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OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

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Re: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

#361

Post by starshadowx2 »

DebtDeflation wrote: post #172

1) Where is Emmett? He's the CEO now. It's his job to be the public face of the company. The company is in an existential crisis and there have been no public statements after his 1AM tweet. 2) Where is the board? At a bare minimum, issue a public statement that you have full faith in the new CEO and the leadership team, are taking decisive action to stabilize the situation, and have a plan to move the company forwar…

People kept asking where he was during his years of being Twitch CEO, it's not unlike him to be MIA now either.

Re: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

#362

Post by adastra22 »

lupire wrote: post #236
spoonjim wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, they haven’t. One is some policy analyst and the other is an actor’s wife.

Tasha Macauley is an electrical engineer who founder of two tech companies, besides having a cute husband. And the other guy is the founder of Quora and Poe.

paper companies

Re: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

#363

Post by 015a »

samspenc wrote: post #23

> One explanation was that Altman was said to have given two people at OpenAI the same project. Have these people never worked at any other company before? Probably every company with more than 10 employees does something like this.

I think this needs to be viewed through the lens of the gravity of how the board reacted; giving them the benefit of the doubt that they acted appropriately and, at least with the information they had the time, correctly.

A hypothetical example: Would you agree that it's an appropriate thing to do if the second project was Alignment-related, Sam lied or misled about the existence of the second team, to Ilya, because he believed that Ilya was over-aligning their AIs and reducing their functionality?

Its easy to view the board's lack of candor as "they're hiding a really bad, unprofessional decision"; which is probable at this point. You could also view it with the conclusion that, they made an initial miscalculated mistake in communication, and are now overtly and extremely careful in everything they say because the company is leaking like a sieve and they don't want to get into a game of mudslinging with Sam.

Re: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

#364

Post by kmlevitt »

dragonwriter wrote: post #333
kmlevitt wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was anything all that bad, Ilya and Greg would’ve known about it, because one of them was chairman of the board and the other was a board member. And both of them want Sam rehired. You can’t even spin it that they are complicit in wrongdoing, because the board tried to keep Greg at the company and Ilya is still on the board now and previously supported them. Whatever the reason is, it is very clearly a personal…

> because the board tried to keep Greg at the company Aside from the fact that they didn't fire him as President and said he was staying on in the press release that went out without any consultation, I've seen no suggestion of any effort to keep him at the company.

Right, but there was no effort to actually oust him either. Which you would expect them to do if they had to fire guilty parties for a massive wrongdoing that couldn’t be ignored

Either he had no part in this hypothetical transgression and thinks the accusation is nonsense, or he was part of it and for some inexplicable reason wasn’t asked to leave Open AI despite that. But you have to choose.

Re: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

#365

Post by maxlamb »

cheeselip420 wrote: post #292
dehrmann wrote: post #228

> Sutskever, who also publicly expressed his "regret" for taking part in the board's move against Altman He means he regrets it failed.

It didn't fail. Sam was removed.

90% of employees are threatening to quit. My guess is Ilya considers this outcome a huge failure.

Re: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

#366

Post by aiman3 »

rossdavidh wrote: post #300

So, none of this sounds like it could be the real reason Altman was fired. This leaves people saying it was a "coup", which still doesn't really answer the question. Why did Altman get fired, really? Obviously, it's for a reason they can't say. Which means, there is something bad going on at the company, like perhaps they are short of cash or something, that was dire enough to convince them to fire the CEO, but which…

i do believe what they said about Altman "was not consistently candid in his communications with the board.", based on my understanding, altman did proved his dishonest behavior from he did to openai, turned non-profit into for-profit and open source model to closed-source one. and even worst, people seems totally accepted this type of personality, the danger is not the AI itself, is the AI will be built by AltmanS!

Re: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

#368

Post by kmlevitt »

jacquesm wrote: post #247
kmlevitt wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best theory I’ve seen is that D’Angelo is just angry because Altman scooped his AI Chatbot company Poe on dev day without informing him first: https://twitter.com/scottastevenson/status/17267310228620087... if this was the case it would explain why he can’t give the real reason for the firing: because saying it out loud would put him in severe legal Jeopardy.

I don't think it matters anymore. He's between a rock and a hard place: if the others followed him without knowing the real reason he's got two more enemies on the board who are likely talking to their own lawyers by now. If he spills it he's screwed immediately, if he doesn't he's screwed in the longer term. So for his sake I hope there are some nice time-stamped minutes that detail exactly what caused them to act l…

That’s another thing though: they were apparently holding secret meetings plotting all this without informing Greg or Sam, which is apparently against their own regulations. So if that’s the case it’s unlikely there is any formal record of what was discussed. And perhaps by design.

Re: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

#369

Post by kyleyeats »

PheonixPharts wrote: post #215
DebtDeflation wrote: post #172

1) Where is Emmett? He's the CEO now. It's his job to be the public face of the company. The company is in an existential crisis and there have been no public statements after his 1AM tweet. 2) Where is the board? At a bare minimum, issue a public statement that you have full faith in the new CEO and the leadership team, are taking decisive action to stabilize the situation, and have a plan to move the company forwar…

Yes these people should all be doing more to feed internet drama! If they don't act soon, HN will have all sorts of wild opinions about what's going on and we can't have that! Even worse, if we don't have near constant updates, we might realize this is not all that important in the end and move on to other news items! I know, I know, I shouldn't jest when this could have grave consequences like changing which uri you…

This sarcastic post is the best understanding of public relations I've seen in an HN post.

Re: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

#370

Post by kmlevitt »

1024core wrote: post #304
kmlevitt wrote: post #81

Neither of these reasons have anything to do with a lofty ideology regarding the safety of AGI or OpenAI’s nonprofit status. Rather it seems they are micromanaging personnel decisions. Also notice that Ilya Sutskever is presenting the reasons for the firing as just something he was told. This is important, because people were siding with the board under the understanding this firing was led by the head research scien…

> But now it looks like the board is represented by D’Angelo, a guy who has his own AI Chatbot company and a bigger conflict of interest with than ever since dev day, when open AI launched highly similar features. Could this be the explanation? That D'Angelo didn't like how OpenAI was eating his lunch and wanted Sam out? Occam's razor and all that.

Right now I think that’s the most plausible explanation simply because none of the other explanations that have been floating around make any sense when you consider all the facts. We know enough now to know that the “safety-focused nonprofit entity versus reckless profit entity“ narrative doesn’t hold up.

And if it’s wrong, D’Angelo and the rest of the board could help themselves out by explaining the real reason in detail and ending all this speculation. This gossip is going to continue for as long as they stay silent.

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