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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

#181

Post by Karrot_Kream »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #99
naasking wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do think Jobs' engineering skill is oversold, but he was also more than just marketing. He had a vision for how technology should integrate with people's lives that drove great ergonomic and UX choices with a kind of polish that was lacking everywhere else. Those alone revolutionized personal computing in many ways. It's hard for younger people to even imagine how difficult it was to get connected to the internet a…

Well I'm not one of those "younger people" though not sure if you were aiming that at me or not. I think it's important to point out that Jobs could recognize nice UX choices, but he couldn't author them. He helped prune the branches of the bonsai tree, but couldn't grow it. On that he leaned on intellects far greater than his own, which he was pretty good at recognizing and cultivating. Though in fact he alienated a…

I'm curious at this perspective. Even from the Slashdot days (my age limit) techie types have hated Jobs, and showered Woz as the true genius. Tech culture has claimed this for a long time. Is your argument that tech people need more broad acclaim? And if so, does this come from a sense of being put down?

I used to broadly believe that Jobs-types were over-fluffed charismatic magnets myself by hanging out in these places until I started working and found out how useful they were at doing things I couldn't or didn't want to do. I don't think they deserve more praise than the underlying technical folks, but that they deserve equal praise. Sort of like how in a two-parent households, different parents often end up shouldering different responsibilities but that doesn't make one parent with certain responsibilities the true parent.

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

#182

Post by g42gregory »

My feeling is the the commercial side of the OpenAI brand is gone. How could OpenAI customers depend on the company, when the non-profit board goes against their interests (by slowing down the development and giving them inferior product)?

On the other hand, the AGI side of the OpenAI brand is just fine. They will continue the responsible AGI development, spearheaded by Ilya Sutskever. My best wishes for them to succeed.

I suspect Microsoft will be filing a few lawsuits and sabotaging OpenAI internally. It's an almost $3Tn company and they have an army of lawyers. They can do a lot of damage, especially when there may not be much sympathy for OpenAI in Silicon Valley's VC circles.

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

#183

Post by antonioevans »

iamflimflam1 wrote: post #96
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 think the problem is, this is not just about dumping the CEO. It’s signalling a very clear shift away from where OpenAI was heading - which seemed to be very focussed on letting people build on top of the technology. The worry now is that the approach is going to be more of controlling access to just researchers who are trusted to be “safe”.

i agree with this. What about the GPTs Store. Are they planning on killing that? Just concerning they'll kill the platform unit AGI comes out.

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

#184

Post by superhumanuser »

0xDEF wrote: post #110
superhumanuser wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if the "benefiting humanity" bit is code for anti mil-tech. What if Sam wasn't being honest about a relationship with a consumer that weaponized OpenAI products against humans?

Ilya has Israeli citizenship and has toured Israel and given talks at Israeli universities including one talk with Sam Altman. He is not anti mil-tech.

Unless the mil-tech was going to their enemies.

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

#186

Post by edgyquant »

fullshark wrote: post #17

Man this still seems crazy to me. The idea that this tension between commercial/non-commercial aspirations got so bad they felt the nuclear option of a surprise firing of Altman was the only move available doesn't seem plausible to me. I believe this decision was ego and vanity driven with this post-hoc rationalization that it was because of the mission of "benefiting humanity."

Maybe, but I have a different opinion. I have worked at startups before where we were building something both technically interesting and what could clearly be a super value add for the business domain. I’ve then witnessed PMs be brought on who cared little about any of that and instead tried to converge in the exact same enshittified product as everywhere else with little care or understand for the real solutions we were building towards. When this happened I knew within a month that the vision of the company, and it’s goals outside of generating investor returns, was dead if this person had their way.

I’ve specifically seen the controlling members of a company realize this after 7-8 months and when that happens it’s a quick change of course. I could see why you’d think it’s ego but I think it’s closer to my previous situation than what you’re stating here. This is a pivotal course correction and they’re not pretty, this just happens to be the most public one ever due to the nature of the business and company.

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

#187

Post by rafaelero »

chancancode wrote: post #71

Jeremy Howard (of fast.ai): https://x.com/jeremyphoward/status/1725712220955586899 He is not exactly an insider, but seems broadly aligned/sympathetic/well-connected with the Ilya/researchers faction, his tweet/perspective was a useful proxy into what that split may have felt like internally.

Such a bad take. Developers (me included) loved Dev Day.

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

#188

Post by nick222226 »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #173
swatcoder wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree with what you've written here but would add the caveat that it's also rather terrible to be in a position where somehow "shepherding responsible AGI" is falling to these self-appointed arbiters. They strike me as woefully biased and ideological and I do not trust them . While I trust Altman even less, there's nothing I've read about Sutskever that makes me think I want him or the people who think like him aro…

I mean, aren't they self appointed because they got there first?

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

#189

Post by 0xDEF »

superhumanuser wrote: post #184
0xDEF wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ilya has Israeli citizenship and has toured Israel and given talks at Israeli universities including one talk with Sam Altman. He is not anti mil-tech.

Unless the mil-tech was going to their enemies.

I don't think anyone at OpenAI was planning to give mil-tech to Iran and Iranian proxies like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.

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

#190

Post by cmrdporcupine »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #181
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I'm not one of those "younger people" though not sure if you were aiming that at me or not. I think it's important to point out that Jobs could recognize nice UX choices, but he couldn't author them. He helped prune the branches of the bonsai tree, but couldn't grow it. On that he leaned on intellects far greater than his own, which he was pretty good at recognizing and cultivating. Though in fact he alienated a…

I'm curious at this perspective. Even from the Slashdot days (my age limit) techie types have hated Jobs, and showered Woz as the true genius. Tech culture has claimed this for a long time. Is your argument that tech people need more broad acclaim? And if so, does this come from a sense of being put down? I used to broadly believe that Jobs-types were over-fluffed charismatic magnets myself by hanging out in these pl…

I guess it depends on what things you want to do, and how you define success, doesn't it?

If we're stuck with the definitions of success and excellence that are dominant right now, then, sure, someone like a Jobs or a Zuck or whatever, I see why people would be enamored with them.

But as an engineer I know I have different motivations than these people. And I think that's what people who make these kinds of arguments are drawing on.

There is a class of person whose success comes from finding creative and smart people and finding ways to exploit and direct them for their own ends. There's a genius in that, for sure. I am just not sure I want to celebrate it.

I just want to make things and help other people who make these things.

To put it another way, I'd take, say, Smalltalk over MacOS, if I have to make the choice.

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