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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

#511

Post by Clubber »

Nidhug wrote: post #364
ThinkBeat wrote: post #229

I have spent time thinking about who would become the next CEO and even without mushrooms my brain came up with a totally out of context idea: Bill Gates. Microsoft is after all invested in OpenAI, and Bill Gates has become "loved by all" (who dont remember evil Gates of the yesteryears. I am not saying it will happen, 99,999% it wont but still he is well known and may be a good face to splash on top of OpenAI. After…

Is Bill Gates really loved by all ? I feel like it was the case before COVID, but then his reputation seemed to go from loved to hated

Don't forget about his ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

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

#512

Post by aledalgrande »

fallingknife wrote: post #203
hef19898 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My last gig was with one of those wannabe Elon Musks (what wouldnI give to get wannabe Steve Jobs back). Horrible, ultimately he was ousted as CEO, only to be allowed to stay on as some head of innovation, because he and his founder buddies retained enough voting power to first get him a life time position as head of the board fir his "acievements" and then prevent his firing. They also vetoed, from ehat people told,…

> Besides getting said company to 800 people burning a sweet billion, he didn't do anything else in his life Getting a company to that size is a lot.

Not if you have 1B sitting in the bank as stated above

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

#513

Post by tim333 »

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…

If they were looking out for investors "blindsided key investor and minority owner Microsoft, reportedly making CEO Satya Nadella furious" doesn't make it sound like they did a terribly good job.

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

#514

Post by tim333 »

eganist wrote: post #406
gardenhedge wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that is fine.. but why the immediate firing, why the controversy?

The immediate firing is from our perspective. Who's to say everything else wasn't already tried in private?

Altman, Brockman and Nadella all say they didn't know in advance.

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

#515

Post by snickerbockers »

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…

>Which in turn now creates the threat that a for-profit version of OpenAI dominates the market with no higher purpose.

Is Microsoft a higher purpose?

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

#516

Post by Havoc »

> "was not made in response to malfeasance or anything related to our financial, business, safety, or security/privacy practices. This was a breakdown in communication between Sam and the board."

A breakdown in coms that took everyone by surprise? Smells like bullshit

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

#517

Post by emptysongglass »

HAL3000 wrote: post #357
threeseed wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

As someone who has orchestrated two coups in different organizations, where the leadership did not align with the organization's interests and missions, I can assure you that the final stage of such a coup is not something that can be executed after just an hour of preparation or thought. It requires months of planning. The trigger is only pulled when there is sufficient evidence or justification for such action. Bui…

How are you still hireable? If I knew you orchestrated two coups at previous companies and I was responsible for hiring, you would be radioactive to me. Especially knowing that all that effort went into putting together a successful coup over other work.

Coups, in general, are the domain of the petty. One need only look at Ilya and D'Angelo to see this in action. D'Angelo neutered Quora by pushing out its co-founder, Charlie Cheever. If you're not happy with the way a company is doing business, your best action is to walk away.

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

#518

Post by dboreham »

manicennui wrote: post #238
Draiken wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this cult of CEOs is weird. It's such a small cohort that when someone doesn't completely blow it, they're immediately deemed as geniuses. Give someone billions of dollars and hundreds of brilliant engineers, researchers and many will make it work. But only a few ever get the chance, so this happens. They don't do any of the work. They just take the credit.

A sizable portion of the HN bubble is wannabe grifters. They look up to successful grifters.

To be fair: a sizable proportion of humans are like that.

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

#519

Post by justcool393 »

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…

it's hilarious how much people for no reason, want to defend the honor of Sam Altman and co. i mean ffs, the guy is not your friend and will definitely backstab you if he gets the opportunity.

i'm surprised anyone can take this "oh woe is me i totally was excited about the future of humanity" crap seriously. these are SV investors here, morally equivalent to the people on Wall Street that a lot here would probably hold in contempt, but because they wore cargo shorts or something, everyone thinks that Sam is their friend and that just if the poor naysayers would understand that Sam is totally cool and uses lowercase in his messages just like mee!!!!

they don't give a shit that your product was "made with they don't give a shit about you.

they don't give a shit about your startup's customers.

they only give a shit about how many dollars they make from your product.

boo hooing over Sam getting fired is really pathetic, and I'd expect better from the Hacker News crowd (and more generally the rationalist crowd, which a lot of AI people tend to overlap with).

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