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Sam Altman returns as CEO, OpenAI has a new initial board

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Re: Sam Altman returns as CEO, OpenAI has a new initial board

#421

Post by Waterluvian »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #149
Berniek wrote: post #142

Who is driving the company (companies)? Certainly not the board, when it can be ousted on the whim of one person. Might as well just get rid of the board (all boards in this organization) as any decision made can be overthrown by a bit of publicity and ego. Perhaps it about getting rich at the expense of any ethics? Those who work for this company should bear this in mind, they are all expendable!

The reason the CEO could oust the board like that was that after the board fired the CEO, 720 of the 770 employees of the company got together and signed a pledge that they will all leave unless the CEO is reinstated and the board fired. This was the purest example of labor democracy and self-organization in action in the United States I have ever seen, my takeaway is rather the opposite of "they are all expendable".…

Because Microsoft offered them all jobs.

Re: Sam Altman returns as CEO, OpenAI has a new initial board

#422

Post by YetAnotherNick »

yumraj wrote: post #294
civilized wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who exactly are you referring to?

Ilya, lost. One of the original hackers I should have said. There are other original hackers.

Unless you assume that Ilya is straight out lying, here is his public reaction on Sam being reinstated:

There exists no sentence in any language that conveys how happy I am[1]

[1]: https://twitter.com/ilyasut/status/1727434066411286557

Re: Sam Altman returns as CEO, OpenAI has a new initial board

#423

Post by jjtheblunt »

mikeg8 wrote: post #411
jjtheblunt wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment made me look for a recent article about Paul Graham firing him from Ycombinator for being exactly not a great leader or trustworthy person. The article was just days ago but it’s eluding my search.

Would love to see it. Everything I’ve read/seen from PG regarding Sama has been nothing but high praise. My understand is Sam chose to leave YC president role to pursue other interests/ventures which eventually turned into OpenAI

Washington Post and Hacker News

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38378216

Re: Sam Altman returns as CEO, OpenAI has a new initial board

#424

Post by althea_tx »

upwardbound wrote: post #284
sanderjd wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, their big mistake was being unwilling to be clear and explicit about this, but as I read it, the board's problem with him was that he wasn't actually acting as the executive of the non-profit that he was meant to be the executive of, but rather was acting entirely in the interests of a for-profit subsidiary of it (and in his own interests), which were in conflict with the non-profit's charter. I think where the…

Regardless of the board's failure to make their case, recent news suggests that the SEC is going to investigate whether it is true that Altman acted in the manner you describe, which would be a violation of fiduciary duty. I agree that it seems like an open & shut case. Typical SEC timelines mean that this will go public in about 18 months from now. An anonymous person has already filed an SEC whistleblower complaint…

The Michigan Post article is mostly speculation and that publication doesn’t have much depth/history to it. Check out their “advertise with us” page.

This whole info dump feels like a mishmash of links to thoughtful things (Stratechery) with links to speculative articles that are clearly biased. Like how is “Influencer Magazine” breaking a story that Wall Street Journal and Kara Swisher are overlooking?

I don’t mean to be a jerk. Just really unconvinced.

Re: Sam Altman returns as CEO, OpenAI has a new initial board

#425

Post by seattleeng »

khazhoux wrote: post #264
simbolit wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they formed an additional entity, which is a for-profit, and has leadership treating the whole thing as a for-profit, and so employees also see what their eyes are telling them. The misalignment is not accidental, it was carefully developed over the last few years.

Or: the employees all joined to work on AI, and they succeeded at building the top AI company, under Sam, and their support of Sam was not engineered or any sort of judgement error on their part. I like to imagine that the employees are smart and thoughtful and have full agency over their own values. It was the Board who apparently had zero pulse on the company they were supposed to oversee.

the majority if the employees at openai joined after chatGPT launched, so it's not like there's some sense of nostalgia or forlorn distress for what they built slowly changing. The stock comp (sorry, "PPUs"... which are a phantom stock plan lol) is also quite high (check levels.fyi) and would have been high 7 to low 8 figures for engineers if secondary/tender offers were made.

I agree it's not that deep - they wanted to join a hypergrowth startup, build cool stuff, and get paid. If someone is rocking the boat, you throw them off the boat. No mission alignment needed! :)

Re: Sam Altman returns as CEO, OpenAI has a new initial board

#426

Post by sundarurfriend »

stingraycharles wrote: post #19
pants2 wrote: post #11

Getting fired and rehired throughout five days of history-making corporate incompetence, and Sam's letter is just telling everyone how great they are. Ha.

As he should, in his public communication. Talking bad about anyone would only reflect poorly on Sam. In private, I can only assume he’s a lot less diplomatic.

Doesn't mean we on the outside can't call BS out for what it is.

Re: Sam Altman returns as CEO, OpenAI has a new initial board

#427

Post by aardvarkr »

moralestapia wrote: post #192
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason the CEO could oust the board like that was that after the board fired the CEO, 720 of the 770 employees of the company got together and signed a pledge that they will all leave unless the CEO is reinstated and the board fired. This was the purest example of labor democracy and self-organization in action in the United States I have ever seen, my takeaway is rather the opposite of "they are all expendable".…

Yeah, and that just means that the board is useless de facto . Nice story on a company, maybe, but really bad thing on a "non-profit".

Useless in the sense that they showed themselves to be incompetent with their failed coup and had to pay the price. As the saying goes, “if you take a shot at the king you had better not miss”.

Re: Sam Altman returns as CEO, OpenAI has a new initial board

#428

Post by CamelCaseName »

ed_mercer wrote: post #342
Jackson__ wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, deepL was really amazing back in 2020 and earlier. But ever since big AI releases like ChatGPT, I can't help and feel they're kinda stagnant. Their model still has the same incorrect repetition issues it's had for years, and their lack of any kind of transparency behind the scenes really makes it feel like it still _is_ the exact same model they've served for years. Quickly checking their twitter does not seem…

Same, feels like they created a model once and left it to rot. What baffles me is how google translate is still behind them despite spearheading the scene a few years ago.

Google's logic is likely, "Why continue to invest in this?"

Re: Sam Altman returns as CEO, OpenAI has a new initial board

#429

Post by giardini »

peanuty1 wrote: post #320
zer0c00ler wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, OpenAI lost a bit of its magic. It's sad because it was really fun so far to see all the great progress. But there are so many unanswered questions still and the lack of transparency is an issue, as is the cult like behavior that can be observed recently.

By cult-like behavior, are you referring to 700+ OpenAI employees threatening to quit unless the board brought back Altman?

How many of OpenAI's employees are actually developing the software they market? 700+ seems awfully high.

Re: Sam Altman returns as CEO, OpenAI has a new initial board

#430

Post by colordrops »

Berniek wrote: post #142

Who is driving the company (companies)? Certainly not the board, when it can be ousted on the whim of one person. Might as well just get rid of the board (all boards in this organization) as any decision made can be overthrown by a bit of publicity and ego. Perhaps it about getting rich at the expense of any ethics? Those who work for this company should bear this in mind, they are all expendable!

Those who work for most companies are all expendable, at least in the US, and especially in the tech sector right now.
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