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Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

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Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#131

Post by jddj »

swatcoder wrote: post #101
peter422 wrote: post #59

I know everybody is going nuts about this, but just from my personal perspective I’ve worked at a variety of companies with “important” CEOs, and in every single one of those cases had the CEO left I would not have cared at all. The CEO always gets way too much credit externally for what the company is doing, it does not mean the CEO is that important. OpenAI might be different, I don’t have any personal experience,…

A deal-making CEO who can carry rapport with the right people, make clever deals, and earn public trust can genuinely make a huge difference to a profit-seeking product company's trajectory. But when your profit-seeking company is owned by a non-profit with a public mission, that trajectory might end up pointed the wrong way. The Dev Day announcements, and especially the marketplace, can be seen as suggesting that's…

This is where I've ended up as well for now.

I'm as distant from it all as anyone else, but I can easily believe the narrative that Ilya (et al.) didn't sign up there just to run through a tired page from the tech playbook where they make a better Amazon Alexa with an app store and gift cards and probably Black Friday sales.

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#132

Post by yafbum »

nilkn wrote: post #34

Only time will tell, but if this was indeed "just" a coup then it's somewhat likely we're witnessing a variant of the Steve Jobs story all over again. Sam is clearly one of the top product engineering leaders in the world -- few companies could ever match OpenAI's incredible product delivery over the last few years -- and he's also one of the most connected engineering leaders in the industry. He could likely have $5…

> He could likely have $500M-$10B+ lined up by next week to start up a new company and poach much of the talent from OpenAI.

Following the Jobs analogy, this could be another NeXT failure story. Teams are made by their players much more than by their leaders; competent leaders are a necessary but absolutely insufficient condition of success, and the likelihood that whatever he starts next reproduces the team conditions that made OpenAI in the first place are pretty slim IMO (while still being much larger than anyone else's).

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#133

Post by lancesells »

jjfoooo4 wrote: post #103
nilkn wrote: post #34

Only time will tell, but if this was indeed "just" a coup then it's somewhat likely we're witnessing a variant of the Steve Jobs story all over again. Sam is clearly one of the top product engineering leaders in the world -- few companies could ever match OpenAI's incredible product delivery over the last few years -- and he's also one of the most connected engineering leaders in the industry. He could likely have $5…

OpenAI’s biggest issue is that it has no moat. The product is a simple interface to a powerful model, and it seems likely that any lead they have in the power of the model can be quickly overcome should they decrease R&D. The model is extremely simple to integrate and access - unlike something like Uber, where tons of complexity and logistics is hidden behind a simple interface, an easy interface to OpenAI’s model ca…

> OpenAI’s biggest issue is that it has no moat.

This just isn't true. They have the users, the customers, Microsoft, the backing, the years ahead of most, and the good press. It's like saying Uber isn't worth anything because they don't own their cars and are just a middleman.

Maybe that now changes since they fired the face of the company, and the press and sentiment turns on them.

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#134

Post by [deleted] »

iamnotafish2 wrote: post #107
tempsy wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m still wondering what unsafe AI even looks like in practical terms The only things I can think of is generated pornographic images of minors and revenge images (ex-partners, people you know). That kind of thing. More out there might be an AI based religion/cult.

Unsafe AI might compromise cybersecurity, or cause economic harm by exploiting markets as agents, or personally exploit people, etc. Honestly none of the harm seems worse than the incredible benefits. I trust humanity can reign it back if we need to. We are very far from AI being so powerful that it cannot be recovered from safely.

[deleted]

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#135

Post by somenameforme »

ls612 wrote: post #9

What are the odds Sam can work the phones this weekend and have $10B lined up by Monday for a new AI company which will take all of the good talent from OpenAI?

Ilya Sutskever, the head scientist at OpenAI, is allegedly who organized the 'shuffle.' So you're going to run into some issues expecting the top talent to follow Sam. And would many people want to get in on a new AI development company for big $$$ right now? From my perspective the market is teetering towards oversaturation, there are no moats, zero-interest rates are a thing of the past, and the path to profit is nebulous at best.

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#136

Post by wolverine876 »

gkoberger wrote: post #98
wolverine876 wrote: post #46

> Angel investor Ron Conway wrote, "What happened at OpenAI today is a Board coup that we have not seen the likes of since 1985 when the then-Apple board pushed out Steve Jobs. It is shocking; it is irresponsible; and it does not do right by Sam & Greg or all the builders in OpenAI." With all sympathy and empathy for Sam and Greg, whose dreams took a blow, I want to say something about investors [edit: not Ron Conway…

I mostly agree with you on this. That being said, I've never gotten the impression Ron is the type of VC you're referring to. He's definitely founder-friendly (that's basically his core tenant), but I've never found him to be the type of VC who is ruthless about cost-cutting or an advocate for layoffs. (And I say this as someone who tends to be particularly wary of investors)

Thanks. I updated my GP comment accordingly.

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#137

Post by blameitonme »

robg wrote: post #54

Seems pretty straightforward, the dev day was a breaking point for the non-profit interests. Question is, how did the board become so unbalanced where this kind of dispute couldn’t be handled better? The commercial interests were not well-represented in the number of votes.

> Seems pretty straightforward, the dev day was a breaking point for the non-profit interests.

What was so bad about that day? Wasn't it just gpt4-turbo, gpt vision and gpt store and few small things?

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#138

Post by 0xDEF »

jaybrendansmith wrote: post #40

This was a very personal firing in my opinion. Unless other, really damaging behaviors emerge, no responsible board fires their CEO with such a lack of care for the corporate reputation and their partners unless the firing is a personal grievance connected to an internal power play. This should be embarrassing to everyone involved, and sama has a real grievance here. Likely legal repercussions. Of course if they real…

>responsible board

The board was irresponsible and incompetent by design. There is one OpenAI board member who has an art degree and is part of some kind of cultish "singularity" spiritual/neo-religious thing. That individual has also never had a real job and is on the board of several other non-profits.

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#139

Post by cwillu »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #74
skywhopper wrote: post #25

Sorry but the board firing the person who works for them is not a “coup”.

> The next day, Brockman, who was Chairman of the OpenAI board, was not invited to this board meeting, where Altman was fired. > Around 30 minutes later, Brockman was informed by Sutskever that he was being removed from his board role but could remain at the company, and that Altman had been fired (Brockman declined, and resigned his role later on Friday). The board firing the CEO is not a coup. The board firing the…

It appears that is the normal practice for a board voting to fire a CEO though, so that aspect doesn't mean much.

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#140

Post by margalabargala »

nick222226 wrote: post #116
tempsy wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m still wondering what unsafe AI even looks like in practical terms The only things I can think of is generated pornographic images of minors and revenge images (ex-partners, people you know). That kind of thing. More out there might be an AI based religion/cult.

How about you give it access to your email and it signs you up for the extra premium service from its provider and doesn't show you those emails unless you 'view all'. How about one that willingly and easily impersonates friends and family of people to help phishing scam companies.

> How about one that willingly and easily impersonates friends and family of people to help phishing scam companies.

Hard to prevent that when open source models exist that can run locally.

I believe that similar arguments were made around the time the printing press was first invented.

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