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Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

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Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#291

Post by throw310822 »

solidasparagus wrote: post #244
dkarras wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not eager to defend Sam as I think he is shady (maybe necessary for a successful CEO? don't know) but the Scarlett Johansson story was just speculation because she knew that she was asked to act, then the news spun it in a way favorable to clicks. I don't think the voice resembles her at all, and it turns out that they auditioned multiple voice actors and used a real voice actor for the voice. IIRC OpenAI also says t…

How does Sam's tweet of 'her' fit into this narrative? Or them reaching out to her two days before release? (methinks the lawyers had some concerns during final stages of release). We can debate how they achieved the final voice and the legality of it, but it seems so clear from where I'm sitting that "it was never intended to resemble [ScarJo's voice]" is a blatant lie.

Max news impact? At this point, any talk of OpenAI is good marketing.

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#292

Post by adastra22 »

throwcon wrote: post #219
jononomo wrote: post #145

Paul Graham has said that one of the things he likes best about Sam Altman is that he figures out ways to "hack" things, and specified that he didn't mean programming, but rather systems, institutions, people, etc. As for me, I'd prefer to see Paul Graham running Open AI.

Is that a good thing?

Paul Graham is British. That was actually an insult.

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#293

Post by jonas21 »

bmitc wrote: post #270
tibbar wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You had the answer there before you dismissed it -- the board agreed to bring Sam Altman back before resigning because of massive pressure campaign that involved 90%+ of employees threatening to resign, and Microsoft (which has OpenAI's IP rights) offering to hire them all immediately. This included the company's key leadership. The organization was unraveling overnight. This was far past the tipping point of "a few…

I answered that scenario though. I'm fine, as a board, letting employees who want to hold the company hostage over a CEO that the board fired walk. The board's major mistake was not communicating why he was let go. My guess is that the likely reason why employees threatened to go was that they felt Altman had the best chances of making the for-profit arm's shares skyrocket. As a non-profit company's board, I'd be fin…

> I'm not aware of the machine learning researchers responsible for the core technology threatening to leave. Who were they?

Ilya Sutskever, Alec Radford, Wojciech Zaremba, Nick Ryder, Mark Chen, ... how many names do you want? >90% of the company threatened to leave.

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#294

Post by throw310822 »

__loam wrote: post #221
malcolmgreaves wrote: post #206

This account is quite believable. It follows a pattern of unethical behavior from Altman. In his latest unethical binge, he illegally used Scarlett Johansson's voice and likeliness for the latest ChatGPT version with speech output. [1] His timed-announcement tweet, "Her", is quite self-incriminating. [2] Remember: inductive logic is a valuable tool for discovering truth. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/20/2416125…

I think what happened is OpenAI was probably going to easily defend themselves from this suit until Altman tweeted about it. It seems like the company didn't really do anything wrong (in this case) but that tweet is actually going to give ScarJo the legal standing she needs to move forward and even win. It feels like leadership class in the valley is totally clueless sometimes.

Didn't this get everyone talking of how OpenAI basically replicated Her's Samantha? Well worth a lawsuit, right?

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#295

Post by ryukoposting »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #277
benreesman wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s utterly mundane, completely common knowledge for those who have been around long enough to have watched both the start and end on Loopt that Altman is a dark-triad sociopath with one marketable skill: (in pg’s words) “becoming powerful”. Guy can’t code, can’t design, can’t publish, can’t climb a traditional corporate ladder with even modest guardrails against fraud, can’t keep his hand out of the cookie jar. Can…

I think it might be time to turn back the clock a bit and revisit some of the things pg said way back when he was pitching Sam Altman to lead YC and the general reaction was "...who?" 2008: "You could parachute [Sam Altman] into an island full of cannibals and come back in 5 years and he'd be the king. If you're Sam Altman, you don't have to be profitable to convey to investors that you'll succeed with or without the…

> Do we accept that Sam Altmans are necessary for cool technology?

Zooming out a bit, do we accept "cool technology" as a virtue? Should it factor into my evaluation of a person at all?

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#296

Post by djbusby »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #185
jollofricepeas wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I keep thinking HN has become Reddit, but as Reddit keeps declining it’s possible that both are declining proportionally at the same rate for the same reasons.

September all over again.

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#297

Post by tibbar »

bmitc wrote: post #270
tibbar wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You had the answer there before you dismissed it -- the board agreed to bring Sam Altman back before resigning because of massive pressure campaign that involved 90%+ of employees threatening to resign, and Microsoft (which has OpenAI's IP rights) offering to hire them all immediately. This included the company's key leadership. The organization was unraveling overnight. This was far past the tipping point of "a few…

I answered that scenario though. I'm fine, as a board, letting employees who want to hold the company hostage over a CEO that the board fired walk. The board's major mistake was not communicating why he was let go. My guess is that the likely reason why employees threatened to go was that they felt Altman had the best chances of making the for-profit arm's shares skyrocket. As a non-profit company's board, I'd be fin…

Wait, are you simply unaware of the widely reported circumstances in the company at that time? 95% of employees signed a letter to the board stating that they would leave the company if Sam was not brought back [1]. Ilya Sutskever, who was on the board and voted to remove Sam, changed his mind and signed the letter. The board named Mira Murati interim CEO; then she signed the letter, the board fired her, and hired another outside CEO. Several key researchers resigned outright before letter even went out, including Jakub Pachoki, who replaced Ilya after he left [2] .

I would challenge you to name a researcher who didn't resign or threaten to resign. Remember, they all had a plausible landing spot: They could simply show up at Microsoft with all the same leadership, coworkers, salary, compute, and IP the next day. OpenAI as we know it was over unless and until the board gave in.

[1] https://www.wired.com/story/95-percent-of-openai-employees-t... [2] https://www.theinformation.com/articles/three-senior-openai-...

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#298

Post by florean »

Aunche wrote: post #152
rst wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Filed a formal complaint" with whom? The board itself is the final authority, empowered to investigate and act. If its members have concerns, they either do something or don't. There's nowhere else to pass the buck.

> "Filed a formal complaint" with whom? For their own records. They can use it for justification for disciplinary action or legal ammunition. It is always useful to document things in writing. It's the same reason why companies will put you on PIP.

Why would you think this stuff wasn't in writing? Do you think the investigation OAI did into the board's actions was just relayed orally?[1] That the board's discussions where all done in conference calls and not in e-mail? Do you think that this documentation gets routinely released to the public or even employees? Before you throw around accusations of incompetence, you should probably have some shred of evidence. This is the type of stuff that is typically considered extremely confidential and even now they say they are unable to reveal details. Why do you think that is? What is preventing them from doing something they apparently want to? Legal agreements such as NDAs, the same ones that would have prevented them from going public with details last years.

The board's mistake was not figuring out a way to go public with their case against Sam when or before they fired him. They obviously misjudged how he would respond. But even there we don't know the full context and constraints they were under. Hopefully, one of them will answer that question of why they didn't at some point, but until we know more, we would be wise to reserve judgement.

[1] https://archive.is/wbwC2

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#299

Post by mikeryan »

jfoster wrote: post #259
tibbar wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You had the answer there before you dismissed it -- the board agreed to bring Sam Altman back before resigning because of massive pressure campaign that involved 90%+ of employees threatening to resign, and Microsoft (which has OpenAI's IP rights) offering to hire them all immediately. This included the company's key leadership. The organization was unraveling overnight. This was far past the tipping point of "a few…

If the board had shared something equivalent to this article at the time, perhaps there wouldn't have been such an intense internal pressure campaign. Instead, they did not even attempt to communicate any rationale behind their actions.

It’s not good form to bad mouth someone you’ve fired. They did, in fact, release a statement which aligns (in PR speak) with what Toner is claiming now.

Mr. Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities. The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.

https://openai.com/index/openai-announces-leadership-transit...

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#300

Post by adastra22 »

jph00 wrote: post #7
mmastrac wrote: post #2

I don't think there's anything new here: https://www.businessinsider.com/who-is-running-openais-start... FTA: > "Sam didn't inform the board that he owned the OpenAI startup fund, even though he constantly was claiming to be an independent board member with no financial interest in the company," she said. Previously: > "Jacob Vespers does not exist to our knowledge," Madhav Dutt, a spokesperson for OpenAI, said. When…

> * I don't think there's anything new here* The information about lying to the board about it is new, AFAIK.

Lying to the board was the reason given for his firing even at the time. They just declined to elaborate back then.
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