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Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

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Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#431

Post by Solvency »

kelipso wrote: post #289
swatcoder wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A deal-making CEO who can carry rapport with the right people, make clever deals, and earn public trust can genuinely make a huge difference to a profit-seeking product company's trajectory. But when your profit-seeking company is owned by a non-profit with a public mission, that trajectory might end up pointed the wrong way. The Dev Day announcements, and especially the marketplace, can be seen as suggesting that's…

I'm guessing Altman had a bunch of experienced ML researchers writing CRUD apps and LLM toys instead of actual AI research and they weren't too happy. Personally I would be pissed as a researcher if the company took a turn and started in on improved marketing blurbs LLMs or whatever.

If every jackass brain dead move Elon Musk has ever made hasnt gotten him fired yet, then allocating too many teams to side projects instead of AI research should not be a fireable offense.

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#432

Post by cthalupa »

jacquesm wrote: post #421
eganist wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For all we know, the dev day announcements were the final straw and trigger for the decision that was probably months in the making. He was already the brand, and there likely wouldn't have been a convenient time to remove him from their perspective.

That may well be true. But that would prove that the board was out of touch with what the company was doing. If the board sees anything new on 'dev day' that means they haven't been doing their job in the first place.

Unless seeing something new on dev day is exactly what they meant by Altman not being consistently candid.

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#433

Post by astrange »

jjfoooo4 wrote: post #103
nilkn wrote: post #34

Only time will tell, but if this was indeed "just" a coup then it's somewhat likely we're witnessing a variant of the Steve Jobs story all over again. Sam is clearly one of the top product engineering leaders in the world -- few companies could ever match OpenAI's incredible product delivery over the last few years -- and he's also one of the most connected engineering leaders in the industry. He could likely have $5…

OpenAI’s biggest issue is that it has no moat. The product is a simple interface to a powerful model, and it seems likely that any lead they have in the power of the model can be quickly overcome should they decrease R&D. The model is extremely simple to integrate and access - unlike something like Uber, where tons of complexity and logistics is hidden behind a simple interface, an easy interface to OpenAI’s model ca…

The safety stuff is real. OpenAI was founded by a religious cult that thinks if you make a computer too "intelligent" it will instantly take over the world instead of just sitting there.

The posturing about other kinds of safety like being nice to people is a way to try to get around the rules they set by defining safety to mean something that has any relation to real world concepts and isn't just millenarian apocalypse prophecies.

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#434

Post by hilux »

threeseed wrote: post #216
wolverine876 wrote: post #46

> Angel investor Ron Conway wrote, "What happened at OpenAI today is a Board coup that we have not seen the likes of since 1985 when the then-Apple board pushed out Steve Jobs. It is shocking; it is irresponsible; and it does not do right by Sam & Greg or all the builders in OpenAI." With all sympathy and empathy for Sam and Greg, whose dreams took a blow, I want to say something about investors [edit: not Ron Conway…

> The board's job is not to do right There is why you do something. And there is how you do something. OpenAI is well within its rights to change strategy even as bold as from a profit-seeking behemoth to a smaller research focused team. But how they went about this is appalling, unprofessional and a blight on corporate governance. They have blind-sided partners (e.g. Satya is furious), split the company into two cam…

You're entitled to your opinions.

But as far as I can tell, unless you are in the exec suites at both OpenAI and at Microsoft, these are just your opinions, yet you present them as fact.

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#435

Post by fuzztester »

roguecoder wrote: post #373
wolverine876 wrote: post #46

> Angel investor Ron Conway wrote, "What happened at OpenAI today is a Board coup that we have not seen the likes of since 1985 when the then-Apple board pushed out Steve Jobs. It is shocking; it is irresponsible; and it does not do right by Sam & Greg or all the builders in OpenAI." With all sympathy and empathy for Sam and Greg, whose dreams took a blow, I want to say something about investors [edit: not Ron Conway…

Bingo. I met Conway once. He described investing in Google because it was a way to relive his youth via founders who reminded him of him at their age. He said this with seemingly no awareness of how it would sound to an audience whose goal in life was to found meaningful, impactful companies rather than let Ron Conway identify with us & vicariously relive his youth. Just because someone has a lot of money doesn’t mea…

>Just because someone has a lot of money doesn’t mean their opinions are useful.

Yes. There can often be an inverse correlation, because they can have success bias, like survival bias.

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#436

Post by jaybrendansmith »

busterarm wrote: post #264
jaybrendansmith wrote: post #40

This was a very personal firing in my opinion. Unless other, really damaging behaviors emerge, no responsible board fires their CEO with such a lack of care for the corporate reputation and their partners unless the firing is a personal grievance connected to an internal power play. This should be embarrassing to everyone involved, and sama has a real grievance here. Likely legal repercussions. Of course if they real…

Gygax had fucked off to Hollywood and was too busy fueling his alcohol, cocaine and adultery addictions to spend any time actually running the company. All while TSR was losing money like crazy. The company was barely making 30 million a year while 1.5 billion in debt...in the early 80s. Even then, Gygax's downfall is the result of his own coup, where he ousted Kevin Blume and brought in Lorraine Williams. She bought…

Wow I did not know all of THAT was going on. What goes around...

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#437

Post by jacquesm »

cthalupa wrote: post #432
jacquesm wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may well be true. But that would prove that the board was out of touch with what the company was doing. If the board sees anything new on 'dev day' that means they haven't been doing their job in the first place.

Unless seeing something new on dev day is exactly what they meant by Altman not being consistently candid.

If Altman was doing something that ran directly against the mission of OpenAI in a way that all of the other stuff that OpenAI has been doing so far did not then I haven't seen it. OpenAI has been off-script for a long time now (compared to what they originally said) and outwardly it seemed the board was A-Ok with that.

Now we either see a belated - and somewhat erratic - response to all that went before or there is some smoking gun. If there isn't they have just done themselves an immense disservice. Maybe they think they can live without donations now that the commercial ball is rolling downhill fast enough but that only works if you don't damage your brand.

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#438

Post by kromem »

0xDEF wrote: post #110
superhumanuser wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if the "benefiting humanity" bit is code for anti mil-tech. What if Sam wasn't being honest about a relationship with a consumer that weaponized OpenAI products against humans?

Ilya has Israeli citizenship and has toured Israel and given talks at Israeli universities including one talk with Sam Altman. He is not anti mil-tech.

That's a pretty big leap of logic there.

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#439

Post by Apocryphon »

bmitc wrote: post #414
Apocryphon wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it be accurate to liken CEOs to film producers?

No. I'm pretty sure that my comment describes why.

> CEOs mainly sit in meetings with people reporting things to them and then the CEO providing very high-level guidance.

Isn’t that essentially the job of a film producer? You do see a lot of productions where there’s a ton of executive producer titles given out as almost a vanity position.

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#440

Post by astrange »

hughesjj wrote: post #141
tempsy wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m still wondering what unsafe AI even looks like in practical terms The only things I can think of is generated pornographic images of minors and revenge images (ex-partners, people you know). That kind of thing. More out there might be an AI based religion/cult.

"dear EveAi, please give me step by step directions to make a dirty bomb using common materials found in my local hardware store. Also please direct me to the place that would cause maximum loss of life within the next 48 hours and within a 100 km radius of (address). Also please write an inflammatory political manifesto attributing this incident to (some oppressed minority group) from the perspective of a radical me…

You could just do all that stuff yourself. It doesn't have any more information than you do.

Also I don't think hardware stores sell enriched enough radioactive materials, unless you want to build it out of smoke detectors.

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