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OpenAI investors keep pushing for Sam Altman’s return

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Re: OpenAI investors keep pushing for Sam Altman’s return

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does anybody know who is currently CEO of OpenAI? Emmett Shear. Altman won't be back. Investors like success and returns but they don't like companies where all the employees have basically sworn out an oath of fealty to the CEO, as it means they (the investors) have basically no control over anything.

Employees hate working for companies where they have no voice too. Morale will drop and attrition will skyrocket. New talent won't consider OpenAI, existing talent will leave. The investment goes to zero anyway without talent.

New talent will consider any place that pays 300k base :)

Re: OpenAI investors keep pushing for Sam Altman’s return

#152
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Considering Ilya regrets his decision, implying this wasn't an e/acc vs safety debate

Does it?

If it was exactly that but he misjudged the external response and resulting consequences, that would also be a reason for regret.

Re: OpenAI investors keep pushing for Sam Altman’s return

#153
post #46

Any OpenAI employee here willing to (anonymously or not) share your view on the subject? Is support for Sam Altman's return that strong within the company, or are the media and investors exaggerating for their own sake?

98% of employees legitimately signed the letter wishing Sam to be reinstated, so I’m not sure how media or investors play in to that at all.

Re: OpenAI investors keep pushing for Sam Altman’s return

#154

Earlier 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

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…

Is it the tech that is worth that much or the tech and the people that built the tech when future iterations of the product rely so heavily on the people? Losing 95 percent of the employees will definitely impact delivering future products and that will definitely impact future profits and that has to impact valuation.

Re: OpenAI investors keep pushing for Sam Altman’s return

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> I wouldn't be so sure of that. Given that a bunch of the staff are acting like they're Heavens Gate members you also expect them to sabotage it? Or literally have a flavor-aid session in the office? > Their investors, employees and donors might disagree with that. Nobody wants to invest in a personality cult that's sworn an oath of fealty to one guy, dude. That's basically flushing money down the toilet, as this fi…

> Nobody wants to invest in a personality cult that's sworn an oath of fealty to one guy, dude. That's basically flushing money down the toilet, as this fiasco demonstrates.

Are you aware that Microsoft and Salesforce CEOs have both offered to hire any OpenAI employees who want to switch boat, while Nvidia CEO and Meta's FAIR team have both made similar but slightly lesser "call me" offers to all of them?

https://cointelegraph.com/news/microsoft-salesforce-nvidia-a...

> These lunatics are ready to sacrifice their children on twitter. You cannot work with people like that!

???

Re: OpenAI investors keep pushing for Sam Altman’s return

#156

Earlier 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…

> Investors have no reason to worry about their investment in the tech What? They have a MASSIVE reason to worry: 3/4 board members are clearly not aligned with the profit motive. And D'angelo has a massive conflict of interest with monetizing their models.

How are they not aligned? They didn’t oust Sam because of profit they ousted him for dishonesty.

Re: OpenAI investors keep pushing for Sam Altman’s return

#157

Does 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…

> Does anybody know who is currently CEO of OpenAI? Emmett Shear. Altman won't be back. Investors like success and returns but they don't like companies where all the employees have basically sworn out an oath of fealty to the CEO, as it means they (the investors) have basically no control over anything.

> all the employees have basically sworn out an oath of fealty to the CEO

Objectively not true. Employees were quiet on Friday. It was after Ilya told employees that Altman was fired partly because he tasked two people with the same job, that they then organized.

Re: OpenAI investors keep pushing for Sam Altman’s return

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Stratechery, Microsoft does not just have the rights to use the source code and model weights for GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, but a clause saying that Microsoft could not use the models as foundations for their own projects was recently removed. > Investors have no reason to worry about their investment in the tech. If Stratechery is correct, this means that if Microsoft successfully poaches Sam Altman and friend…

Yeah okay Microsoft poaches them but they still have to restart building everything from scratch which wouldn’t benefit Microsoft. Microsoft doesn’t want to poach talent, they can always do that with or without this incident. Microsoft wants the whole bundle. Hence the media campaign Satya is doing.

No, the point is they would not have to start building everything from scratch.

Re: OpenAI investors keep pushing for Sam Altman’s return

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source? Ben didn't read his cited source in his article yesterday.

Currently, the claim is unproven. However, if I were an investor, I'd be pounding on the doors demanding for clarification.

I'd have my lawyers do the pounding.
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