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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

#31

Post by andy99 »

gustavus wrote: post #7

Here's the thing. I've always been kind of cold on OpeanAI claiming to be "Open" when it was clearly a for profit thing and I was concerned about the increasing move to the commercialization of AI that Sam was taking. But I am much more concerned to be honest those who feel they need to control the development of AI to ensure it is "aligns with their principles", after all principles can change, and to quote Lewis "O…

If the board was really serious about doing good over making profit (if this is indeed what the whole thing is about) they'd open source gpt-4/5 with a gpl-style license

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

#32

Post by swatcoder »

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."

In a clash of big egos, both are often true. Practical differences escalate until personal resentment forms and the parties stop engaging with due respect for each other.

Once that happens, real and intentional slights start accumulating and de-escalation becomes extremely difficult.

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

#33

Post by claytonjy »

ls612 wrote: post #9

What are the odds Sam can work the phones this weekend and have $10B lined up by Monday for a new AI company which will take all of the good talent from OpenAI?

I definitely believe he can raise a lot of money quickly, but I'm not sure where he'll get the talent, at least the core modeling talent. That's Ilya's lane, and I get the sense that group are the true believers in the original non-profit mission.

But I suspect a lot of the hires from the last year or so, even in the eng side, are all about the money and would follow sama anywhere given what this signals for OpenAIs economic future. I'm just not sure such a company can work without the core research talent.

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

#34

Post by nilkn »

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 $500M-$10B+ lined up by next week to start up a new company and poach much of the talent from OpenAI.

What about OpenAI's long-term prospects? They rely heavily on money to train larger and larger models -- this is why Sam introduced the product focus in the first place. You can't get to AGI without billions and billions of dollars to burn on training and experiments. If the company goes all-in on alignment and safety concerns, they likely won't be able to compete long-term as other firms outcompete them on cash and hence on training. That could lead to the company getting fully acquired and absorbed, likely by Microsoft, or fading into a somewhat sleepy R&D team that doesn't lead the industry.

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

#36

Post by x86x87 »

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."

This is not commercial vs non commercial imho. This is the old classic humans being humans.

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

#37

Post by 3seashells »

WendyTheWillow wrote: post #30

I just hope the "AI safety" people don't end up taking LLMs out of the hands of the general public because they read too many Isaac Asimov stories...

If you were a AI going rogue, how would you evade public scrutiny?

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

#38

Post by x86x87 »

noonething wrote: post #23

I hope they go back to being Open now that Altman is gone. It seems Ilya wants it to 'benefit all of humanity' again.

Things can improve along a dimension you choose to measure but there is also the very real risk of openai imploding. Time will tell.

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

#39

Post by esafak »

ls612 wrote: post #19
staticman2 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would the good talent leave? Are they all a "family" and best buddies with Sam?

A lot of them have already left this morning. idk for sure why but a good bet is that they are more on board with Sam's vision of pushing forward AI than the safetyist vision.

What fraction?

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

#40

Post by jaybrendansmith »

This was a very personal firing in my opinion. Unless other, really damaging behaviors emerge, no responsible board fires their CEO with such a lack of care for the corporate reputation and their partners unless the firing is a personal grievance connected to an internal power play. This should be embarrassing to everyone involved, and sama has a real grievance here. Likely legal repercussions. Of course if they really did just invent AGI, and sama indicated an intent to monetize, that might cause people to act without caution if the board is AGI doomers. But I'd think even in that case it would be an argument best worked out behind closed doors. This reminds everybody of Jobs of course, but perhaps another example is Gary Gygax at TSR back in the 80s.
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