I think OpenAI made the right choice. Just look at what has become of many of the most successful YC companies. Do we really want OpenAI to turn into another Airbnb? It’s clear the biggest priority of YC is profit.
They made a deal with Microsoft, who has a long history of exploiting users and customers to make as much money as possible. Just look at the latest version of Windows; Microsoft doesn’t care about AI only as much as it enables them to make more and more money till no end through their existing products. They rushed to integrate AI into all of their legacy products to prop them up rather than offer something legitimately new. And they did it not organically but by throwing their money around, attracting the type of people who are primarily motivated by money. Look at how the vibe of AI has changed in the past year —- lots of fake influencers and the mad gold rush around it. And we are hearing crazy stories like comp packages at OpenAI in the millions, turning AI into a rich man’s game.
For a company that has “Open” in their name, none of their best and most valuable GPT models are open source. It feels as disingenuous as the “We” in WeWork. Even Meta has them beat here.
Sam Altman, while good at building highly profitable SaaS, consumer, & B2B tech startups and running a highly successful tech accelerator, before this point, didn’t have any kind of real background in AI. One can only imagine how he must feel like an outsider.
I think it’s a hard decision to fire a CEO, but the company is more than the CEO, it’s the people who work there. A lot of the time the company is structured in such a way that the CEO is essentially not replaceable, we should be thankful OpenAI fortunately had the right structure in place to not have a dictator (even a benevolent one).