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OpenAI investors try to get Sam Altman back as CEO after sudden firing

wsj.com

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Re: OpenAI investors try to get Sam Altman back as CEO after sudden firing

#41

Post by antimora »

sp332 wrote: post #38

Sutskever has been clashing with Altman and it looks like he orchestrated his firing. Getting him back would almost certainly mean losing the other or even the whole board. Investors have decided which they would prefer to hang on to. Edit: updated pronouns

She?

Re: OpenAI investors try to get Sam Altman back as CEO after sudden firing

#43

Post by VirusNewbie »

bogwog wrote: post #32

I don't follow OpenAI or SV news all that much. Is this guy really that critical to the company? I thought Ilya Sutskever was the genius? Is this a non-compete thing, where they're scared Altman will take company secrets to a competitor, or is this dude actually a major factor in the company's success (and not just a lucky bystander)?

Ilya is certainly the brains behind ChatGPT, but I believe a lot of engineering talent recently joined OpenAI because they aligned with Sam and Greg’s vision of making consumer software and commercializing it.

So while you’re right that Sama isn’t crucial to OpenAI, I think a lot more employees are aligned with Sama’s vision.

Re: OpenAI investors try to get Sam Altman back as CEO after sudden firing

#45

Post by gkoberger »

sp332 wrote: post #38

Sutskever has been clashing with Altman and it looks like he orchestrated his firing. Getting him back would almost certainly mean losing the other or even the whole board. Investors have decided which they would prefer to hang on to. Edit: updated pronouns

Ilya is a "him". And yes, there's probably no path to Ilya and Sam both remaining at the company... but both are brilliant adults with (relatively) low egos, so there's hope they can settle this and work together. Their disagreements on the future of AI are a feature, not a bug.

Re: OpenAI investors try to get Sam Altman back as CEO after sudden firing

#46

Post by tw04 »

bogwog wrote: post #32

I don't follow OpenAI or SV news all that much. Is this guy really that critical to the company? I thought Ilya Sutskever was the genius? Is this a non-compete thing, where they're scared Altman will take company secrets to a competitor, or is this dude actually a major factor in the company's success (and not just a lucky bystander)?

They’re afraid he’s an actual leader and all of their talent will follow him. It doesn’t matter how good Ilya is individually, nobody is building gpt-5+ as an individual contributor.

Re: OpenAI investors try to get Sam Altman back as CEO after sudden firing

#49

Post by smnrchrds »

What are the odds that, if Sam Altman returns to OpenAI, it would remain a non-profit? From everything that the news has covered since his departure, it seems that the board is committed to the non-profit mission, but Sam runs OpenAI like a for-profit startup company. I imagine if he returns, the board will be replaced with people who share Sam's vision and OpenAI will drop the façade of public responsibility and non-profit mission and start optimizing for money.

Re: OpenAI investors try to get Sam Altman back as CEO after sudden firing

#50

Post by m_ke »

bogwog wrote: post #32

I don't follow OpenAI or SV news all that much. Is this guy really that critical to the company? I thought Ilya Sutskever was the genius? Is this a non-compete thing, where they're scared Altman will take company secrets to a competitor, or is this dude actually a major factor in the company's success (and not just a lucky bystander)?

He is one of the most well connected people in tech and probably responsible for all of their partnerships and fundraising success. His departure in this fashion would make it really hard for them to raise as much money as they will need and potentially put them on a blacklist of a lot of YC companies. To top it off he'd probably raise a few billion and poach half of the team.
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