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

I see signs of Toner trying to spin things.

“for years, Sam had made it really difficult for the board to actually do that job by withholding information, misrepresenting things that were happening at the company, in some cases outright lying to the board … [Altman gave] inaccurate information about the small number of formal safety processes that the company did have in place … For any individual case, Sam could always come up with some kind of innocuous-sounding explanation of why it wasn’t a big deal, or misinterpreted, or whatever … But the end effect was that after years of this kind of thing, all four of us who fired him came to the conclusion that we just couldn’t believe things that Sam was telling us, and that’s just a completely unworkable place to be in as a board”

Thoughts:

- The claim that this had been going on for years is presented as support for the decision to oust Sam. This is a spin, because an easy criticism is that, if this had been going on for so long, why didn’t Toner do anything about it years sooner? As she says herself, quoted in one of the other near-duplicate articles, all along she had been responsible as a board member for “providing independent oversight over the company,” so there was a years-long lapse in effectiveness in her oversight duties if her claims are true.

- The emphasis on “all four of us who fired him” is an attempt to provide social proof that she did the reasonable thing. It’s a description of the board’s behavior rather than explaining Sam’s — the ostensible purpose of the article — so it’s rhetoric serving some other purpose.

I never put words in your mouth or arbitrarily assigned more authority to one person or another in this thread. You did.

I provided sound, legal, cited arguments for the case that Palestinians are being genocided by Israel. You waved your hands and suggested that somehow, they're actually the ones doing the genociding, but you did literally nothing to back your argument other than try to piggy back on mine with nothing more than what looks to me to be the equivalent of an "I'm rubber, you're glue."

You called nations "unserious and wrong" because you apparently have an ideological disagreement with them. No consideration for their position, no desire to find out why many entire countries are calling what's happening a genocide, just: they're wrong. No reason for why, no counter argument, nothing. I would have expected you to at least try to take a geopolitical analysis along the lines of certain nations, like the PRC, may bandwagon just out of a desire to reduce American hegemony, but you didn't even do that, because you apparently have no respect for people you disagree with.

This whole conversation you've acted morally and intellectually superior to me and capped with a final condescension, in the meantime your words matched your accusations towards me. You have been unserious, you've been fallacious, you've been wrong, you've been utterly tribalist.

> You said that their goal is genocide, which is the unserious claim.

If, maybe after five years, you ever happen to stumble across this old thread, or remember the "horeshit unserious person" you briefly condescended to, I genuinely, truly would love to hear your thoughts on how you felt mocking those calling out the genocide of Palestinians as it happened, in the future as the whole horror of what's occuring has percolated through the global consciousness. I don't suggest people will ever stop trying to justify it, however I'm very curious what your personal feelings would be if future you reflects on your utterly callous dismissal of genocide. My personal email is caleb@calebjay.com, I've never shared that on this forum, and I'm genuinely interested on hearing from you in the future, I will do so without judgement.

I feel bad for dang in all this

Is like the worst situation for him where despite there really being no causal connection between hacker news and Sam Altman in any kind of functional way, the reality of the connections and the Zeitgeist of the this moment, makes this topic continue to rise to the top and has dominated over the last, let’s say a couple weeks

In an odd way because of how close this community is to all this stuff, it’s almost exacerbated by it

So while dang is trying to keep the community moving, there’s a risk of looking opinionated in favor for the associated parties.

So he’s really stuck here honestly, it’s a really interesting set of circumstances happening right now on this forum given all of this

That’s not to say it’s not a topic that we should stop highlighting or discussing - i’ve been very excited to see the shift in sentiment, just over the last couple months towards way more pro social ideas. And holding bad accountable and making argumentation for it is a good thing imo

> Can't be toxic culture if everyone wants to work there

Some counterarguments:

1) this only works if information flows out of the organization, but OpenAI has used NDAs to suppress criticism

2) OpenAI seems to me to polarize the people with the technical skills to work there, I think I'd bet that more of them are creeped out than eager

3) people, especially young people, are very capable of believing that being a jerk is the same as being hardcore is the same as being valuable

The answer is simple: the single most valuable asset at OpenAI appears to be Altman bullshitting about science fiction AI, and nothing else. When he disappear, value plumetted, partners evaporated, clients stopped paying, competitors rushed to hire him, etc.

It's like Elon 'Electric Jesus' Musk, without him, they're just selling shitty cars nobody quite like. So he can get paid more than all profit Tesla ever made, because without him, there would be 0 profit anyway.

Talk to Tesla owners: they are surprised by how shit the car is, but they feel like mini Elons. That's probably similar at OpenAI ?