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OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

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Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#631

- Cant be a personal scandal, press release would be worded much more differently - Board is mostly independent and those independent dont have equity - They talk about not being candid - this is legalese for “lying” The only major thing that could warrant something like this is Sam going behind the boards back to make a decision (or make progress on a decision) that is misaligned with the Charter. Thats the only fir…

Doesn’t make any sense. He is ideologically driven - why would he risk a once in a lifetime opportunity for a mere sale? Desperate times calls for desperate measures. This is a swift way for OpenAI to shield the business from something which is a PR disaster, probably something which would make Sam persona non grata in any business context.

Same guy who ran a crypto scam that somehow involved scanning the retinas of third-world citizens?

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#632
post #575

Not surprised. This summer I had a conversation with a senior staffer at OpenAI who had smoke coming from his ears due to Sam's incompetence. Contrary to his public image, he doesn't have the skillset of a CEO. He was a failed founder who was hired to head YC because he's smart and likeable. He was in a similar role at AI - a brainy media mouthpiece. Real work being done by senior staff. OpenAI's massive scale-up req…

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Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#633

It doesn't take a genius to figure out they are losing stupid amounts of money, with no major plan to recoup their investments. Board probably took a look at updated burn-rate projections, saw that they have 6 months of runway, saw that they don't have enough GPUs, saw that Llama and Mistral and whatever other open-source models are awesome and run on personal computers, and thought to themselves - why the hell are w…

Try using Mistral, Lama first then see if your statement is true.

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#636

- Cant be a personal scandal, press release would be worded much more differently - Board is mostly independent and those independent dont have equity - They talk about not being candid - this is legalese for “lying” The only major thing that could warrant something like this is Sam going behind the boards back to make a decision (or make progress on a decision) that is misaligned with the Charter. Thats the only fir…

On lying: There's a great irony here. Altman apparently accepted[1] "Hawking Fellowship Award on behalf of OpenAI" at the University of Cambridge.

I kid you not, sitting in a fancy seat, Altman is talking about "Platonic ideals". See the penultimate question on whether AI should be prescriptive or descriptive about human rights (around 1h 35sec mark). I'll let you decide what to make of it.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjpNG0CJRMM&t=3632s

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#637
> not consistently candid in his communications

We expect him to lie whenever the board thinks it's necessary and we expect him to tell the truth whenever it fits the narrative.

We also expect him to play along, even when some feature is too freaking powerful or so fucking pathetic it would only make marketing people and influencers drop their panties and write 15.000 fucking newsletters about it because PR.

The company is about money and he simply didn't prioritize that. He tried to blow it up, exalted, exaggerated, trying to make people aware of the fact that OpenAI has no edge on the competition at all.

There are so many options and OpenAI got waaaaaaay too much attention.

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#640
Considering the timing around APEC I think it's quite reasonable to suspect he met with high-ranking officials of some "hostile" government and made some promises or deals that the board was very unhappy with or that may have even veered into national security concerns.
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