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Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

businessinsider.com

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Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#541

Post by dragonwriter »

Aunche wrote: post #207
akozak wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen the "coup" framing a lot I just don't see how that's justified. They're the board of directors! Hiring and firing the CEO is core to the job (as is maintaining mission alignment, in the nonprofit world).

It's very unusual to vote to fire a CEO without all members being present. Doing so made it seem like they were stabbing him in the back

> It's very unusual to vote to fire a CEO without all members being present.

It's not unusual to exclude people with conflicts from a decision. That's a typical part of a corporate conflict of interest policy, and for a charity nonprofit board (as the OpenAI board is) it's even more critical, since failute to do so risks the tax-exempt status.

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#542

Post by ignoramous »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #535
n2d4 wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's likely that Ilya didn't think the launch was anything notable: https://www.businessinsider.com/chatgpt-was-inaccurate-borin...

One of my most valuable memories is when I dismissed ChatGPT the day it came out. I didn't bother trying it; GPTs were just autocomplete, and OpenAI had already stretched the limits of what autocomplete could do, so this ChatGPT would just be slightly better autocomplete. Much like pg dismissing Facebook as lame when it first launched, I was exponentially mistaken: https://paulgraham.com/swan.html > History tends to…

> One of my most valuable memories is when I dismissed ChatGPT the day it came out.

Some were primed to do so by Meta's Galactica: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33611265

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#543

Post by tarsinge »

mike_hearn wrote: post #530
smackay wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's Gwynne Shotwell, COO of SpaceX, who makes the rockets fly.

And yet Shotwell didn't create SpaceX, define its mission, establish its products, create Starlink or recruit the core team. Musk did all of that and tons more as well. It's fascinating how nobody was making this claim of a non-technical Musk up until the moment he stopped being loyal to one particular wing of US politics. Now we see a concerted effort to diminish his achievements. Do you people really think this wil…

He is diminishing his achievements all by myself on Twitter. Like before there was doubts he was technical. Now it's clear he is not and was acting (at least regarding software). If Steve Jobs was claiming he also did the iPhone engineering don't you think people would challenge that? He lies, he gets caught up, that's it. Look at his recent exchange with LeCun, is it really politics or has he simply too much ego and lost touch and people are calling it?

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#544

Post by dragonwriter »

fastball wrote: post #133
akozak wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen the "coup" framing a lot I just don't see how that's justified. They're the board of directors! Hiring and firing the CEO is core to the job (as is maintaining mission alignment, in the nonprofit world).

I think the "coup" framing is supported at least by Helen Toner's claims in this article. > "We were very careful, very deliberate about who we told, which was essentially almost no one in advance, other than obviously our legal team and so that's kind of what took us to to November 17." If that doesn't sound like a secret coup, I don't know what does. Like, yes, it is their job to hire and fire the CEO so it's not r…

So, they observed the ususl confidentiality of personnel matters and didn't discuss them with people off the board or conflicted out of the decision? Any thing else would have been grossly unprofessional and irresponsible.

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#545

Post by sackfield »

Havoc wrote: post #512

> [W]hen ChatGPT came out November 2022, the board was not informed in advance. We learned about ChatGPT on Twitter,” Jikes. Yeah I can see how a board would lose their sht. Boards are generally quite tolerant unless you keep them in the dark on strategic matters or ask them to rubber stamp stuff post fact.

I would be thrilled, if I were board member I would want the organisation to succeed and ChatGPT can't be described as anything other than an unmitigated success. I wouldn't feel the need to make myself the main character of the story and act like my permission was required for innovation. But that's just me.

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#547

Post by tarsinge »

thelastgallon wrote: post #380
thaumaturgy wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it might be time to turn back the clock a bit and revisit some of the things pg said way back when he was pitching Sam Altman to lead YC and the general reaction was "...who?" 2008: "You could parachute [Sam Altman] into an island full of cannibals and come back in 5 years and he'd be the king. If you're Sam Altman, you don't have to be profitable to convey to investors that you'll succeed with or without the…

> I'm more interested in whether Altman, and Musk, and Zuckerberg, and Bezos, and Ellison, and all the other amoral wealth-hoarders, are finally becoming obvious enough now that people might finally begin to see them as the yucky byproducts of a yucky system. One of them doesn't belong on the list. Fossil fuel and legacy automobile companies killed EVs[1][2], bought all the battery patents and made sure there were no…

You are missing the point I think. The problem with individuals in the initial list is they were presented as models. The point is they are not some forces of good as it was claimed they were (along Tech / SV culture). That you need to compare them to fossil fuel princes really highlights how low they have fallen.

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#548

Post by KptMarchewa »

ZiiS wrote: post #513
jfoster wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen this mentioned a few times, but is this true? I could swear I've heard him mention that he uses ChatGPT for programming stuff. He might not be a super technical software engineer, but is he "non-technical" in that he can't even write some simple python or something equivalent?

He did two years computer science at Stanford before dropping out. I don't think "simple python" is the benchmark.

So, probably epitome of Dunning-Kruger.

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#549

Post by insane_dreamer »

fastball wrote: post #519
fnordpiglet wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When a board is about to fire a CEO do you think they typically discuss it publicly first? It’s usually treated as highly sensitive information at every company. Likewise if any company is about to fire anyone they also don’t typically advertise this to anyone other than HR, legal, and maybe the manager. For the CEO the manager -is- the board. I’d be curious if you believe differently how you feel boards usually adve…

Who said publicly? There is a lot of room between "discuss publicly" and "We were very careful, very deliberate about who we told, which was essentially almost no one in advance". For example, a lot of the pressure that caused them to reverse course came from Microsoft. Maybe if the board had discussed such a big decision without OpenAI's biggest investor, Microsoft would've been on board with the firing.

Who would they be telling? Board members don’t and shouldn’t discuss matters with employees. Please show me the case where employees were told in advance that the board was going to fire the CEO.
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