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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

#411

Post by sumedh »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #169
khazhoux wrote: post #106

An "Independent" board is supposed to be a good thing, right? Doesn't this clown show show that if a board has no skin in the game --apart from reputation-- they have no incentive to keep the company alive?

I think this was a unique situation due to timing. OpenAI had 9 board members at the beginning of the year, but 3 (Reid Hoffman, Shivon Zilis, and Will Hurd) had to leave for various reasons (e.g. conflict of interest, which IMO should have also taken D'Angelo off the board), and this would have never happened if they were still on the board. So you were left with a rare situation where the board was incredibly immat…

> Shivon Zilis

Is that the same person who had kids with Elon. Did Elon put her on the Open AI board as his proxy.

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

#412

Post by GreedClarifies »

voidfunc wrote: post #380
jxi wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

lolz.

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

#413

Post by dragonwriter »

adastra22 wrote: post #347
jeremyjh wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make a copy of the files and work on them and that is a fork.

How do you merge changes between the source trees? Keep in mind this predates basically ANY kind of source control. It would have been nearly 3x the work.

> Keep in mind this predates basically ANY kind of source control.

It might be before they were ported to DOS or OS/2, but it definitely wasn't before source control existed (SCCS and RCS were both definitely earlier.)

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

#414

Post by stingraycharles »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #280
stingraycharles wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understand, Microsoft realizes this and gives them the equivalent of their OAI stock options in MSFT stock options if they join them now. For some employees, this may mean $10MM+

Options on Microsoft stock, a publicly-traded and stable company, are incomparable to those on OpenAI, which didn't even bother having proper equity to start with. The employees will get hosed. They never got equity, they got "equity." The senior ones will need liquidity, soon, to pay legal counsel; the rest will need to take what they can get.

Usually one would go borrow money from a bank with the shares / options as collateral in these types of cases if you really need the money for legal expenses without liquidating them.

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

#415

Post by bezier-curve »

nemo44x wrote: post #356
anupamchugh wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s lots of conflicts of interests beyond Adam and his Poe AI. Yes, he was building a commerical bot using OpenAI APIs, but Sam was apparently working on other side ventures too. And Sam was the person who invested in Quora during his YC tenure, and must have had a say in bringing him onboard. At this point, the spotlight is on most members of the nonprofit board

I wouldn’t hold Sam bringing him over in too high a regard. Fucking each other over is a sport in Silicon Valley. You’re subservient exactly until the moment you sense an opportunity to dominate. It’s just business.

"Business" sucks then. This is sociopathic behavior.

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

#416

Post by GreedClarifies »

adastra22 wrote: post #377
LewisVerstappen wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You get it!

This is the correct answer. The people who have never had jobs in their lives wanted control of a 100B company.

What a pleasant career trajectory. Heck it was already great to go from graduated university -> board of OpenAI. If that's possible why not CEO?

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

#417

Post by ssnistfajen »

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…

The speculations are rampant precisely because the board has said absolute nothing since the leadership transition announcement on Friday.

If they had openly given literally any imaginable reason to fire Sam Altman, the ratio of employees threatening to quit wouldn't be as high as 95% right now.

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

#418

Post by dragonwriter »

adastra22 wrote: post #404
dragonwriter wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It appears they have an exclusive, irrevocable license to the existing IP. Appears from what? I've seen this stated several times, usually citing nothing and occasionally citing a Nadella statement from which it would be a very tenuous inference.

Non-contradicted statements made multiple times by Microsoft both now and prior to this brouhaha.

> Non-contradicted statements made multiple times by Microsoft both now and prior to this brouhaha.

The statements I've seen don't match what is claimed, which is why I asked for one that did.

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

#419

Post by ssnistfajen »

mvdtnz wrote: post #374
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If the text completion algorithm is sufficiently advanced enough then we wouldn't be able to tell it's not AGI, especially if it has access to state-of-the-art research and can modify its own code/weights. I don't think we are there yet but it's plausible to an extent.

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

#420

Post by VirusNewbie »

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…

But why would Ilya publicly say he regrets his decision and wants Sam to come back. You think his existential worries are less important than being liked by his coworkers??
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