501–510 of 1001 posts
Man, the board already looked reckless and incompetent, but this solidifies the appearance. You can do crazy ill-advised things, but if you unwaveringly commit, we’ll always wonder if you’re secretly a genius. But when you immediately backtrack, we’ll know you were a fool all along.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any talented engineer or scientist who actually wants to ship product AND make money would head over to Sam’s startup. Any investor who cares about making money would fund Sam’s startup as well. The way the board pulled this off really gave them no good outcome. They stand to lose talent AND investors AND customers. Half the people I know who use GPT in their work are wondering if it will be even worth paying for if…
And any talented engineer or scientist who actually wants to build safe AGI in an organization that isn't obsessed with boring B2B SaaS would align with Ilya. See, there are two sides to this? Sam isn't a god, despite what the media makes him out to be; none of them are.
If Sam were to be ousted it should have happened before ChatGPT was unleashed on the world.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A non profit board absolutely calls the shots at a non profit, in so far as the CEO and their employment goes. Non profit boards are not beholden, structurally, to investors and there are no shareholders. No stakeholder would walk away from OpenAI for want of sam Altman. They don’t license OpenAI technology or provide funding for his contribution. They do it to get access to GPT4. There is no comparable competitor av…
Something I don't fully understand, from [1], Altman was an employee of the for-profit entity. So to fire him, wouldn't the non-profit board be acting in it's capacity as a director of the for-profit entity (and thus have a fiduciary duty to all shareholders of the for-profit entity)? Non-profit governance is traditionally lax, but would the other shareholders have a case against the members of the non-profit board f…
(Remember, fiduciary does not necessarily have anything to do with money)
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 di…
I don't know how this unfolds but when somewhat smart models become a commodity, and thus the remaining 90% of the population get access to polished chatbots distributed through dominant platforms like Google, Facebook, Instagram, etc. - where does that leave OpenAI at? High-end models probably. And maybe with superintelligence unlocked it's all that's needed to win business-wise, I don't know.
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…
There’s no evidence of that, only your assumptions. Lots of comments from knowledgeable folks outside the media and who couldn’t care less about a “pressure campaign”, even if it did exist, think the board was clueless and got duped into making a huge mistake with the coup.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not for the better why? Obviously Sam wasn’t the best fit for OpenAI and investors aren’t even saying what the problem is. Clearly the board feels he was the wrong person for the job. I think it’s ridiculous that everything thinks that Sam being outed means OpenAI is in trouble. Let this play out and see how it evolves
Not like the board, except Ilya has some real capital or expertise to convince everyone this is the right decision. If they do, it is the perfect time to speak out loud, not letting this news bubbling up to the front page and everyone is talking about how disastrous they were? What is this board waiting then? The weekend?? The board isn’t bullet proof and they are not god. They can fire Sam yes, it won’t stopping peo…
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.
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 Altman was fired. 4 other key people quit and it seems more will follow and join Sam's new venture. This outcome would be a disaster for Microsoft, for other OpenAI investors and for OpenAI. So the board is, per multiple sources, talking with Sam Altman to return. The board declined to comment and is free to clarify any inaccuracies.
There's no need for a spin, the board has miscalculated and got itself in a bad spot.
This suggests a plausible explanation that Altman was attempting to engineer the board’s expansion or replacement: After the events of the last 48 hours, could you blame him? In this scenario, it was a pure power struggle. The board believed they’d win by showing Altman the door, but it didn’t take long to demonstrate that their actual power to do so was limited to the de jure end of the spectrum.
If the coup fails in the end (which seems likely), it will have proved that the "nonprofit safeguard" was toothless. Depending on the board members' ideological positions, maybe that's better than nothing.