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OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO

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Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO

#451

Post by no_wizard »

jacquesm wrote: post #436
no_wizard wrote: post #66

He was outed for a reason. Why in the world would the board backtrack this? I think this is rumor mill reporting, trying to get things out too fast.

> He was outed for a reason. I've yet to see a good one. And even if: how you do something is often as important or even more important than that you do something. And on the 'how' bit the board just utterly failed. This is the most watched company in the world right now on the tech front, you can't just oust the CEO without a very good plan. If you do that kind of thing on a whim you are not fit to serve on the boar…

Like mass soulless firings don’t happen?

Why aren’t we holding CEOs to the fire when they layoff thousands of people in what is effectively an email? Thats somehow okay but a CEO being ousted suddenly and it’s all hands on deck bad optics?

The board had a mandate level of votes for the replacement of Sam (2/3 of the board voted yes). Thats conviction.

Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO

#452

Post by manyoso »

lucubratory wrote: post #442

It's insane to me how easily Sam's side can spin the board firing him for violating the company's Charter and then not backtracking at all as "Within 24 hours the board has come crawling back, I- er Sam Altman might deign to return if they grovel hard enough and I'm given complete control." This is really, really clearly incestuous tech media stuff as part of a pressure campaign. Sam is the darlin of tech media and h…

Very nice skepticism.

Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO

#453

Post by anonylizard »

lucubratory wrote: post #442

It's insane to me how easily Sam's side can spin the board firing him for violating the company's Charter and then not backtracking at all as "Within 24 hours the board has come crawling back, I- er Sam Altman might deign to return if they grovel hard enough and I'm given complete control." This is really, really clearly incestuous tech media stuff as part of a pressure campaign. Sam is the darlin of tech media and h…

Sam is not just the darling of tech media. He literally

1. Met with every major head of state except for Xi and Putin. He is the face of AI, not just for OpenAI, but for the entire world. The entire AI industry would hate for this to happen. 2. Lead a company from 2 billion valuation to nearly 80 billion in a year.

There is no precedent in startup history to get rid of a CEO at this stage.

Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO

#454

Post by csomar »

adharmad wrote: post #361
crop_rotation wrote: post #60

The board seems truly incompetent here and looking at the member list it doesn't seem very surprising. A competent board should have asked for legal and professional advice before taking a drastic step like this. Instead the board thought it was a boxing match and tried to deliver a knockout punch before the market closes with blunt language. This might be the most incompetent board for an organisation of this size.

It was complete amateur hour for the board. But that aside, how did so many clueless folks who understand neither the technology, or the legalese, nor have enough intelligence/acumen to forsee the immediate impact of their actions happen to be on the board of one of the most important tech companies?

I think when it started it was not the most important tech company but just some open research effort.

Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO

#455

Post by SnorkelTan »

karmasimida wrote: post #221
minimaxir wrote: post #34

This saga is somehow more absurd than HBO's Silicon Valley.

Because that show is written by people who barely knew Silicon Valley. If you read those memoirs/history of those Silicon Valley companies, it is 100% more entertaining than the show itself

The shows writers had quite a few advisors with deep ties to Silicon Valley. Former twitter ceo dick Costello comes to mind.

Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO

#456

Post by cmrdporcupine »

Satam wrote: post #438

It now seems to me that it was inevitable that something like GPT would take off - but it didn't necessarily have to come from OpenAI. Someone else would have filled their place. The collective ML knowledge and research were rapidly evolving, computing was getting faster and cheaper. The pressure was building and at some point, something somewhere had to pop off. They were a great but not a singular team. And it look…

The reason something like GPT didn't come out of e.g. Google is that they had/have stuff similar but were very reticent about making it public -- because of the ethical aspects as well as the sheer resource cost of hosting it to the public -- and also I suspect have naturally internal conflicts about whether it's the right direction to take, etc.

And so something like OpenAI came along where Ilya S etc. got bags of money to go take that approach and scale the crap out of it, and, yeah, they got results. Because they didn't have to be careful, or deal with competing interests.

That's all fine, but it's also no surprise when it all blows up, is it?

Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO

#459

Post by tick_tock_tick »

015a wrote: post #384
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude, everyone already thinks the board did a crazy ill-advised thing. They're about to be the board of like a 5 person or so company if they double down and commit. To be honest I hate takes like yours, where people think that acknowledging a mistake (even a giant mistake) is a sign of weakness. A bigger sign of weakness in my opinion is people who commit to a shitty idea just because they said it first, despite all…

Bad take. Not "everyone" feels that what they did was wrong. We don't have insight into what's going on internally. Optics matter; the division over their decision means that its definitionally non-obvious what the correct path forward is; or, that there isn't one correct path, but multiple reasonable paths. To admit a mistake of this magnitude is to admit that you're either so unprincipled that your mind can be chan…

> Bad take. Not "everyone" feels that what they did was wrong.

But everyone important does so who cares about the rest?

Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO

#460

Post by erikpukinskis »

Satam wrote: post #438

It now seems to me that it was inevitable that something like GPT would take off - but it didn't necessarily have to come from OpenAI. Someone else would have filled their place. The collective ML knowledge and research were rapidly evolving, computing was getting faster and cheaper. The pressure was building and at some point, something somewhere had to pop off. They were a great but not a singular team. And it look…

> When listening to interviews with Sam I was always surprised by how little useful information I am able to get out of listening to him

To be fair, isn’t that kind of the bar for CEOs? Their job is to hire and fire senior people, ensure they have a mountain of cash, and put out fires.

It’s not an operational position and so I wouldn’t expect a CEO to have deep operational knowledge.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding the division of labor though?

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