealing like that really is, not saying I see any reason to suspect its that and not something else, but, yeah, doing that and cocncealing it absolutely would be a reason for both firing him and making the statement made. Unless Brockman was involved, though, firing Brockman doesn't really make sense.

Yeah, looking at the self-dealing going on with WeWork and Adam Neumann, it's not that.

Not sure what you mean here. They tried to IPO in 2019 and all the dirty laundry came out, scuttled the IPO and Neumann got ousted.

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#318

Post by dragonwriter »

fragmede wrote: post #268
dragonwriter wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-dealing like that really is, not saying I see any reason to suspect its that and not something else, but, yeah, doing that and cocncealing it absolutely would be a reason for both firing him and making the statement made. Unless Brockman was involved, though, firing Brockman doesn't really make sense.

Yeah, looking at the self-dealing going on with WeWork and Adam Neumann, it's not that.

There's a difference between self-dealing you sell the board on and self-dealing you conceal from the board (also, different where its a pure for-profit where the self-dealing happens and where there is a non-profit involved, because the latter not only raises issues of conflict of interest with the firm, but also potential violations of the rules governing non-profits.)

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#319

Post by anigbrowl »

johnwheeler wrote: post #226
lenerdenator wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that if there were a lack of truth to him being less-than-candid with the board, they would have left that part out. You don’t basically say that an employee (particularly a c-suiter with lots of money for lawyers) lied unless you think that you could reasonably defend that statement in court. Otherwise, it’s defamation.

I’m not saying there is lack of truth. I’m saying that’s not the real reason. It could be there’s a scandal to be found, but my guess is the hostility from OpenAI is just preemptive. There’s really no nice way to tell someone to fuck off from the biggest thing. Ever.

John, I don't think you understand how corporate law departments work. It's not like a romantic or friend breakup where someone says a mean remark about the other to underline that it's over; there's a big legal risk to the corporate entity from carelessly damaging someone's reputation like that, so it's smarter to just keep the personality/vision disagreements private and limit public statements to platitudes.

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#320

Post by cthalupa »

soderfoo wrote: post #232
lexandstuff wrote: post #62

What an unbelievable turn of events! To the outside observer, OpenAI is one of the most successful, well-oiled machines, shipping nearly weekly and doing an unbelievably good job marketing itself. Clearly, there's a lot of turmoil going on behind the scenes.

And Sam was the face of AI to the general public, which makes these moves all the more perplexing.

I think you're likely vastly overestimating the amount of people in the general public who have any idea who Sam is at all.
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