Or maybe it involves a deal that they're stuck with, and now dependent upon, even if the terms aren't aligned well with the non-profit. Saying that could be awkward.
What I can't guess at explanations for is publicly stating the not-consistently-candid in the initial announcement. I'm not expert on these things, but that sounds to me like either a euphemism for something that they needed to be seen as explicitly distancing the company from ASAP or a blunder that a lawyer or PR person would've advised them not to do, and which they didn't need to do.
If you were in this position and had even a sliver of defensibility to play, you would have already played it.
Because the longer this goes, the more sharks circle and the less likely OpenAI's survival becomes.
(UNLESS you thought you f---ed up and wanted Altman back so you want to be nice to him. But if you wanted that, you wouldn't have hired Shear as interim CEO to replace your previous interim CEO.)
My first thought was that it's not defensible because it's a desired outcome and this route avoids either negative press or another consequence of him leaving of his own volition.
Why? It should be obvious: power. But that also means that it doesn't matter what they say, because they'll lie to conceal that this was really a power play, driven by petty looking rivalries.
(Was) a hundred billion dollar rocketship, pioneering the future. That this is only the first such palace intrigue we've seen is surprising.
The root of the problem seems to lie in the challenges of growth and the accompanying pressures. The issues we've observed in the past week are likely tied to weak or ineffective leadership. This isn't just about leading developers or the technical team; it's about leadership at every level within the company. If leadership were strong and clear, I doubt these issues would have arisen.
It's like whenever there is a power vacuum, all the possible contenders compete and there's chaos. The existence of chaos suggests at least that there's a power vacuum at the top. Similar to when big leaders throughout history died, their children/lieutenants then fought and caused civil wars (e.g Mongols).
But while a leader is strong, there can be stability. Take, for instance, Facebook during its initial growth phase. Despite facing intense pressure from various quarters, it never descended into chaos or disarray. This stability could be attributed to a robust board, or perhaps to Mark Zuckerberg's leadership effectiveness. Whatever your opinion of him, his leadership across all levels of the company and on the board seemed to prevent competing interests from creating chaos.
This situation also underscores the importance of selecting the right people for the board. It's not just about finding smart individuals who look good on paper or focusing on trendy topics like AI ethics. The board members need a deep understanding of startups and business. Maybe the current board's inexperience and theoretical approach are issues. It could be that they are too young or resemble a vanity board more than an effective one.
However, we can't place all the blame on the board. Strong, clear, and effective leadership at the top is crucial. Sam Altman might excel in many areas, but perhaps what's needed is a leader like Zuckerberg at Facebook (and perhaps a similar leadership structure, too), or current-era Musk, someone who could have possibly prevented these problems.
> It should be obvious: power. But that also means that it doesn't matter what they say, because they'll lie to conceal that this was really a power play, driven by petty looking rivalries.
Am I the only one who finds these kinds of explanations unconvincing? I don't think anyone knows precisely what was going through Sutskever's mind on Friday, but whenever the best explanation people have for an event is that an obviously very smart person suddenly became very stupid, it gives me the feeling that we don't have all the information.
The board has bylaws governing how it works. One of them says that it has to have 48 hours notice before a special online meeting (to, e.g. agenda, minutes, resolutions, actions). I think a board member cannot speak officially on behalf of them before that. Perhaps they have already had a meeting to get legal advice before a further announcement? We might be due an announcement soon.
Basically all boards work slow and we want instant responses which causes conflict.
However it's still mind boggling to me that a) they didn't foresee the response of their decisions and b) they haven't produced anything on paper explaining things to the company afterwards. I would have expected the CEO to say something like "they are meeting at this date according to their by laws" but perhaps a CEO cannot reveal such information legally?
I think this is a reasonable take. I'm also not convinced that the board acted outside their mandate as stewards of the OpenAI non-profit. There are definitely reasonable suspicions, but we still don't have all the details.
What is there to explain? Sam Altman played a stupid game, founding a sham nonprofit instead of a startup, and won a stupid prize when the board fired him for dishonesty.
> Sam Altman played a stupid game, founding a sham nonprofit instead of a startup, and won a stupid prize when the board fired him for dishonesty.
What dishonesty? I'm sympathetic to this version of events, but if it's true then the board ought to be able to give specifics - and if they can't then the strident tone of the initial announcement was unjustified.
The worst thing is the swell of people who feel they have the right to know. It's a private business decision, not gossip.
Also, when you fire somebody with cause, you don't broadcast the gory details. You're not trying to destroy them, just get them out of your orbit. Retaining the whole reason also limits the legal comeback.
Random board members leave and out of 9 people in the original board there are only 6 left.
3 of them dont like each other.
Pit them against each other to oust the 2 of them. So now only 4 remain.
Now oust the last guy whose vote you needed earlier (to kick out the other people). You dont need him anymore.
He can write some random complaint letters, who cares. He can even stay on the board, the clique can always outvote him.
Now only 3-4 left on board.
Recruit spouses and grandparents to the board to fill back to 9. In fact, you dont even have to - you answer to nobody as long as you stay on the board.
Congrats, you now control an 80 billion company.
Sell the intellectual property to highest bidder in a bargain sale for 20b, then pay each other 10b in salaries, use 9b for legal fees and start a new startup for 1b for fiduciary duties as a fig leave to show that the non profit still operates.
Oh also allegedly most employees want to quit, but whatever, use a dollar bill to wipe your tears.
Wouldnt all that be absolutely legal? In Soviet states probably. In USA?
Hat tools does any of us plebs have in this country have to compel reasonable behavior from board members? As far as I can tell in this country you're not even legally allowed to be on a board if you're not a narcissistic, antisocial cretin.
Best theory I've heard is that the board sought to distance themselves from Sam because they got advance warning of the big copyright infringement lawsuit that just dropped today.
In other words, what if they knew the suit was coming and sought to make Sam the fall guy by firing him sort-of-for-cause ... but they're stuck, because they can't explain what the cause reason was, without admitting the board was aware of the misconduct.
But then why not wait a few extra days and then have something to write down in the "Reason" box on his pink slip? Even if this turns out to be true it still smells like incompetence.
I think it’s becoming more and more clear they were acting out of incompetence, I really doubt there’ll come to light a justifiable reason for their actions.
Honestly, I actually believe the books2 corpus controversy is true. Where else, other than library genesis, would they come across 500B tokens of books? Considering books1 is 50B and they describe that as open domain books, what's left would seem to me to be books that they don't have the rights to use or right to have digitally. I'm not bemoaning them for it. I'd do the same thing because I don't really give af about copyright laws. It also seems obvious by the way each were treated in the training process. They pretty much say that while books1 corpus was trained on several times, they used books2 far less. That's exactly what I would say to cover my ass so that when I'm caught, I can tell them, "Look, though, we barely even used it. In fact, the paper overstates our use. As far as remember, we only used the table of contents. And not even the whole table of contents. Just a fraction of it. Are you gonna arrest me for using a fraction of the table of contents?"
I love this quote from a post on the topic at The Verge:
> As Bloomberg reported late last night, new interim CEO Emmett Shear is involved in mediating these negotiations, creating the frankly unprecedented situation where (1) the interim CEO who replaced (2) the interim CEO who replaced Sam and who (3) got replaced for trying to get Sam back is now (4) deeply involved in a new effort to get Sam back. Read it through a few times, it’s fine. It doesn’t make any sense to anyone else either.
One other thing (among very many) that makes no sense to me:
1. Ilya was on the board and deeply involved with the original decision to fire Sam - he in fact delivered the news to Sam.
2. Ilya has since had a change of heart, saying he regrets his participation in Sam's firing, and even signing the employee letter demanding the board resign.
3. But obviously since Ilya went along in the first place, even if he wasn't the "ringleader" as many originally assumed, he must have had discussions/evidence presented to him that convinced him that Sam needed to go. While he obviously underestimated the chaos this would cause, he must have known this was a huge decision and not one he would have taken lightly.
So my point is, why doesn't Ilya just spill the beans if he is now on "Team bring back Sam". Why doesn't Ilya just write a letter to Shear saying this is why he decided to fire Sam in the first place?
God I'm having a hard time imagining how the Netflix version of this will be better than the real thing.
Ilya wanted to slow down due to safety concerns, the board said getting rid of Sam is the way to do it, Ilya backed that method and it 1) hurt OAI more than expected and 2) doesn’t appear likely to slow down AGI development anyway, so now Ilya regrets it. Neither the board nor Ilya want to come out and say: “Sam downplayed the proximity or danger of the next breakthrough.” That would be begging the government to step in, for example.
Yes the board said it’s not because their safety policies failed, but also firing the CEO is one of those safety policies.
AFAICT Ilya and Sam seemed to have axiomatically different views on whether AGI/ASI is even possible via this route, which would not leave a ton of room for compromise as one (Ilya) felt the event horizon approaching, which based on recent reporting he seems to.
Anyway, just my theorizing with no more information than anyone else here.
If Ilya convinced the board they need to fire Sam, then demanded the board resign because they listened to him, well, he needs a wheelbarrow to carry around that massive pair of balls.
> So my point is, why doesn't Ilya just spill the beans if he is now on "Team bring back Sam".
Because publicly spilling the beans on the reason would poison the negotiations and (and because it would) undermine Sam if he returned.
Anything that even remotely justifiably undermined the board’s confidence, even if in the totality of the circumstances there is regret of the termination decision, would have this concern.
> So my point is, why doesn't Ilya just spill the beans
To avoid more chaos. There are essentially zero good faith negotiation processes that are improved by leaking all the details to the public in parallel.
Maybe Ilya realized he was acting emotionally and messed up massively by getting rid of Sam and a truthful explanation would make him look like an idiot
Or alternately, he made a well-reasoned and principled decision by getting rid of Sam, but now everyone thinks he's awful for it and he's trying to save face and avoid ruining his own career
Boards fire CEOs all the time. It is literally their only job. BUT, the curve ball was all the employees wanting to leave (most likely to msft). So, THEN, Ilya has a change of heart, since, openai will no longer exist. But just like all relationship "breaks" - its fucked.
> the Netflix version of this will be better than the real thing.
On that note, Ilya's about-face is easily explained by him being suddenly "recruited" into the Traveller program over the weekend and begging for Sam to return because Altman's leadership of Open AI seeds the beginning of what will one day become The Director.
I think the assumption that Ilya was the ringleader still holds and all the evidence still points in that direction. Adam represents the board NOW (after the signed letter and change of heart), but it doesn't mean that Ilya wasn't the key instigator at the start of this and all the way through Monday morning.
I have a simpler theory. Board convinced Ilya that Sam would fire him if they don't fire him first. Remember the reason being two team doing the same project.
Fear of getting fired from a company you started could lead anyone to be irrational. He is just too embarrassed to say it now that it lead to this big of havoc.
I think Ilya is in the same boat as everyone else: Waiting to see how the process plays out. It's not like nothing is happening, it's simply that things haven't resolved yet. If results end up feeling sideways (z-axis?) to Ilya, he might consider what he has to say.
imo Ilya has his own reasons and benefits that he thought he would gain from ousting Sam. However, it caused the wildfire backfire we are all watching now insert popcorn
This appears to be coming from the same sources who said Sam had a 5 PM deadline on Saturday, also a 5 PM deadline on Sunday, also 90% of the company about to walk out.
I’m not saying the board looks great here but it’s about time to notice that Altman’s camp is spinning this hard, and stop taking anything that comes from them at face value.
The only way this story could get any more stupider is if we find out that the conflict between Sam and Ilya or D'Angelo started because of something related to personal romantic relationships between them and some other involved individuals.
The fact the new CEO can't even get answers from the board is quite telling. Looks like the OpenAI board wants those investor lawsuits. And allegedly the Quora guy Adam D'Angelo is the ringleader of all this?
This whole saga has helped me see how rumors grow. (And I know you used the word allegedly, but still.) First it was Ilya who was the ringleader. Now it is Adam. There has been a small amount of new information (Ilya seems to have backtracked), but there is no real information to suggest Adam was a ring leader. It is the pure speculation of people trying to make sense of the whole thing.
I'm not sure if lawsuits against the non-profit will be possible, as the investors didn't invest in it. More likely, making public the facts behind who was responsible for the shenanigans and what evidence they had (if any), combined with pressure from employees, will force their hand.
"A few folks sent me a Hacker News comment speculating I was involved in the OpenAI conflict. Totally false. I was as surprised as anyone Friday, and still don’t know what happened."
It seems that way, which is baffling to me, as this seems a particularly easy problem to solve. No need to wait for an independent investigator to give a report in 30 days (by which time OpenAI might be toast). Just have individual discussions with each board member and ask them why they voted to fire Sam, and what evidence there was. Then, take appropriate action.
If I had to guess, there will be one person who pushed for Sam's firing with vague reasons, and the others went along with it for their own vague reasons. In which case, the solution would be to fire those members (including Ilya) from the board, but let Ilya continue as chief scientist.
> Just have individual discussions with each board member
Who has the discussions?
> Then, take appropriate action.
Who takes action?
The board is at the top. Unlike for-profit corporations, there are no shareholders behind them. Ultimately, any and all action is taken by the board. They're not accountable to anyone else. They don't have to discuss anything with anybody, and there's no action anyone else can take.
Unless you're suing the board and get the government to step in, but it's not clear there's any grounds for that.
na, both of these is where intel & communication becomes public, there's a whole iceberg of private stuff underneath.
Basically you took the wrong conclusion from your observation.
This reminds me of the following story:
> "There are three men on a train. One of them is an economist and one of them is a logician and one of them is a mathematician.
> And they have just crossed the border into Scotland (I don't know why they are going to Scotland) and they see a brown cow standing in a field from the window of the train (and the cow is standing parallel to the train).
> And the economist says, 'Look, the cows in Scotland are brown.' And the logician says, 'No. There are cows in Scotland of which at least one is brown.' And the mathematician says, 'No. There is at least one cow in Scotland, of which one side appears to be brown.'
It really just seems like the board isn't OK with OpenAI becoming a Microsoft money-machine. Isn't that the obvious interpretation?
Once they made that gigantic deal with Microsoft and became a closed, for-profit company "Open"AI created a direct conflict of interest with itself with a board whose mandate I guess was to prevent the inevitable pull toward resource accumulation.
The board is trying to exercise its mandate, and OpenAI the for-profit company is at odds with that mandate. Is that because of Sam Altman's leadership? Does that qualify as "wrongdoing"?
Not at all. It may have looked like that in the beginning, but it looks nothing like that now. If that were the reason:
Why would they take this huge decision extremely suddenly?
Why would they announce it without first consulting with the president of the board?
Why would they claim that Sam Altman had been lying to the board in the official announcement?
Why would they announce some very weak reasons for that claim of lying to employees, and nothing to anyone outside the company?
Why would they immediately start negotiations to bring Sam back?
Why would they hire a new CEO that then says he is very much for commercialization, and that commercialization was not the reason for firing Sam?
Why would they start a new round of negotiation to bring Sam back?
Why would one of the four members of the board who took this turn decide to undo it and become an advocate for bringing Sam back?
The whole thing makes no sense at all if the motivation was disagreements over commercialization of their tech - something that has already happened months ago.
I am reading the abrupt announcement as an absence of trust they have in Sam. They must have felt that Sam would jeopardize the control of the board if he felt threatened or severely undermined the mission of the non profit, for example by selling/transferring IP out of OAI to prepare his departure.
Because their motivation was the fear Sam inspired them, they acted the way they did. Then, it's hard to justify actions based on suspicious.
Everything I've read about this situation indicates that the board acted appropriately within their authority as the the leaders of OpenAI, the non-profit. Sam Altman and co. have veered off into wild delusions of grandeur over the last year with their talk of how they're "building God" (out of scraped reddit comments and blog posts) and comparing ChatGPT to the invention of fire. The board has shown that there are still adults in the room in AI development who aren't high off their own fumes, and also aren't interested in becoming lapdogs for M$FT. Thank God.
If that's your take away I genuinely fear for the future of AI. This has been the biggest shit show. Yes, they acted within their hard power, but clearly never read the room. Announcing a 6 month transition plan while finding the new CEO and saying Sam wants to spend time with friends and family would have been the adult thing to do. Not shoot from your hip, and accuse him of lying and potentially burning your entire work to the ground, commercial or not. You kind of need to have a plan for something like this, which they clearly did not. I don't care so much if Sam goes back, I literally have no vested interest. It worries me the people left in the room just generally seem incompetent at running a large organization for something that's potentially pretty important.
It's hard for me to imagine a worse take. Even if you only assume the best of intentions of the board (which I think is a huge assumption), their actions have been so mind-bogglingly stupid that basically all they may end up doing is transferring all of OpenAI to Microsoft, basically for free, where there will be 0 oversight and MSFT's only duty is to its shareholders.
If you really wanted to create "AGI for the benefit of all humanity", I can't imagine a better way to cut off your nose and then remove your brain to spite your face.
All around a bad take. But FYI OpenAI's explicit mission has always been to build godlike AI which eclipses humanity in its ability to autonomously perform the majority of economically valuable work.
Sure, the board has the prerogative to stick to that interpretation of its mandate if that's their motivation. But it looks like they won't have much of a company left if they do. Maybe they are fine with that, I guess we will see.
Would be interesting to see if those 700+ signatories will really give up their juicy PPUs and start over at Microsoft, if the board calls their bluff.
I will be very sad, when they day comes and AGI is controlled by the money making company, especially if it is because of the actions of OpenAI and not some other entity.
It is the end of the humanity as we know it, and the owner has ultimate power over the world, as the gains are exponential once you acquire it.
Ultimate reason why someone was clever enough to make OpenAI governance as it is, and why this drama is happening. And why Microsoft is involved so deeply.
If it was so important, why allow the board to shrink so much? Conjecture from an outsider: I think Altman wanted less governance. I wish money didn’t corrupt as it frequently does.
Edit: I wonder what would have happened had Will Hurd not run for president and stayed on the board.
That's my take as well. They just underestimated the fanboy level of religious following that tech CEOs now possess and the scale of impact that would lead too.
From their point of view, it was just business as usual, or maybe they thought that the more vocal public voice would be that of those that are more concerned with AI and ethics and that also don't want to see AI fall pray to capital driven incentives, and are supportive of OpenAI specifically because of it's Non for profit arrangement.
For example, when Sam became CEO, it led to people leaving and starting Anthropic (now considered OpenAIs biggest competitor), and the reason for that split was because of Sam's increased move away from the core values of OpenAI.
It's very possible they assumed that more people felt that way, and would be happy about their firing of Sam.
Conjecture from the outside: The employees are likely mad their PPUs are not worth what they were last week moreso than the Altman cult. Bringing Altman back may get their money recouped. If the board had waited a month, this likely wouldn’t have blown up so bad after the Thrive Capital purchase.
Let's call them Adam, Helen and Tasha, not the board. 3 people who have some questionable connections with competitors and have nothing to loose if OpenAI dies.
The kind of pressure microsoft is able to exert here is mind blowing. The hero worshipping they were able to cultivate, with so much media pressure, they truly control our lives
> The kind of pressure microsoft is able to exert here is mind blowing.
Remember the time Elon Musk bought a social media company accidentally as a joke? That's what 1/4 trillion dollars lets you do. 10x that and you have the power of Microsoft.
I linked that New Yorker article from another thread, and dang said my comment was downweighted, but he wouldn't say how, just that it wasn't done by a mod: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38357062 (I know people don't like it when you complain about the moderation, but it seems topical in this case, since it gives insight into other machinations which could be happening)
My read is not that Sam is critical for the development of ai at openai, but he is the person pushing for them to get commercial success and also getting them deals to actually have the compute to do things. So he IS critical for making all of the employees have PPUs that are worth anything. I imagine a lot of people are looking at hundreds of thousands or even millions lost if OpenAI decides to just stop commercializing and walk away from being a $100B+ company.
I don't think he's critical but that's not really the point. His unexpected and apparently unnecessary firing has demonstrated that OpenAI is a weirder organization than most people realized. It's corporate structure, the makeup of the board, the various dealings is now suddenly under the spotlight.
If anyone else was CEO of OpenAI and had been fired like this, the discussion would be almost the same.
It looks like 90%+ of the company is ready to join him and other senior members at Microsoft under a new banner and with the backing of Microsoft which is the major cost center for OpenAI, and also own 49% of OpenAI. It's got to be a furiously grand couple of 10x'ers for the remaining 10% that stay behind to compete with Sam, so while some other CEO might sit in the same seat as him now and might have similar competences, I'd say that in light of this history he is critical, at least right now. We might ask if Steve Jobs was critical at Apple, it sure did seem so when he came back in 1997. History suggest so, but people will of cause have differing opinions on the matter.
Frankly, I would go so far as to say he is the wrong man for the job of running the for-profit arm of a nonprofit.
He seems to be a guy who wants to be the next Zuckerberg. He wants fame and power, and would step on anyone and anything that gets in his way.
His agreessive commercialization of OpenAI gets in the way of the organization’s original mission. He believes he should get to tell the board what to do, not the other way around.
OpenAI would be better off with a more “tame” CEO who would just do what he/she can to make some dough without running afoul of the organization’s charter, accepting that his/her role and desires are secondary to organization’s.
To many people, it seems that the board made an insane decision without reason. Whether that one decision is the doom of OpenAPI or not, the idea of having incompetent leadership (if true) is the doom of OpenAPI.
Not from any technical knowledge. Maybe his vision and business acumen, but mostly because at that level the tech-bro ceo founders stick together. Not in any formal conspiracy sense, just they have faith and trust and googly-eyes for each other.
From that perspective, the leaked sms messages from elon Musk prior to Twitter purchase were positively illuminating and will give you fascinating (if cringy) insight how billion dollar funding actually works.
Readit News
Or maybe it involves a deal that they're stuck with, and now dependent upon, even if the terms aren't aligned well with the non-profit. Saying that could be awkward.
What I can't guess at explanations for is publicly stating the not-consistently-candid in the initial announcement. I'm not expert on these things, but that sounds to me like either a euphemism for something that they needed to be seen as explicitly distancing the company from ASAP or a blunder that a lawyer or PR person would've advised them not to do, and which they didn't need to do.
At this point, that's the 95% conclusion.
If you were in this position and had even a sliver of defensibility to play, you would have already played it.
Because the longer this goes, the more sharks circle and the less likely OpenAI's survival becomes.
(UNLESS you thought you f---ed up and wanted Altman back so you want to be nice to him. But if you wanted that, you wouldn't have hired Shear as interim CEO to replace your previous interim CEO.)
(Was) a hundred billion dollar rocketship, pioneering the future. That this is only the first such palace intrigue we've seen is surprising.
The root of the problem seems to lie in the challenges of growth and the accompanying pressures. The issues we've observed in the past week are likely tied to weak or ineffective leadership. This isn't just about leading developers or the technical team; it's about leadership at every level within the company. If leadership were strong and clear, I doubt these issues would have arisen.
It's like whenever there is a power vacuum, all the possible contenders compete and there's chaos. The existence of chaos suggests at least that there's a power vacuum at the top. Similar to when big leaders throughout history died, their children/lieutenants then fought and caused civil wars (e.g Mongols).
But while a leader is strong, there can be stability. Take, for instance, Facebook during its initial growth phase. Despite facing intense pressure from various quarters, it never descended into chaos or disarray. This stability could be attributed to a robust board, or perhaps to Mark Zuckerberg's leadership effectiveness. Whatever your opinion of him, his leadership across all levels of the company and on the board seemed to prevent competing interests from creating chaos.
This situation also underscores the importance of selecting the right people for the board. It's not just about finding smart individuals who look good on paper or focusing on trendy topics like AI ethics. The board members need a deep understanding of startups and business. Maybe the current board's inexperience and theoretical approach are issues. It could be that they are too young or resemble a vanity board more than an effective one.
However, we can't place all the blame on the board. Strong, clear, and effective leadership at the top is crucial. Sam Altman might excel in many areas, but perhaps what's needed is a leader like Zuckerberg at Facebook (and perhaps a similar leadership structure, too), or current-era Musk, someone who could have possibly prevented these problems.
Am I the only one who finds these kinds of explanations unconvincing? I don't think anyone knows precisely what was going through Sutskever's mind on Friday, but whenever the best explanation people have for an event is that an obviously very smart person suddenly became very stupid, it gives me the feeling that we don't have all the information.
The board has bylaws governing how it works. One of them says that it has to have 48 hours notice before a special online meeting (to, e.g. agenda, minutes, resolutions, actions). I think a board member cannot speak officially on behalf of them before that. Perhaps they have already had a meeting to get legal advice before a further announcement? We might be due an announcement soon.
Basically all boards work slow and we want instant responses which causes conflict.
However it's still mind boggling to me that a) they didn't foresee the response of their decisions and b) they haven't produced anything on paper explaining things to the company afterwards. I would have expected the CEO to say something like "they are meeting at this date according to their by laws" but perhaps a CEO cannot reveal such information legally?
They lost a CEO and chairman pretty suddenly....
Why Altman was fired.
What dishonesty? I'm sympathetic to this version of events, but if it's true then the board ought to be able to give specifics - and if they can't then the strident tone of the initial announcement was unjustified.
Also, when you fire somebody with cause, you don't broadcast the gory details. You're not trying to destroy them, just get them out of your orbit. Retaining the whole reason also limits the legal comeback.
Personally pretty tired of the drama.
I can build such a funny hypothetical scenario.
Step1 get on a board of a big company.
Random board members leave and out of 9 people in the original board there are only 6 left.
3 of them dont like each other.
Pit them against each other to oust the 2 of them. So now only 4 remain.
Now oust the last guy whose vote you needed earlier (to kick out the other people). You dont need him anymore. He can write some random complaint letters, who cares. He can even stay on the board, the clique can always outvote him.
Now only 3-4 left on board.
Recruit spouses and grandparents to the board to fill back to 9. In fact, you dont even have to - you answer to nobody as long as you stay on the board.
Congrats, you now control an 80 billion company.
Sell the intellectual property to highest bidder in a bargain sale for 20b, then pay each other 10b in salaries, use 9b for legal fees and start a new startup for 1b for fiduciary duties as a fig leave to show that the non profit still operates.
Oh also allegedly most employees want to quit, but whatever, use a dollar bill to wipe your tears.
Wouldnt all that be absolutely legal? In Soviet states probably. In USA?
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In other words, what if they knew the suit was coming and sought to make Sam the fall guy by firing him sort-of-for-cause ... but they're stuck, because they can't explain what the cause reason was, without admitting the board was aware of the misconduct.
https://www.semafor.com/article/11/21/2023/openai-microsoft-...
> As Bloomberg reported late last night, new interim CEO Emmett Shear is involved in mediating these negotiations, creating the frankly unprecedented situation where (1) the interim CEO who replaced (2) the interim CEO who replaced Sam and who (3) got replaced for trying to get Sam back is now (4) deeply involved in a new effort to get Sam back. Read it through a few times, it’s fine. It doesn’t make any sense to anyone else either.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/21/23971120/the-negotiation...
1. Ilya was on the board and deeply involved with the original decision to fire Sam - he in fact delivered the news to Sam.
2. Ilya has since had a change of heart, saying he regrets his participation in Sam's firing, and even signing the employee letter demanding the board resign.
3. But obviously since Ilya went along in the first place, even if he wasn't the "ringleader" as many originally assumed, he must have had discussions/evidence presented to him that convinced him that Sam needed to go. While he obviously underestimated the chaos this would cause, he must have known this was a huge decision and not one he would have taken lightly.
So my point is, why doesn't Ilya just spill the beans if he is now on "Team bring back Sam". Why doesn't Ilya just write a letter to Shear saying this is why he decided to fire Sam in the first place?
God I'm having a hard time imagining how the Netflix version of this will be better than the real thing.
Yes the board said it’s not because their safety policies failed, but also firing the CEO is one of those safety policies.
AFAICT Ilya and Sam seemed to have axiomatically different views on whether AGI/ASI is even possible via this route, which would not leave a ton of room for compromise as one (Ilya) felt the event horizon approaching, which based on recent reporting he seems to.
Anyway, just my theorizing with no more information than anyone else here.
1) Frank becomes a witness for the Feds against the Coreleone.
2) Frank recants when his brother shows up at the hearing reminding him of the consequences of breaking the oath of silence.
3) Frank kills himself to ensure his children's safety.
https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/59089/why-did-fra...
Because publicly spilling the beans on the reason would poison the negotiations and (and because it would) undermine Sam if he returned.
Anything that even remotely justifiably undermined the board’s confidence, even if in the totality of the circumstances there is regret of the termination decision, would have this concern.
To avoid more chaos. There are essentially zero good faith negotiation processes that are improved by leaking all the details to the public in parallel.
Or alternately, he made a well-reasoned and principled decision by getting rid of Sam, but now everyone thinks he's awful for it and he's trying to save face and avoid ruining his own career
Or a secret third thing, of course
On that note, Ilya's about-face is easily explained by him being suddenly "recruited" into the Traveller program over the weekend and begging for Sam to return because Altman's leadership of Open AI seeds the beginning of what will one day become The Director.
The mission comes first.
Fear of getting fired from a company you started could lead anyone to be irrational. He is just too embarrassed to say it now that it lead to this big of havoc.
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Because there may be legal consequences, and it's best to not give Sam's lawyers any ammunition.
The Netflix version will probably be more believable than the real thing.
Ilya is on team TIFU and is (poorly) trying to save face.
I’m not saying the board looks great here but it’s about time to notice that Altman’s camp is spinning this hard, and stop taking anything that comes from them at face value.
I bet this kind of interpersonal drama drives a lot more big decisions than most people are aware of.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/anna-brockman-cried-asked-il...
All four are possible ringleaders.
Given Ilya's change of heart he is slightly less probable as the ringleader.
I tend to believe that was exactly his strategy with his change of heart...
"A few folks sent me a Hacker News comment speculating I was involved in the OpenAI conflict. Totally false. I was as surprised as anyone Friday, and still don’t know what happened."
If I had to guess, there will be one person who pushed for Sam's firing with vague reasons, and the others went along with it for their own vague reasons. In which case, the solution would be to fire those members (including Ilya) from the board, but let Ilya continue as chief scientist.
Who has the discussions?
> Then, take appropriate action.
Who takes action?
The board is at the top. Unlike for-profit corporations, there are no shareholders behind them. Ultimately, any and all action is taken by the board. They're not accountable to anyone else. They don't have to discuss anything with anybody, and there's no action anyone else can take.
Unless you're suing the board and get the government to step in, but it's not clear there's any grounds for that.
Basically you took the wrong conclusion from your observation.
This reminds me of the following story:
> "There are three men on a train. One of them is an economist and one of them is a logician and one of them is a mathematician.
> And they have just crossed the border into Scotland (I don't know why they are going to Scotland) and they see a brown cow standing in a field from the window of the train (and the cow is standing parallel to the train).
> And the economist says, 'Look, the cows in Scotland are brown.' And the logician says, 'No. There are cows in Scotland of which at least one is brown.' And the mathematician says, 'No. There is at least one cow in Scotland, of which one side appears to be brown.'
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Once they made that gigantic deal with Microsoft and became a closed, for-profit company "Open"AI created a direct conflict of interest with itself with a board whose mandate I guess was to prevent the inevitable pull toward resource accumulation.
The board is trying to exercise its mandate, and OpenAI the for-profit company is at odds with that mandate. Is that because of Sam Altman's leadership? Does that qualify as "wrongdoing"?
Why would they take this huge decision extremely suddenly?
Why would they announce it without first consulting with the president of the board?
Why would they claim that Sam Altman had been lying to the board in the official announcement?
Why would they announce some very weak reasons for that claim of lying to employees, and nothing to anyone outside the company?
Why would they immediately start negotiations to bring Sam back?
Why would they hire a new CEO that then says he is very much for commercialization, and that commercialization was not the reason for firing Sam?
Why would they start a new round of negotiation to bring Sam back?
Why would one of the four members of the board who took this turn decide to undo it and become an advocate for bringing Sam back?
The whole thing makes no sense at all if the motivation was disagreements over commercialization of their tech - something that has already happened months ago.
Because their motivation was the fear Sam inspired them, they acted the way they did. Then, it's hard to justify actions based on suspicious.
If you really wanted to create "AGI for the benefit of all humanity", I can't imagine a better way to cut off your nose and then remove your brain to spite your face.
It is the end of the humanity as we know it, and the owner has ultimate power over the world, as the gains are exponential once you acquire it.
Ultimate reason why someone was clever enough to make OpenAI governance as it is, and why this drama is happening. And why Microsoft is involved so deeply.
Edit: I wonder what would have happened had Will Hurd not run for president and stayed on the board.
That's my take as well. They just underestimated the fanboy level of religious following that tech CEOs now possess and the scale of impact that would lead too.
From their point of view, it was just business as usual, or maybe they thought that the more vocal public voice would be that of those that are more concerned with AI and ethics and that also don't want to see AI fall pray to capital driven incentives, and are supportive of OpenAI specifically because of it's Non for profit arrangement.
For example, when Sam became CEO, it led to people leaving and starting Anthropic (now considered OpenAIs biggest competitor), and the reason for that split was because of Sam's increased move away from the core values of OpenAI.
It's very possible they assumed that more people felt that way, and would be happy about their firing of Sam.
By now they don't have full legitimacy.
To be fair, this was deliberately done. You don't want the person selling you the bombs to be the one deciding how many you use.
Not according to Sam Altman: "Development of superhuman machine intelligence is probably the greatest threat to the continued existence of humanity."
https://blog.samaltman.com/machine-intelligence-part-1
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Remember the time Elon Musk bought a social media company accidentally as a joke? That's what 1/4 trillion dollars lets you do. 10x that and you have the power of Microsoft.
But is Sam Altman really that critical? Or is it more a case that people follow where he leads (i.e. there are others equally technically competent).
Sam seems like the kind of guy you don't want to cross. Paul Graham says he's "extremely good at becoming powerful": https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/sam-altmans-ma...
I linked that New Yorker article from another thread, and dang said my comment was downweighted, but he wouldn't say how, just that it wasn't done by a mod: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38357062 (I know people don't like it when you complain about the moderation, but it seems topical in this case, since it gives insight into other machinations which could be happening)
If anyone else was CEO of OpenAI and had been fired like this, the discussion would be almost the same.
He seems to be a guy who wants to be the next Zuckerberg. He wants fame and power, and would step on anyone and anything that gets in his way.
His agreessive commercialization of OpenAI gets in the way of the organization’s original mission. He believes he should get to tell the board what to do, not the other way around.
OpenAI would be better off with a more “tame” CEO who would just do what he/she can to make some dough without running afoul of the organization’s charter, accepting that his/her role and desires are secondary to organization’s.
Maybe, maybe not.
This has more to do with board than with Altman.
To many people, it seems that the board made an insane decision without reason. Whether that one decision is the doom of OpenAPI or not, the idea of having incompetent leadership (if true) is the doom of OpenAPI.
Not from any technical knowledge. Maybe his vision and business acumen, but mostly because at that level the tech-bro ceo founders stick together. Not in any formal conspiracy sense, just they have faith and trust and googly-eyes for each other.
From that perspective, the leaked sms messages from elon Musk prior to Twitter purchase were positively illuminating and will give you fascinating (if cringy) insight how billion dollar funding actually works.