Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 596 posts

Re: OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role

#111

Post by tempnow987 »

hotnfresh wrote: post #77
nothrowaways wrote: post #41

Altman is more powerful than I thought.

If he wins in this, it’ll mean he’d maneuvered himself into a position of controlling the whole thing—in fact, if not on paper—some time back. The “coup” people’ve been writing about will have been his actions over the last year or so, not the board’s. Big money on the line. Insane, life-changing payouts in the cards. Altman and MS on the side of those, the board on the side of the mission. Money’s likely to win.

If the board has the support of all the staff the board will be absolutely fine.

That said, not clear to me that board is supported by the staff.

So if Sam goes, and many of the key staff go... will be interesting.

And the boards style in all this, if that is the "mission" - is wild. You have partners, staff, businesses - doing a VC round and you blow it all up without it sounds like even talking to your board president? Normally this type of ouster requires a properly noticed meeting!

Re: OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role

#112

Post by resource0x »

mrtksn wrote: post #98
breadwinner wrote: post #57

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.

Currently, it’s very unclear who operates under what motives. How much is it about ego? How much is it about money and how much is it due to intellectual positions? Maybe there’re are no heroes and maybe there’re no antiheroes? With the recent news about other investments and deals, the facade doesn’t seem to even resemble the OpenAI’s reality. I can’t wait to read the autobiography of involved parties.

Are you sure they will be "consistently candid" in their autobiographies? :-)

Re: OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role

#113

Post by spking »

jessenaser wrote: post #101
mrtksn wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently, it’s very unclear who operates under what motives. How much is it about ego? How much is it about money and how much is it due to intellectual positions? Maybe there’re are no heroes and maybe there’re no antiheroes? With the recent news about other investments and deals, the facade doesn’t seem to even resemble the OpenAI’s reality. I can’t wait to read the autobiography of involved parties.

Sam Altman by Walter Isaacson Releasing 2037...

Shouldn't it be written by ChatGPT?

Re: OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role

#114

Post by tw04 »

CSMastermind wrote: post #83
appplication wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

From everything I can piece together the underlying problem is that Sam defunded Ilya's alignment research because they only have so much compute and they needed all of it to keep up with the demand for ChatGPT and the APIs, especially after dev day. 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…

> If Elon is able to promise him the resources he needs to do his research then I think it could work out.

Who on earth would ever trust an Elon promise at this point? The guy literally can’t open his mouth without making a promise he can’t keep.

Unless Ilya is getting something in a bulletproof contract and is willing to spend a decade fighting for it in court, he’s an idiot doing anything with Elon.

Re: OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role

#115

Post by sillysaurusx »

alecco wrote: post #95
bossyTeacher wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's actually hard power. MS is in a position to destroy OpenAI

Any other FAANG would happily fill that position if MS drops the ball.

Bingo. Compute is fungible.

It would be ironic if everyone killed OpenAI by denying them compute though.

Still, OpenAI is a peacock feather in Microsoft’s cap. They’re either bluffing, foolish, or prescient to let it go.

Re: OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role

#116

Post by capableweb »

spookthesunset wrote: post #96
dchichkov wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More likely that the WorldCoin project is doing poorly. With crypto and NFTs going down it could be a house of cards. And in a need of an urgent injection of money.

The worldcoin thing really bugs me too. Any time there is crypto, somebody is scamming somebody else. Worldcoin is no different in this regard.

Did you figure out the motives behind Bitcoin too while doing your research?

Re: OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role

#117

Post by pyb »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #29
moralestapia wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, MS leaving is the absolute end of OpenAI (and for all practical purposes the end of Ilya's career). It's Satya's call now, he's not happy and wants @sama back. Next week is going to be interesting!

Why would I not believe that Meta or Google or anyone really come in or replace Microsoft? You don’t think they’re kicking themselves that Microsoft got the deal?

Or, even more likely, Apple.

Re: OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role

#118

Post by tempnow987 »

dontupvoteme wrote: post #17
bilal4hmed wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pulling investment would be a hard power. Imagine if Microsoft says the change in leadership and idiotic board means the contract is done, no more compute for openAI and then goes on to back Sam Altmans new company openai will be writing papers and asking for donations within a weeks time at that point as the rest of openAI quits

.. and MS takes a massive hit financially as they're hardpdroven as an unreliable cloud service.

Uh, you have a nonprofit board firing a CEO at a board meeting that doesn't even sound like was properly noticed. Was the board president even given time to attend?

And Microsoft has total rights to the models and weights, so they can CONTINUE their services and then spin up with Sam's new company.

Re: OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role

#119

Post by ioulaum »

breadwinner wrote: post #57

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.

I think Sam could "potentially" be the bigger man in this.

Ilya may still be someone who should be on the board... Especially given his role as head of alignment research. He deserves a say on key issues related to OpenAI.

People get excited. Stupid things happen. Especially in startups.

ChatGPT having become so successful doesn't change the fact that the company as a whole, is fairly immature still.

They should seriously just laugh about it and move on.

Let's just say that Ilya had a bad couple of days, and probably needs a couple of weeks of vacation.

Re: OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role

#120

Post by neilv »

janejeon wrote: post #31

So the discussions are definitely happening it seems: https://twitter.com/sama/status/1726345564059832609

I don't have enough info to take a position on the current situation there, but I think that's a brilliant selfie. (Pained reaction to having to wear an OpenAI guest ID.)
Post reply on HN