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OpenAI investors keep pushing for Sam Altman’s return

wsj.com

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Re: OpenAI investors keep pushing for Sam Altman’s return

#81

Post by gjsman-1000 »

himaraya wrote: post #78
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Stratechery, Microsoft does not just have the rights to use the source code and model weights for GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, but a clause saying that Microsoft could not use the models as foundations for their own projects was recently removed. > Investors have no reason to worry about their investment in the tech. If Stratechery is correct, this means that if Microsoft successfully poaches Sam Altman and friend…

Source? Ben didn't read his cited source in his article yesterday.

Currently, the claim is unproven. However, if I were an investor, I'd be pounding on the doors demanding for clarification.

Re: OpenAI investors keep pushing for Sam Altman’s return

#82

Post by himaraya »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #81
himaraya wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source? Ben didn't read his cited source in his article yesterday.

Currently, the claim is unproven. However, if I were an investor, I'd be pounding on the doors demanding for clarification.

I meant, can you link the claim that the clause in question got removed?

Re: OpenAI investors keep pushing for Sam Altman’s return

#83

Post by 15457345234 »

righthand wrote: post #74
15457345234 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I, as an investor would love such a company, as long as I was sure that the CEO would stay. As an investor you have no way of obtaining that surety. So, you would not love this company. > But the better interpretation is that the people there have said "we are not loyal to the board" rather than that they are more loyal to Altman Dude they're retweeting heart emojis and carrying water in _the most disturbing_ fashi…

That will last until Sam gives up and drops them all when he moves on to whatever he’s doing next. They may be dogmatic about it but it’s only because they think they have cards to play.

It's giving me real Jim Jones vibes, to be honest. It's incredibly weird behaviour.

Re: OpenAI investors keep pushing for Sam Altman’s return

#84

Post by righthand »

3cats-in-a-coat wrote: post #75
righthand wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? The board announced the removal of a CEO which they have the power to do. It upset a bunch of employees who liked the CEO. The board is in search of a new CEO. OpenAI’s valuation isn’t because Sam Altman is worth $90B it’s the tech. The tech is fine. Investors have no reason to worry about their investment in the tech. The people under pressure are Sam Altman trying to reclaim his job he was fired from and Satya…

"It upset a bunch of employees. The tech is fine". Uhmm, it upset 98% (not figuratively, but mathematically) of all 700 employees who signed a petition to quit unless he's reinstated and for the board to resign. As for the tech... who... exactly do you think created, maintains and is developing future enhancement for the tech? Is it doing it by itself? Sorry, we're not there yet .

> Uhmm, it upset 98% (not figuratively, but mathematically) of all 700 employees who signed a petition to quit unless he's reinstated and for the board to resign.

And they have yet to leave as far as I know. Seems like no one is in an actual hurry to quit.

Re: OpenAI investors keep pushing for Sam Altman’s return

#85

Post by thinkindie »

righthand wrote: post #65
flappyeagle wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These words are gonna get ate one way or another. There is no outcome where the current board wins. Emmet is already threatening the board with resignation unless they provide evidence of wrongdoing [1]. Which they don't have, because they would have revealed it already. They are empty shirts. [1] https://x.com/emilychangtv/status/1727020834005700914?s=20

Why? The board announced the removal of a CEO which they have the power to do. It upset a bunch of employees who liked the CEO. The board is in search of a new CEO. OpenAI’s valuation isn’t because Sam Altman is worth $90B it’s the tech. The tech is fine. Investors have no reason to worry about their investment in the tech. The people under pressure are Sam Altman trying to reclaim his job he was fired from and Satya…

Technology is not made out of thin air but it is made - and maintained - by people; and when 500 out of 700 people threaten to quit on the spot and leave for competitors, or for Microsoft, investors might not be happy at all.

Re: OpenAI investors keep pushing for Sam Altman’s return

#86

Post by spamizbad »

3cats-in-a-coat wrote: post #75
righthand wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? The board announced the removal of a CEO which they have the power to do. It upset a bunch of employees who liked the CEO. The board is in search of a new CEO. OpenAI’s valuation isn’t because Sam Altman is worth $90B it’s the tech. The tech is fine. Investors have no reason to worry about their investment in the tech. The people under pressure are Sam Altman trying to reclaim his job he was fired from and Satya…

"It upset a bunch of employees. The tech is fine". Uhmm, it upset 98% (not figuratively, but mathematically) of all 700 employees who signed a petition to quit unless he's reinstated and for the board to resign. As for the tech... who... exactly do you think created, maintains and is developing future enhancement for the tech? Is it doing it by itself? Sorry, we're not there yet .

I think one lesson we learned from Twitter is that you can cull a large amount of a tech workforce and the product will keep humming along, albeit at a reduced rate of change.

Also, unlike Twitter, OpenAI pays engineers very competitive salaries and can aggressively re-hire roles.

Re: OpenAI investors keep pushing for Sam Altman’s return

#87

Post by gjsman-1000 »

himaraya wrote: post #82
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently, the claim is unproven. However, if I were an investor, I'd be pounding on the doors demanding for clarification.

I meant, can you link the claim that the clause in question got removed?

https://stratechery.com/2023/openais-misalignment-and-micros...

"Microsoft’s original agreement with OpenAI also barred Microsoft from pursuing AGI based on OpenAI tech on its own; my understanding is that this clause was removed in the most recent agreement."

(It's hidden under a citation bubble you need to click after the third paragraph.)

Re: OpenAI investors keep pushing for Sam Altman’s return

#88

Post by flappyeagle »

righthand wrote: post #65
flappyeagle wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These words are gonna get ate one way or another. There is no outcome where the current board wins. Emmet is already threatening the board with resignation unless they provide evidence of wrongdoing [1]. Which they don't have, because they would have revealed it already. They are empty shirts. [1] https://x.com/emilychangtv/status/1727020834005700914?s=20

Why? The board announced the removal of a CEO which they have the power to do. It upset a bunch of employees who liked the CEO. The board is in search of a new CEO. OpenAI’s valuation isn’t because Sam Altman is worth $90B it’s the tech. The tech is fine. Investors have no reason to worry about their investment in the tech. The people under pressure are Sam Altman trying to reclaim his job he was fired from and Satya…

> The board announced the removal of a CEO which they have the power to do.

They have the power to remove him momentarily, do they have the power to keep him out? we're still finding out.

> OpenAI’s valuation isn’t because Sam Altman is worth $90B it’s the tech.

OpenAI's valuation is nominally because of the tech. It's fundamentally because of the people. 90% of the staff is threatening to follow Sam to $MS so that's the whole ball game. They went to OpenAI to make themselves rich. The board fired the guy that was trying to do that for them.

> I was sad when my favorite pet died too, but then eventually you get a new pet that’s just as good as a Worldcoin guy, maybe better.

Doesn't matter if you or I am sad. It only matters if the talent at OpenAI is sad. The board made them sad. Sam and Sataya make them happy.

Re: OpenAI investors keep pushing for Sam Altman’s return

#89

Post by 3cats-in-a-coat »

righthand wrote: post #84
3cats-in-a-coat wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It upset a bunch of employees. The tech is fine". Uhmm, it upset 98% (not figuratively, but mathematically) of all 700 employees who signed a petition to quit unless he's reinstated and for the board to resign. As for the tech... who... exactly do you think created, maintains and is developing future enhancement for the tech? Is it doing it by itself? Sorry, we're not there yet .

> Uhmm, it upset 98% (not figuratively, but mathematically) of all 700 employees who signed a petition to quit unless he's reinstated and for the board to resign. And they have yet to leave as far as I know. Seems like no one is in an actual hurry to quit.

Sam Altman is currently talking to the board. You want them to spin up drama by quitting in the middle of the talks? You're trying too hard to copy paste your desired narrative on this and it fits so, so, so poorly.

Re: OpenAI investors keep pushing for Sam Altman’s return

#90

Post by agloe_dreams »

startupsfail wrote: post #31

I would call for an attempt to restore the nonprofit structure and the board, using a CA government intervention that regulates nonprofits. Sam Altman certainly was very perceptive - https://blog.samaltman.com/machine-intelligence-part-1 But it does seem that the concentration of power was getting a bit high. And the fact that the nonprofit that was created to balance exactly that had disintegrated is not a good sign…

This is not a structure that will actually work in the real world and everyone involved knows it.

Why? Because the profit half is why the non-profit would ever have power.

If the company is led to slow progress down or reduce profit motivations, other companies will fill that gap and the non-profit doesnt have power over AI anymore.

To be the source of AI, to control it, means to have the money to pay the best, to build the sort of place that AI dev can thrive. Only then can you control what gets out there. This will lead a rift between the pro-profit and non-profit halves and when the investors and clients get limited by the nonprofits, they will work to kill the non-profit. This is what reality, not dream company world, looks like. Might I add, the board was stacked from the start. They have a competitor on the board regulating the profit half. Few if any of them are actually respectable or successful leaders.

This ends with the Board gone and replaced with one pro-profit for MS, or MS holding all the cards internally. No version of this actually will work long-term and it never would. People inventing it thought they could make a dream company of sorts with no downsides, just non-profit smarts running a profitable company...but it isn't a balanced system. The money wins out.

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