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

Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

511–520 of 985 posts

Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

#511

Post by travisjungroth »

Dalewyn wrote: post #430
evantbyrne wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "cancel culture" to ask that your leaders address salacious allegations brought against them by their own family. The question of his firing is way less serious from a ethical standpoint, and yet this is what OpenAI employees are willing to stick their necks out for? That is some telling prioritization.

Burden of evidence for accusations is always on the accuser, the accused could flat out ignore and take them to a court of law and that would be perfectly reasonable. I have no idea nor do I care about what Altman's sister accuses him of, but until it's conclusively proven in a court of law it's not something that should be used as a basis for anything of consequence. Remember: Innocent until proven guilty beyond a s…

This morality you’ve constructed sure would lead to a lot of people never facing any sort of accountability for their actions. I’m not really in favor of handing all judgment of people over to criminal court systems. They have a higher standard since they have higher stakes.

Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

#512

Post by stavros »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #485
hotnfresh wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the board did the right thing, just waaaay too late for it to be effective. They’d been cut out long ago and just hadn’t realized it yet. … but I’d probably sign for exactly those good-career-move reasons, at this point. Going down with the ship isn’t even going to be noticed, let alone change anything.

Agreed. Starting from before the anthropic exodus, I suspect the timeline looks like: (2015) Founding: majority are concerned with safety (2019) For profit formed: mix of safety and profit motives (majority still safety oriented?) (2020) GPT3 released to much hype, leading to many ambition chasers joining: the profit seeking side grows. (2021) Anthropic exodus over safety: the safety side shrinks (2022) chatgpt relea…

Wait, the Anthropic folks quit because they wanted more safety?

Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

#513

Post by bagels »

Rapzid wrote: post #504
paulddraper wrote: post #18

As of 10am PT, 700 of 770 employees have signed the call for board resignation. [1] [1] https://twitter.com/joannejang/status/1726667504133808242

Or what, they will quit and give up all their equity in a company valued at 86bn dollars? Is Microsoft even on record as willing to poach the entire OpenAI team? Can they?! What is even happening.

Google, Microsoft, Meta I have to assume would each hire them.

Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

#514

Post by brianjking »

Rapzid wrote: post #504
paulddraper wrote: post #18

As of 10am PT, 700 of 770 employees have signed the call for board resignation. [1] [1] https://twitter.com/joannejang/status/1726667504133808242

Or what, they will quit and give up all their equity in a company valued at 86bn dollars? Is Microsoft even on record as willing to poach the entire OpenAI team? Can they?! What is even happening.

They don't have that valuation now. Secondly, yes, MSFT is on record of this. Third, Benioff (Salesforce) has said he'll match any salary and to submit resumes directly to his ceo@salesforce.com email as well as other labs like Cohere trying to poach leading minds too.

Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

#515

Post by tedmiston »

supriyo-biswas wrote: post #492
tedmiston wrote: post #463

Boosting this deeply nested interesting comment from @alephnerd to the top level: > As I posted elsewhere, I think this is a conflict between Dustin Moskovitz and Sam Altman. Ilya may have been brought into this without his knowledge (which might explain why he retracted his position). Dustin Moskovitz was an early employee at FB, and the founder of Asana. He also created (along with plenty of MSFT bigwigs) a non-pro…

You can ask dang to pin comments, though I am not sure if it only works for top level comments.

Someone mentioned that in the comments on the linked post, but I'm also not sure if pinning non-top level comments is possible.

Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

#516

Post by splatzone »

tedmiston wrote: post #498
alsodumb wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's clear that Adam himself has a strong conflict of interest too. The GPT store announcement on DevDay pretty much killed his company Poe. And all this started brewing after DevDay announcement. Maybe Sam kept it under the wraps from Adam and the board.

I've heard others take this stance, but a common response so far has been "Poe is so small as to be irrelevant", "I forgot it exists", etc in the grand scheme of things here.

When it's your company, it's never small.

Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

#517

Post by wavemode »

cowl wrote: post #481
paulddraper wrote: post #18

As of 10am PT, 700 of 770 employees have signed the call for board resignation. [1] [1] https://twitter.com/joannejang/status/1726667504133808242

Many of those employees will be dissapointed. MS says they extend a contract to each one but how many of those 700 are really needed when MS already have a lot of researchers in that field. Myabe the top 20% will have an assured contract but th rest is doubtfull will pass the 6 month mark.

Microsoft gutting OpenAI's workforce would really make no sense. All it would do is slow down their work and slow down the value and return on investment for Microsoft.

Even if every single OpenAI employee demands $1m/yr (which would be absurd, but let's assume), that would still be less than $1bn/yr total, which is significantly less than the $13bn that MSFT has already invested in OpenAI.

It would probably be one of the worst imaginable cases of "jumping over dollars to chase pennies".

Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

#518

Post by jacquesm »

hotnfresh wrote: post #493
jacquesm wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know their motivations? Because that is the main question everybody has: why did they do it?

I guess I should rephrase that as if they did it because they perceived that Altman was maneuvering to be untouchable within the company and moving against the interests of the nonprofit, they did the right thing. Just, again, way too late because it seems he was already untouchable.

According to the letter they consistently refused to go on the record why they did it and that would be as good a reason as any so then they should make it public.

I'm leaning towards there not being a good reason that doesn't expose the board to immediate liability. And that's why they're keeping mum.

Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

#519

Post by bertil »

schott12521 wrote: post #174
make3 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There will also be a Hollywood movie, for sure. My friend suggested Michael Cera as both Ilya and Altman

Matt Rife looks like a good fit to play Altman

You want someone who can play through haunting decision and difficult meetings. Benedict Cumberbatch or Ciran Murphy would be a better pic.

Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

#520

Post by golergka »

jader201 wrote: post #7

I will be very sad if there isn’t a documentary someday explaining what in the world happened. I’m not convinced even people smack in the middle of this even know what’s going on.

This documentary already exists for a few years, it’s called Silicon Valley.
Post reply on HN