> Microsoft, which has invested billions in OpenAI, learned that OpenAI was ousting CEO Sam Altman just a minute before the news was shared with the world, according to a person familiar with the situation.
Well this probably disproves the theory that it was a power grab by Microsoft. It didn’t make too much sense anyway since they already have access to tech behind GPT and Microsoft doesn’t necessarily need the clout behind the OpenAI brand.
The "coup by MSFT" conspiracy theory made no sense. Microsoft has an insanely good deal with OpenAI:
* Exclusive access to resell OpenAI's technology and keep nearly all of that revenue for themselves, both cloud and services
* Receive 75% of OpenAI's profits up to $1 trillion
All they had to do is not rock the boat and let the golden goose keep laying eggs. A massive disruption like this, so soon after DevDay would not fit that strategy.
My guess at this point is financial malfeasance, either failing to present a deal to the board or OpenAI has been in financial straits and he was covering it up.
OpenAI shouldn't even be making a profit, as it's a 501(c)3 charity. The whole umbrella for-profit corp they formed when they became popular should be illegal, and is clearly immoral.
This is probably a dumb question, but what are some specific scenarios of financial malfeasance that could’ve taken place? Like Altman stealing money from OpenAI?
Through the public actions of Sam Altman in various places like the US congress it has become rather clear that his goals are to device and fear monger to create an environment of regulatory capture where due to misguided laws OpenAI will have an unfair competitive advantage.
This might be quite in line with what Microsoft tends to like. But it also can be a risk for MS if regulation goes even a step further.
This is also in direct opposition with the goals OpenAI set themself and which some of the other investors might have.
So MS being informed last minute to not give them any chance to change that decision is quite understandable.
At the same time it might have been pushed under the table by people in MS which where worried it poses to much risk, but which maybe e.g. might need an excuse why they didn't stop it.
Lastly is the question why Sam Altman acted the way he did. The simplest case is greed for money and power, in which case it would be worrying for business partners at how bad he was when it comes to public statements not making him look like a manipulative untranslatable **. The more complex case would be some twisted believe that a artificial pseudo monopoly is needed "because only they [OpenAI] can do it in the right way and other would be a risk". In that case he would be an ideologically driven person with a seriously twisted perception of reality, i.e. the kind of people you don't want to do large scale business with because they are too unpredictable and can generally not be trusted. Naturally there are also a lot of other options.
But one thing I'm sure about is that many AI researchers and companies doing AI products did not trust the person Sam Altman at all after his recent actions, so ousting him and installing a different CEO should help increasing trust into OpenAI.
Completely disagree. Right now they're not much more than a fancy reseller of OpenAI's technology. The real prize would be exclusivity and control of the roadmap.
Buying them (or getting de facto control) is clearly an easier way to achieve that, vs. replicating the technology in-house.
IMO this is the most important part of Nadella's blog post:
> Most importantly, we’re committed to delivering all of this to our customers while building for the future.
It's curious to me that they see the departure of Sam Altman as a reason to remind us that they are "building for the future" (which I take to mean: working toward independence from OpenAI). I think it actually lends credence to the theory that this was a failed power grab of some sort.
You can't be serious. You think that Microsoft themselves saying they didn't know DISPROVES that it was a covert power grab by them? Have you heard of "lying"?
In my opinion, I'd say the shortness and lack of details backs up the story that they had no idea. You'd see way more words if a marketing department had it's hands on something like this. This was 100% a get something out asap job.
Just for once I’d like to see such a statement look like, “You sheep probably want a comment on today’s news. We’re not doing that. We’re just content to buy up all the shares you’re panic-dumping. Looking forward to flipping them back to you next week when you panic in the other direction.”
(Assuming they have some plan that gives them the flexibility to trade shares directly on the market like that. I think $GME had something like this?)
It began the day up 54.75% YTD and ended the day up 50.6% YTD. They've had single-day downswings as large or larger like 30 times this year alone. Microsoft is fine.
Copying what was posted here in case they update or change it:
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A statement from Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella
Nov 17, 2023 | Microsoft Corporate Blogs
As you saw at Microsoft Ignite this week, we’re continuing to rapidly innovate for this era of AI, with over 100 announcements across the full tech stack from AI systems, models, and tools in Azure, to Copilot. Most importantly, we’re committed to delivering all of this to our customers while building for the future. We have a long-term agreement with OpenAI with full access to everything we need to deliver on our innovation agenda and an exciting product roadmap; and remain committed to our partnership, and to Mira and the team. Together, we will continue to deliver the meaningful benefits of this technology to the world.
What would make you think a marketing department would potentially be involved here? Besides the obvious Marketing = Bad connection prevalent here on HN?
I don’t see any verbiage that implies Microsoft had no idea. If Microsoft was the aggressor, of course they would play dumb and disclose as little as possible.
If anything this is a power grab by the board away from Microsoft. Optimistically, this could be an attempt to return OpenAI to its original status as a true non-profit company. OpenAI lost most of its openness under Sam.
They needed the Microsoft investment before GPT scaling was proven out. I imagine many entities would be willing to put money into a truly open research lab given OpenAI’s track record.
The focus on openness was literally how the board ended their statement on firing Altman.
And then Greg being all "committed to safety" in his resignation statement makes me think this was a conflict between being an open OpenAI with global research or being closed and proprietary in the name of safety.
I almost think its too late at this point, unless they have one hell of an arc. I don't see them being "open" until MS is totally out of the picture. I honestly don't even hate OpenAI in its current state... but sitting on the fence, trying to be both "open" and attached at the hip to MS is just... odd.
I’d try to get to the source of the compute, partner with AMD and Nvidia to build out DCs architected from the ground up to train and serve LLM’s. Get rid of Microsoft…
> put money into a truly open research lab given OpenAI’s track record.
Why? It’s hard to imagine anyone putting any significant amounts of money (in comparison to the MS deal anyway) without any exclusivity rights at least
OpenAI has the most capable language model in the world, that’s bordering on a national security asset. I could see the US government stepping in to provide funding.
There are now 4 people left in the OpenAI non-profit board, after the ouster of both Sam and Greg today. 3 of the 4 remaining are virtual unknowns, and they control the fate of OpenAI, both the non-profit and the for-profit. Insane.
What's with the lowercase? I think it's cute if someone is being deliberately low-effort, or trying to present that way, but IMO it's cringe to use it for consequential official statements like this.
> but IMO it's cringe to use it for consequential official statements like this
This is funny to me, as Twitter is the platform for "deliberately low-effort" posts, but you see it as a platform for official statements. How times change...
I'm often stunned by how casually and poorly executives write. The more rich and powerful they are, the worse it seems to be. I guess things like proper capitalization, punctuation, full sentences, etc. aren't worth their time, and people will hang on every word that they write anyway.
Eventually being maybe 5+ years to build out the cloud tech to do so. The reason GPT-4 succeeded is massive RDMA+GPU compute clusters for training the model.
I sense a Netflix documentary is already in the works!
But seriously, this muddies the water even more. I assumed the Microsoft deal being based on some false pretense was the reason this was all happening. I guess that could still be true and the board is trying to protect themselves from whatever else is about to come out.
I wonder if this is one of those pivotal moments in history where OpenAI collapses or fades and Google or someone else dominates the future of AI, and we’re all left wondering “what if”.
Unless Google (or someone else) outright acquires GPT4 and future GPT research, it's unlikely that someone will suddenly overtake OpenAI. From what we've seen, no one is close to GPT4, sometimes not even GPT3.
Well, it doesn't have to be as good as GPT4. I've gotten a ton of use/power out of a local llama model. Even GPT3 was "good enough" for a lot of tasks. I mostly use ChatGPT because its the most convenient.
OpenAI has pretty much the "best" model and first mover advantage. They can lose the latter, and might struggle to keep the former.
I don't know if this is true at all but I read another comment as to mean that Microsoft basically has legal rights to fork ChatGPT. In that case if OpenAI dies maybe they'll just be relieved that the power dynamics got simpler.
Not really the money but expected return on the money from all these features being rolled out. You can 100% bet there was major estimations made on return on investment. Everything they are releasing has some AI magic on it now. The last thing you want to see is chaos in a company you're betting the farm on.
>I'd argue this is signaling they have the IP / source code / models / etc.
I think that just signals that they have a firm business agreement with OAI regardless of what Altman might be doing.
with a product like chatGPT, especially given the nature of how it has been presented thus far (our servers, our API, your account on those servers) , it seems extraordinarily dangerous to treat it like a common partnership agreement.
Readit News
Well this probably disproves the theory that it was a power grab by Microsoft. It didn’t make too much sense anyway since they already have access to tech behind GPT and Microsoft doesn’t necessarily need the clout behind the OpenAI brand.
My guess at this point is financial malfeasance, either failing to present a deal to the board or OpenAI has been in financial straits and he was covering it up.
Deleted Comment
Through the public actions of Sam Altman in various places like the US congress it has become rather clear that his goals are to device and fear monger to create an environment of regulatory capture where due to misguided laws OpenAI will have an unfair competitive advantage.
This might be quite in line with what Microsoft tends to like. But it also can be a risk for MS if regulation goes even a step further.
This is also in direct opposition with the goals OpenAI set themself and which some of the other investors might have.
So MS being informed last minute to not give them any chance to change that decision is quite understandable.
At the same time it might have been pushed under the table by people in MS which where worried it poses to much risk, but which maybe e.g. might need an excuse why they didn't stop it.
Lastly is the question why Sam Altman acted the way he did. The simplest case is greed for money and power, in which case it would be worrying for business partners at how bad he was when it comes to public statements not making him look like a manipulative untranslatable **. The more complex case would be some twisted believe that a artificial pseudo monopoly is needed "because only they [OpenAI] can do it in the right way and other would be a risk". In that case he would be an ideologically driven person with a seriously twisted perception of reality, i.e. the kind of people you don't want to do large scale business with because they are too unpredictable and can generally not be trusted. Naturally there are also a lot of other options.
But one thing I'm sure about is that many AI researchers and companies doing AI products did not trust the person Sam Altman at all after his recent actions, so ousting him and installing a different CEO should help increasing trust into OpenAI.
Buying them (or getting de facto control) is clearly an easier way to achieve that, vs. replicating the technology in-house.
IMO this is the most important part of Nadella's blog post:
> Most importantly, we’re committed to delivering all of this to our customers while building for the future.
It's curious to me that they see the departure of Sam Altman as a reason to remind us that they are "building for the future" (which I take to mean: working toward independence from OpenAI). I think it actually lends credence to the theory that this was a failed power grab of some sort.
Maybe almost had to since it was during market hours.
Deleted Comment
I'm not saying I think it WAS that, but come on.
In my opinion, I'd say the shortness and lack of details backs up the story that they had no idea. You'd see way more words if a marketing department had it's hands on something like this. This was 100% a get something out asap job.
(Assuming they have some plan that gives them the flexibility to trade shares directly on the market like that. I think $GME had something like this?)
Edit: And, of course, actually mean it, unlike Caroline Ellison and the $22 FTT: https://twitter.com/carolinecapital/status/15892874579753041...
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A statement from Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella Nov 17, 2023 | Microsoft Corporate Blogs
As you saw at Microsoft Ignite this week, we’re continuing to rapidly innovate for this era of AI, with over 100 announcements across the full tech stack from AI systems, models, and tools in Azure, to Copilot. Most importantly, we’re committed to delivering all of this to our customers while building for the future. We have a long-term agreement with OpenAI with full access to everything we need to deliver on our innovation agenda and an exciting product roadmap; and remain committed to our partnership, and to Mira and the team. Together, we will continue to deliver the meaningful benefits of this technology to the world.
Deleted Comment
They needed the Microsoft investment before GPT scaling was proven out. I imagine many entities would be willing to put money into a truly open research lab given OpenAI’s track record.
And then Greg being all "committed to safety" in his resignation statement makes me think this was a conflict between being an open OpenAI with global research or being closed and proprietary in the name of safety.
OpenAI (the board that made this decision) is still ultimately a non-profit, so it's possible that interests might not be aligned.
OpenAI’s biggest customer and investor starts buying AMD chips and simultaneously building their own chips
there are a lot of ignorable cracks in the armor that support any number of theories
let alone Altman himself, who knows
Why? It’s hard to imagine anyone putting any significant amounts of money (in comparison to the MS deal anyway) without any exclusivity rights at least
They 100% have leverage to exert influence on both, it’s just bad PR if word gets out.
This is funny to me, as Twitter is the platform for "deliberately low-effort" posts, but you see it as a platform for official statements. How times change...
But seriously, this muddies the water even more. I assumed the Microsoft deal being based on some false pretense was the reason this was all happening. I guess that could still be true and the board is trying to protect themselves from whatever else is about to come out.
OpenAI has pretty much the "best" model and first mover advantage. They can lose the latter, and might struggle to keep the former.
Deleted Comment
They just ended Ignite, their huge IT conference - and have revealed baking GPT into EVERYTHING they do. Everything.
The closing keynote was the massive engineering effort put in to running LLMs at scale - for MS themselves and customers.
MS is all in on GPT, including releasing a no code and low code custom GPT builder for orgs this week.
“we’re committed to delivering all of this to our customers ... We have ... full access to everything we need to deliver on our innovation agenda...”
I'd argue this is signaling they have the IP / source code / models / etc.
(Which, for what it's worth, is common in substantial partnership agreements.)
I think that just signals that they have a firm business agreement with OAI regardless of what Altman might be doing.
with a product like chatGPT, especially given the nature of how it has been presented thus far (our servers, our API, your account on those servers) , it seems extraordinarily dangerous to treat it like a common partnership agreement.