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

arstechnica.com

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

#151

Post by yaroslavyar »

yafbum wrote: post #132
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 conditio…

Well, I would debate that NeXT OS was a failure as a product, keeping in mind that it is a foundation of all current in macOS and even iOS versions that we have not. But I agree that it was a failure from a business perspective. Although I see it more like Windows phone — too late to market — failure, rather than an out of talented employers failure.

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

#152

Post by huytersd »

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,…

You may be right in many cases but if you think that’s true in all cases, you’re a low level pleb that can’t see past his own nose.

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

#153

Post by iamflimflam1 »

cwillu wrote: post #127
iamflimflam1 wrote: post #87

Everyone I speak to who have have been building on top of OpenAI - and I don’t mean just stupid chat apps - feel like the rug has just been pulled out from under them. If as it seems, dev day was the last straw, what does that say to all the devs?

Company with an unusual corporate structure designed specifically to be able to enforce an unpopular worldview, enforced that unpopular worldview. I get that people feel disappointed, but I can't help but feel like those people were maybe being a bit wilfully blind to the parts of the company that they didn't understand/believe-in/believe-were-meant-seriously.

It feels like they’ve had plenty of time to reset the direction of the company if they thought it was going wrong.

Allowing it to go so far off course feels like they’ve really dropped the ball.

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

#155

Post by tfehring »

wolverine876 wrote: post #65

In the past, many on HN complained that OpenAI had abandoned its public good mission and had morphed into a psuedo-private for-profit. If that was your feeling before, what do you think now? Are you relieved or excited? Are you the dog who caught the car? At this point, on day 2, I am heartened that their mission was most important, even at the heart of the most important technology maybe ever or since nuclear power…

I think it was a good thing that, in hindsight, the leading AI research company had a strong enough safety focus that it could do something like this. But that’s only the case as long as OpenAI remains the leading AI research company going forward, and after yesterday’s events I think that’s unlikely. Pushing for more incremental changes at OpenAI, possibly by getting the board to enact stronger safety governance, would have been a better outcome for everyone.

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

#156

Post by Draiken »

hef19898 wrote: post #121
Draiken wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this cult of CEOs is weird. It's such a small cohort that when someone doesn't completely blow it, they're immediately deemed as geniuses. Give someone billions of dollars and hundreds of brilliant engineers, researchers and many will make it work. But only a few ever get the chance, so this happens. They don't do any of the work. They just take the credit.

My last gig was with one of those wannabe Elon Musks (what wouldnI give to get wannabe Steve Jobs back). Horrible, ultimately he was ousted as CEO, only to be allowed to stay on as some head of innovation, because he and his founder buddies retained enough voting power to first get him a life time position as head of the board fir his "acievements" and then prevent his firing. They also vetoed, from ehat people told,…

The sad reality is that most top executives get there because of connections or simply being in the right place at the right time.

Funnily enough I also worked for a CEO that hit the lottery with timing and became a millionaire. He then drank his own kool-aid and thought he was some sort of Steve Jobs. Of course he never managed to build anything afterwards. But he kept making a shit ton of money, without a doubt.

After they get one position in that echelon, they can keep failing upwards ad nauseam.

I don't get the cult part though. It's so easy to see they're not even close to the geniuses they pretend to be. Just look at the recent SBF debacle. It's pathetic how folks fall for this.

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

#157

Post by orbital-decay »

wolverine876 wrote: post #129
orbital-decay wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the rumors are correct and ideological disagreement was at the core of this, OpenAI is not going to be open anyway, as Sutskever wants more safety, which implies being as closed as possible. Whether it's "public good" is in the eye of the beholder, as there are multiple mutually incompatible concerns about AI safety, all of which have merit. The future balance between those will be determined by unpredictable even…

> Whether it's "public good" is in the eye of the beholder That's too easy an answer, used to dismiss difficult questions and embrace amorality. There is public good, sometimes easy to define and sometimes hard. If ChatGPT is used to cure cancer, that would be a public good. If it's used to create a new disease that millions, that's obviously bad. Obviously, some questions are harder than that, but it doesn't excuse…

The issue with giving everyone open access to uncontrolled everything is obvious, it does have merit indeed. The terrible example of unrestricted social media as "information superconductor" is alive and breathing, supposedly it led to at least one actual physical genocide within the last decade. The question that is less obvious to some is: do these safety concerns ultimately lead us into the future controlled by a few, who will then inevitably exploit everyone to a much worse effect? That it's already more or less the status quo is not an excuse; it needs to be discussed and not dismissed blindly.

It's a very political question, and HN somewhat despises politics. But OpenAI is not an apolitical company either, they are ideologically driven and have the AGI (defined as "capable of replacing humans in economically important jobs) as their stated target. Your distant ancestors (assuming they were from Europe) were able to escape the totalitarianism and feudalism, starting from the Middle Ages, when the margins were mile-wide compared to what we have now. AI controlled by a few is way more efficient and optimized; will you even have a chance before your entire way of thinking is turned to the desired direction?

I'm from a country that lives in your possible future (Russia), I've seen a remarkably similar process from the inside, so this question seems very natural to me.

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

#158

Post by za3faran »

itronitron wrote: post #75
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,…

I worked at a startup where the first CEO, along with the VP of Sales and their entire department, was ousted by the board on a Tuesday. I think it's likely that we're going to find out Sam and others are just talented tech evangelists/hucksters and that justifiably worries a lot of people currently operating in the tech community.

How did the company end up fairing?

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

#159

Post by cwillu »

iamflimflam1 wrote: post #153
cwillu wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Company with an unusual corporate structure designed specifically to be able to enforce an unpopular worldview, enforced that unpopular worldview. I get that people feel disappointed, but I can't help but feel like those people were maybe being a bit wilfully blind to the parts of the company that they didn't understand/believe-in/believe-were-meant-seriously.

It feels like they’ve had plenty of time to reset the direction of the company if they thought it was going wrong. Allowing it to go so far off course feels like they’ve really dropped the ball.

I think that's where the “not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities” comes in.

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

#160

Post by s1artibartfast »

wolverine876 wrote: post #65

In the past, many on HN complained that OpenAI had abandoned its public good mission and had morphed into a psuedo-private for-profit. If that was your feeling before, what do you think now? Are you relieved or excited? Are you the dog who caught the car? At this point, on day 2, I am heartened that their mission was most important, even at the heart of the most important technology maybe ever or since nuclear power…

>OpenAI had abandoned its public good mission and had morphed into a psuedo-private for-profit.

>They should be fine with the overwhelming volume of investment available to them.

>Another way to look at it: How could this be wrong, given that their objective was not profit, and they can raise money easily with or without Altman?

This wasn't just some cultural shift. The board of OpenAI created a seperate for profit legal entity in 2019. The for-profit legal entity received overwhelming investment from Microsoft to make money. Microsoft, Early investors, and Employees all have a stake and want returns from this for profit company.

The separate non-profit OpenAI has a major problem on its hands if it thinks its goals are no longer aligned with the co-owners of the for-profit company.

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