OpenAI investors keep pushing for Sam Altman’s return
111–120 of 272 posts
Re: OpenAI investors keep pushing for Sam Altman’s return
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
All they need is another 2% and at a measly two billion that would be an easy settlement. The board members get to save face and Satya is off to the races, employees happy, investors happy. It could easily happen.
What is interesting is that Sam noted that OpenAI board should go after his shares if he were to go off on the company...which implies some sort of ownership that others had no prior knowledge of. What's the over-under of his shares being more than 2%?
That was a joke, the fact that he has no shares is the punchline.
He is basically saying they have no leverage to stop him speaking out once he’s been fired (which they might if he remained an equity holder).
Re: OpenAI investors keep pushing for Sam Altman’s return
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
Companies aren’t valued for their current state, but future prospects.
Is Sam Altman a future prospect of LLMs? It’s not like he holds the secret to GPT v5 or anything.
I'd be surprised if Sam was by himself, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if some of the people who signed that letter do hold the secret to the next big thing (GPT-5 probably isn't the next big thing; if it exists already it's likely just a nice iterative improvement and not a fundamental change).
Re: OpenAI investors keep pushing for Sam Altman’s return
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Uhmm, it upset 98% (not figuratively, but mathematically) of all 700 employees who signed a petition to quit unless he's reinstated and for the board to resign. And they have yet to leave as far as I know. Seems like no one is in an actual hurry to quit.
Sam Altman is currently talking to the board. You want them to spin up drama by quitting in the middle of the talks? You're trying too hard to copy paste your desired narrative on this and it fits so, so, so poorly.
If Sam comes back it’ll be under heavy changes. The board isn’t going to leave. You don’t get ousted and then get to call the shots, no matter how many employees you think you have on your side. Furthermore the fact that Sam is in talks is further proof that he won’t be coming back on his terms. As the board why would you fold to the employees just because they like a guy?
I’m not copy pasting anything, cute diss though.
Re: OpenAI investors keep pushing for Sam Altman’s return
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
These words are gonna get ate one way or another. There is no outcome where the current board wins. Emmet is already threatening the board with resignation unless they provide evidence of wrongdoing [1]. Which they don't have, because they would have revealed it already. They are empty shirts. [1] https://x.com/emilychangtv/status/1727020834005700914?s=20
So no evidence of wrongdoing then: -----> WHY DID THEY DO IT? SERIOUSLY! They all just decided to wake up that day and say let's go fire Sam and blow up the company because "lack of candor" that they can't even give details on?? These are serious people doing serious stuff. These are not idiots. What the heck is going on? Can anyone explain?
Considering Ilya regrets his decision, implying this wasn't an e/acc vs safety debate, the two most likely scenarios to me appear to be:
A) DeAngelo getting revenge for custom GPTs killing his company Poe's core product.
B) The board discovering Sam working to use OpenAI resources/IP to further his own personal business/political goals.
Re: OpenAI investors keep pushing for Sam Altman’s return
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
"It upset a bunch of employees. The tech is fine". Uhmm, it upset 98% (not figuratively, but mathematically) of all 700 employees who signed a petition to quit unless he's reinstated and for the board to resign. As for the tech... who... exactly do you think created, maintains and is developing future enhancement for the tech? Is it doing it by itself? Sorry, we're not there yet .
I think one lesson we learned from Twitter is that you can cull a large amount of a tech workforce and the product will keep humming along, albeit at a reduced rate of change. Also, unlike Twitter, OpenAI pays engineers very competitive salaries and can aggressively re-hire roles.
I dont think there is a large overlap here.
Twitter seemed to be adult daycare with a HUGE amount of positions that openly did nothing all day, many many positing publicly about how they only actually worked a few hours a week. Along with a Huge business support staff that seemed to really be pointless
I do not see that analog at OpenAI which has mainly engineering positions.
Also the idea that you just just "aggressively re-hire role" engineering positions in a emergent field like AI seems to be bit naive to me. How many experience people outside OpenAI are their int he first place??
It seems to me to be very ironic that in other situations is seems to be common for people to hate on corporations that treat their employees like interchangeable widgets that can just be replaced on a dime with a new human, yet here we see people claim that exact thing. Very odd
Re: OpenAI investors keep pushing for Sam Altman’s return
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t think the board is under any pressure. If they don’t do anything else they just need the employees to fold on their threat to resign. Even if the employees resign, ChatGPT is still running and there are lots of people willing to take the defecting employees spots. The only thing they are pressured on is to fill in the story for the media point of view which is irrelevant to the actual functioning of OpenAI.
Good luck keeping those employees around even if they all decide to fold. These folks are being flooded with offers. Why would they work for an organization that doesn't care what 95% of them want?
Why keep them around when there are hordes of qualified, recently laid-off workers ready to take their spot?
And, not every person from OpenAI is getting flooded with offers. Maybe a few key scientists/developers.
If anything, putting OpenAI on their resume might get workers preferential treatment for an initial interview. Maybe.
Re: OpenAI investors keep pushing for Sam Altman’s return
#118Does anybody know who is currently CEO of OpenAI? Friday, Sam. Saturday, Mira. Sunday was a day off, Monday it was Emmet so who is it for today? Kidding aside, the board is under more and more pressure but - surprisingly - they haven't folded yet. I am interpreting that as that they are trying to get something out of it that nobody is willing to give them. The new CEO is also surprisingly not to be found at all, no p…
I don’t think the board is under any pressure. If they don’t do anything else they just need the employees to fold on their threat to resign. Even if the employees resign, ChatGPT is still running and there are lots of people willing to take the defecting employees spots. The only thing they are pressured on is to fill in the story for the media point of view which is irrelevant to the actual functioning of OpenAI.
Even if only 1/4 of the people threating to resign, resigns, its still like 20% of the company leaving abruptly without any sort of handover. They might keep the light on for chatgpt and the API's, but its going to blunt growth and re-hiring isn't done in a heartbeat. You need to vet, test and onboard new employees. You're looking at a setback of at least 9-12 months of growth and research
Re: OpenAI investors keep pushing for Sam Altman’s return
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t think the board is under any pressure. If they don’t do anything else they just need the employees to fold on their threat to resign. Even if the employees resign, ChatGPT is still running and there are lots of people willing to take the defecting employees spots. The only thing they are pressured on is to fill in the story for the media point of view which is irrelevant to the actual functioning of OpenAI.
> I don’t think the board is under any pressure. Ok, you have a higher threshold for the use of the word pressure than I do. > If they don’t do anything else they just need the employees to fold on their threat to resign. Even if the employees resign, ChatGPT is still running and there are lots of people willing to take the defecting employees spots. I wouldn't be so sure of that. > The only thing they are pressured…
>> If they don’t do anything else they just need the employees to fold on their threat to resign. Even if the employees resign, ChatGPT is still running and there are lots of people willing to take the defecting employees spots.
>I wouldn't be so sure of that.
What about all those people who just pivoted from web3 to ai?
Re: OpenAI investors keep pushing for Sam Altman’s return
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why? The board announced the removal of a CEO which they have the power to do. It upset a bunch of employees who liked the CEO. The board is in search of a new CEO. OpenAI’s valuation isn’t because Sam Altman is worth $90B it’s the tech. The tech is fine. Investors have no reason to worry about their investment in the tech. The people under pressure are Sam Altman trying to reclaim his job he was fired from and Satya…
They claimed to remove the CEO with cause. They have not provided cause. Even the twitch dude is asking for the cause. The board just firing off half-cocked and then going silent is probably a larger source the issues for employees than altman the person/leader. There is effectively nobody in the driver seat and the board can't be trusted to do anything in the best interests of the company.
They did provide cause, you just don't accept what they said as valid or detailed enough.