Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

681–690 of 946 posts

Re: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

#681

Post by jacquesm »

aravindgp wrote: post #331
jacquesm wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortunately no conflict of interest there. Ignore the guy behind the curtain.

In the case of a board member of OpenAI running a separate chatbot company, it would be important to consider these factors. The specifics of the situation, including the nature of both companies, the level of competition between them, and the actions taken by the board member and OpenAI to manage potential conflicts, would all play a role in determining if there is a conflict of interest. Definitely conflict of inte…

It is about as bad as it gets and given that datum I hope that D'Angelo has a very good lawyer because I think he might need that.

Re: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

#682

Post by wruza »

hooande wrote: post #530
LarsDu88 wrote: post #487

There has to be a bigger story to this. Altman took a non-profit and vacuumed up a bunch of donor money only to flip Open AI into the hottest TC style startup in the world. Then put a gas pedal to commercialization. It takes a certain type of politicking and deception to make something like that happen. Then in the past week, he's going and taking money from the Saudis on the order of billions of dollars to make AI a…

Alternative theory: ChatGPT was a runaway hit product that sucked up a lot of the organization's resources and energy. Sam and Greg wanted to roll with it and others on the board did not. They voted on it and one side won. There isn't a bigger, more interesting story here. This is in fact a very common story that plays out at many software companies. The board of openai ended up making a decision that destroyed billi…

The board of openai ended up making a decision that destroyed billions of dollars worth of brand value and good will

Maybe I’m special or something, but nothing changed to me. I always wonder why people suddenly lose “trust” in a brand, as if it was a concrete of internal relationships or something. Everyone knows that “corporate” is probably a snakepit. When it comes out to public, it’s not a sign of anything, it just came out. Assuming there was nothing like that in all the brands you love is living with your eyes closed and ears cupped. There’s no “trust” in this specific sense, because corporate and ideological conflicts happen all the time. All OAI promises are still there, afaiu. No mission statements were changed. Except Sam trying to ignore these, also afaiu. Not saying the board is politically wise, but they drove the thing all this time and that’s all that matters. Personally I’m happy they aren’t looking like political snakes (at least that is my ignorant impression for the three days I know their names).

Re: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

#683

Post by mcv »

Zolde wrote: post #594
havercosine wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naive question. In my part of the world, board meetings for such consequential decisions can never be called out on such short notice. Board meeting has to be called ahead of time by days, all the board members must be given written agenda. They have to acknowledge in writing that they've got this agenda. If the procedures such as these aren't followed, the firing cannot stand in court of law. The number of days are…

No. Apparently they had to give 48 hours notice for calling special teleconference meetings, and only Mira was notified (not a board member) and Greg was not even invited. > at least four days before any such meeting if given by first-class mail or forty-eight hours before any such meeting if given personally, [] or by electronic transmission. But the bylaws also state that a board member may be fired (or resign) at…

I don't see how this kind of reasoning can possible hold up. How can board members not be invited to such an important decision? You can't say they don't have to be there because they won't be a board member after this decision; they're still a board member before the decision has been made to remove them.

If Ilya was on the side of Sam and Greg, the other 3 never had a majority. The only explanation is that Ilya voted with the other 3, possibly under pressure, and now regrets that decision. But even then it's weird to not invite Greg.

And if the vote happened in an illegitimate way, I'd expect Sam and Greg to immediately challenge it and ignore the decision, and that didn't happen.

Re: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

#684

Post by adastra22 »

rtpg wrote: post #586
adastra22 wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well obviously that wouldn't be the explanation given to other board members. But it would be the reason he instigated this after dev day, and the reason he won't back down (OpenAI imploding? All the better).

But you would need to convince the rest of the board with _something_, right? Like to not only fire this guy, but to do it very publicly, quickly, with the declaration of lying in the announcement. There are 3 other people on the board, right? Maybe they're all buddies of some big masterminding, but I dunno..

The one thing they all have in common is being AI safetyists, which Sam is not. I’d bet it’s something to do with that.

Re: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

#685

Post by denton-scratch »

cdogl wrote: post #590
adrianN wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was Marx wrong?

> Was Marx wrong? pt. 1: Whether he was right or wrong was pertinent. You can find plenty of eminent contemporaries of Marx who claimed the opposite. My point was that this is an argument made about technological change throughout history which has become a cliché, and in my opinion it remains a cliche regardless of how eminent (in a narrow field) the person making that claim is. Part of GP was from authority, and I…

> He was also wrong about the inevitably revolutionary tendencies of the working class.

Marx's conception of the "working class" is a thing that no longer exists; it was of a mass, industrial, urban working class, held down by an exploitative capitalist class, without the modern benefits of mass education and free/subsidized health care. The inevitability of the victory of the working class was rhetoric from the Communist Manifesto; Marx did anticipate that capitalism would adapt in the face of rising worker demands. Which it did.

Re: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

#686

Post by latexr »

jll29 wrote: post #652
todd3834 wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough, I should have said, it’s my opinion that it has had a positive impact. I still think it’s easy to see them as a non profit. Even with everything they announced at AI day. Can anyone make an argument against it? Or just downvote because you don’t agree.

I think it's fair to say that after a lot of empty promises, AI research finally delivered something that can "wow" the general population, and has been demonstrated to be useful for more than an single use case. I know a law firm that tried ChatGPT to write a legal letter, and they were shocked that it use the same structure that they were told to use in law school (little surprise here, actually).

I also know of a lawyer who tried ChatGPT and was shocked by the results.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/05/lawyer-cited-6-f...

Re: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

#687

Post by osrec »

LarsDu88 wrote: post #487

There has to be a bigger story to this. Altman took a non-profit and vacuumed up a bunch of donor money only to flip Open AI into the hottest TC style startup in the world. Then put a gas pedal to commercialization. It takes a certain type of politicking and deception to make something like that happen. Then in the past week, he's going and taking money from the Saudis on the order of billions of dollars to make AI a…

What does TC style mean?

Re: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

#688

Post by [deleted] »

lolinder wrote: post #510
shandor wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m confused how the board is still keeping their radio silence 100%. Where I’m from, with a shitstorm this big raging, and the board doing nothing, they might very easily be personally held responsible for all kinds of utterly nasty legal action. Is it just different because they’re a nonprofit? Or how on earth the board is thinking they can get away with this anymore?

What specific legal action could be pursued against them where you're from? Who would have a cause for action? (I'm genuinely curious—in the US I'm not aware of any action that could be taken here by anyone besides possibly Sam Altman for libel.)

[deleted]

Re: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

#689

Post by kotxig »

If the outcome of all of this is that Altman ends up at Microsoft and hiring the vast majority of the team from OpenAI, it's probably wise to assume that this was the intended outcome all along. I don't know how else you get the talent at a company like OpenAI to willingly move to Microsoft, but this approach could end up working.

Re: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

#690

Post by sumedh »

nmfisher wrote: post #555
LMYahooTFY wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Altman took a non-profit and vacuumed up a bunch of donor money only to flip Open AI into the hottest TC style startup in the world. Then put a gas pedal to commercialization. It takes a certain type of politicking and deception to make something like that happen. What exactly is the problem here? Is a non-profit expected to exclusively help impoverished communities or something? What type of politicking and decepti…

> Is a non-profit expected to exclusively help impoverished communities or something? What type of politicking and deception is involved in creating a for profit subsidiary which is granted license to OpenAIs research in order to generate wealth? OpenAI was literally founded on the promise of keeping AGI out of the hands of “big tech companies”. The first thing that Sam Altman did when he took over was give Microsoft…

> OpenAI was literally founded on the promise of keeping AGI out of the hands of “big tech companies”.

Where does it say that?

Post reply on HN