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OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

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Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#301

Post by nikcub »

Put the pieces together:

Nov 6 - OpenAI devday, with new features of build-your-own ChatGPT and more

Nov 9 - Microsoft cuts employees off from ChatGPT due to "security concerns" [0]

Nov 9 - OpenAI experiences severe downtime the company attributes to a "DDoS" (not the correct term for 'excess usage') [3]

Nov 15 - OpenAI announce no new ChatGPT plus upgrades [1] but still allow regular signups (and still do)

Nov 17 - OpenAI fire Altman

Put the threads together - one theory: the new release had a serious security issue, leaked a bunch of data, and it wasn't disclosed, but Microsoft knew about it.

This wouldn't be the first time - in March there was an incident where users were seeing the private chats of other users [2]

Further extending theory - prioritizing getting to market overrode security/privacy testing, and this most recent release caused something much, much larger.

Further: CTO Mira / others internally concerned about launch etc. but overruled by CEO. Kicks issue up to board, hence their trust in her taking over as interim CEO.

edit: added note on DDoS (thanks kristjansson below) - and despite the downtime it was only upgrades to ChatGPT Plus with the new features that were disabled. Note on why CTO would take over.

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/09/microsoft-restricts-employee...

[1] https://twitter.com/sama/status/1724626002595471740

[2] https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/21/23649806/chatgpt-chat-his...

[3] https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/09/openai-blames-ddos-attack-...

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#302

Post by doerinrw »

https://openai.com/our-structure Worth a read, in light of all this. An interesting tidbit that I bet is bouncing around his head right now:

  Third, the board remains majority independent. Independent directors do not hold equity in OpenAI. Even OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, does not hold equity directly. His only interest is indirectly through a Y Combinator investment fund that made a small investment in OpenAI before he was full-time.
I sincerely hope this is about the man and not the AI.

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#303

Post by ChrisCinelli »

minimaxir wrote: post #4

Saying this is sudden would be an understatement. Sam Altman spoke at an APEC panel on behalf of OpenAI literally yesterday: https://twitter.com/LondonBreed/status/1725318771454456208

Well, they must have believed that leaving Sam as CEO was a bigger risk for the company (or the members of the board) than having him leaving in the spot. The board may have had their hand twisted.

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#304

Post by matt3D »

ldjkfkdsjnv wrote: post #16

WOW! Clearly some funny business going on at OpenAI, as people have speculated. I always assumed Sam Altman was too smart to be in a situation like this. I have heard grumblings about suspicious corporate structuring, behind the scenes profit taking, etc. All speculation though. The All In podcast had some words about this a few months ago, though they spoke in generalities.

Could this be the reason they suspended new account signups?

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#306

Post by mmaunder »

omgJustTest wrote: post #278

Altman was at APEC yesterday saying "humanity is on the edge of destroying itself" or similar. A few things that could lead to the company throwing shade: 1. Real prospects of OpenAI progress have been undersold, and that Altman and cofounders sought to buy time by slow-rolling the board 2. Real profitability is under/overestimated 3. The board was not happy with the "doom and gloom" narrative to world leaders 4. Wor…

Good points. I’d flip 1 around to add a 6th, and that is, progress was oversold - specifically the compute required to go beyond GPT-4 capability.

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#307

Post by yokoprime »

birriel wrote: post #227

This is highly speculative, but minute 18:46 in the DevDay presentation [0] struck me as very awkward. Sam's AGI comment seemed off-script, and I don't think Satya liked it very much. [0] https://www.youtube.com/live/U9mJuUkhUzk?si=dyXBxi9nz6MocLKO

OpenAI has AGI written in the hero on their website. I think Satya was running a bit long and knew so he wanted to wrap it up

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#308

Post by unsupp0rted »

omgJustTest wrote: post #278

Altman was at APEC yesterday saying "humanity is on the edge of destroying itself" or similar. A few things that could lead to the company throwing shade: 1. Real prospects of OpenAI progress have been undersold, and that Altman and cofounders sought to buy time by slow-rolling the board 2. Real profitability is under/overestimated 3. The board was not happy with the "doom and gloom" narrative to world leaders 4. Wor…

Most of those wouldn't result in an urgent publicly-acknowledged firing

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#309

Post by thewarpaint »

jejeyyy77 wrote: post #21

def some sort of scandal. The prodigy Altman is booted after creating potentially the most successful company of all time and replaced by CTO who had no prior ML/AI experience becomes CEO. Wow.

> the most successful company of all time

Source? According to what metric?

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#310

Post by iLoveOncall »

nikcub wrote: post #301

Put the pieces together: Nov 6 - OpenAI devday, with new features of build-your-own ChatGPT and more Nov 9 - Microsoft cuts employees off from ChatGPT due to "security concerns" [0] Nov 9 - OpenAI experiences severe downtime the company attributes to a "DDoS" (not the correct term for 'excess usage') [3] Nov 15 - OpenAI announce no new ChatGPT plus upgrades [1] but still allow regular signups (and still do) Nov 17 -…

I'm not saying that you're not right, but this definitely wouldn't warrant an instant firing of your CEO.
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