81–90 of 596 posts
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Is there any way he can even stay if Altman returns? Seems like one of them is out and making their own AI venture soon.
He could possibly stay in a pure Chief Scientist role while abdicating his board seat. But if I were a CEO, I'd have a hard time trusting a C-level role to someone whose vision is diametrically opposed to my own.
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It seems clear that there weren’t specific reasons, just a kind of final straw in the product announcements that made the board realize how far from the original mission the company had drifted. Turning it into an emergency and surprise coup with innuendo of wrongdoing looks to have been a huge mistake, and may result in total loss of control where a more measured course correction could have succeeded.
Does the board not have final control? Why have they agreed (in principle) to step down? I wish more of the reporting around this was specific about who has the power to do what.
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A rough guess is that Elon will pick up Ilya, with a promise to really aim for safe AGI.
If Ilya’s problem with Sam was that he was acting out on his own and deviating from founding principles, he’s not going to have a good time under Elon.
Ilya losing access to the GPUs he needs to do his research so that the company can service a few more customers seemed like a fundamental betrayal to him and a sign that Sam was ignoring safety in order to grow marketshare.
If Elon is able to promise him the resources he needs to do his research then I think it could work out.
The key question in my mind is not who is going to be on the new board, but whether Ilya Sutskever will stay if Altman comes back. I worry that OpenAI without Ilya is not going to produce groundbreaking innovations at the same pace. Hopefully Sam Altman and Ilya Sutskever can patch things up. That's more important than who they add or remove to the board.
A rough guess is that Elon will pick up Ilya, with a promise to really aim for safe AGI.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems clear that there weren’t specific reasons, just a kind of final straw in the product announcements that made the board realize how far from the original mission the company had drifted. Turning it into an emergency and surprise coup with innuendo of wrongdoing looks to have been a huge mistake, and may result in total loss of control where a more measured course correction could have succeeded.
Purely outside perspective, but people’ve been complaining for quite a while that OpenAI seems to have bailed on their original mission. Sure looks like Altman was capitalism’ing the whole thing—maybe not on purpose, but because it’s just the only way he knows to operate—and had kinda half-sold it to Microsoft, which sure is corroborated by folks posting on here expecting MS to now be in a position to forcibly overri…
The only power MS has is soft power as a backer. Will that win over the board's actual power? If MS pulls investment it will be a catastrophic blow.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems clear that there weren’t specific reasons, just a kind of final straw in the product announcements that made the board realize how far from the original mission the company had drifted. Turning it into an emergency and surprise coup with innuendo of wrongdoing looks to have been a huge mistake, and may result in total loss of control where a more measured course correction could have succeeded.
Does the board not have final control? Why have they agreed (in principle) to step down? I wish more of the reporting around this was specific about who has the power to do what.
The problem comes when the situations starts to resemble the line about how, if you owe a bank a billion dollars, you own the bank: if the direction the CEO has taken the company differs enough from the vision of the board, and they've had enough time to develop the company in that direction, they can kinda hold the organization hostage. Yes, the company isn't what the board really wanted it to be, but it's still worth a bajillion dollars: completely unwinding it and starting over is unthinkable, but all the options that include firing the CEO (the only real lever the board has, the foundation of all the decision-making weight that they have, remember) end up looking like that.
It's worth knowing the specific reasons why the board fired Sam before assessing the value of this news. Too much rumor and not enough evidence.
Also its likely that a large number of the news stories coming out right now are PR "plants" by one side or the other to make the firing seem justified or the return a fait accompli. In a coup one of the first tasks is to get public opinion on your side and build momentum for the outcome you want to see. I'm curious where the rank & file OpenAI employees stand on this, as it seems to me like they will be the ultimate…
The board was naive, to say the least.
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In this imaginary hypothesis you don’t think some other giant will fund them?
without altman who would want to come in and fund the folks who made this decision ? Fire youre CEO on friday, hire him back on Saturday ?? esp if Altman takes the majority of the folks from money making side