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

businessinsider.com

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

#371

Post by eshack94 »

highwayman47 wrote: post #327
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…

Half the board lacks any technical skill, and the entire board lacks any business procedural skill. Ideally, you’d have a balance of each on a component board.

Ideally, you also have at least a couple independent board members who are seasoned business/tech veterans with the experience and maturity to prevent this sort of thing from happening in the first place.

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

#372

Post by 015a »

fullshark wrote: post #45
prepend wrote: post #34

So Surdkever fires Altman, then signs a letter saying they’ll quit unless he’s reinstated. There’s only 4 board members, right? Who wanted him fired. Is this a situation where they all thought the others wanted him fired and were just stupid? Have they been feeding motions into chatgpt and asking “should add I do this?”

Seems most likely Sustkever wanted him fired and then realized his mistake. Ultimately the board was probably quietly seething about the direction the company was headed, got mad enough to retake the reigns with that stunt and then realized what that actually meant. Now they are trying to unring the bell but cannot.

But the article's exact wording is "Sustkever is said to have offered two explanations he purportedly received from the board" key word being "purportedly received". He could be choosing words to protect himself, but it strongly implies that he wasn't the genesis of the action. Of course, he was convinced enough of it to vote him out (actually; has this been confirmed? they would have only needed 3, right? it was confirmed that he did the firing over Meet, but I don't recall confirmation that he voted Yet); which also implies that he was at some point told more precise reasoning? Or maybe he's being muzzled by the remaining board members now, and this reasoning he "received" is what they approved him to share, right now?

None of this makes sense to label any theory as "most likely" anymore.

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

#373

Post by pushedx »

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…

He has said more than he said during his entire 5 years at Twitch

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

#374

Post by mvdtnz »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #255
PheonixPharts wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My favorite hypothesis: Ilya et al suspected emergent AGI ( e.g. saw the software doing things unprompted or dangerous and unexpected) and realized the Worldcoin shill is probably not the one you want calling the shots on it. For the record, I don't think it's true. I think it was a power play, and a failed coup at that. But it's about as substantiated as the "serious" hypotheses being mooted in the media. And it's m…

Absolutely wild to me that people are drawing a straight line between a text completion algorithm and AGI. The term "AI" has truly lost all meaning.

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

#375

Post by ramraj07 »

two_in_one wrote: post #323

Both 'reasons' are a bullsh*t. But interesting is Sustkever was the key person, it wouldn't happen without him. And now he says board told him why he was doing it? He didn't reiterate he regrets about it. So looks like he was one of the driving forces, if not the main. Of course he doesn't want the reputation of 'the man who killed OpenAI'. But he definitely took part and could prevent it.

Nytimes mentioned that just a month back someone else was promoted to the same level as Ilya. Sounds like more than a coincidence.

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

#377

Post by adastra22 »

LewisVerstappen wrote: post #299
fullshark wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems most likely Sustkever wanted him fired and then realized his mistake. Ultimately the board was probably quietly seething about the direction the company was headed, got mad enough to retake the reigns with that stunt and then realized what that actually meant. Now they are trying to unring the bell but cannot.

> Now they are trying to unring the bell but cannot. Well, they can unring the bell pretty easy. They were given an easy out. Reinstate Sam (he wants to come back) and resign. However, they CONTINUE to push back and refuse to step down.

Then they wouldn't be in control, which is what they really want.

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

#378

Post by hooande »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #255
PheonixPharts wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My favorite hypothesis: Ilya et al suspected emergent AGI ( e.g. saw the software doing things unprompted or dangerous and unexpected) and realized the Worldcoin shill is probably not the one you want calling the shots on it. For the record, I don't think it's true. I think it was a power play, and a failed coup at that. But it's about as substantiated as the "serious" hypotheses being mooted in the media. And it's m…

Why wouldn't Ilya come out and say this? Why wouldn't any of the other people who witnessed the software behave in an unexpected way say something?

I get that this is a "just for fun" hypothesis, which is why I have just for fun questions like what incentive does anyone have to keep clearly observed ai risk a secret during such a public situation?

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

#379

Post by hayksaakian »

veeralpatel979 wrote: post #357

Update (11/20/23 8 PM PST): NYT just released a new interview with Sam Altman: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38359070

recorded Wednesday 11/15/23

Interesting but not necessarily relevant to the current situation directly.

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

#380

Post by voidfunc »

jxi wrote: post #329
lupire wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

She only founded one, Fellow Robots, and that "company" went nowhere. There's no product info and the company page shut down. She was CEO of GeoSim for a short 3 years, and this "company" also looks like it's going nowhere. She has quite a track record of short tenures and failures.

> She has quite a track record of short tenures and failures.

It may be good to have a failure perspective on a board as a counter-balance. I don't think this is a valid knock against her. She has relevant industry experience at least.

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