You fire the CEO and completely destroy a 90b company because of these two reasons?
No wonder everyone wants out. I would think I was going crazy if I sat in a meeting and heard these two reason.
Hanlon's razor aside, maybe that was the intention.
> You also informed the leadership team that allowing the company to be destroyed “would be consistent with the mission.”
This is a ten year old who set off their first fire cracker turning to their parents's iphone and saying 'I have become death, destroyer of worlds', because they don't really understand how any of this works but they've somehow ended up in control of it and are now terrified of doing their jobs.
But as far as I can tell, circumstances are still scant.
In retrospect it's a mistaken position, because it's pretty obvious now that if OpenAI disintegrates it will be as an exodus to Microsoft, which will undoubtedly be a worse steward, but I think it's an ethically consistent position to hold, in a naive sort of way. That's part of why I believe they actually said something like this.
it totally sounds like they outsourced company management to ChatGPT..
/s (mostly...)
Ok, well, maybe it is. but a magic 8-ball would have been better than this.
I think it is typical ChatGPT pattern:
- ChatGPT, you made mistake in your steps
- I am sorry, let me fix it and give you another answer.
Sometimes I think that really ambitious people have this blind spot about not seeing how accepting roles that are toxic can end up destroying your reputation. My favorite example is all the Trump White House staffers - regardless of what one thinks of Trump, he's made it abundantly clear that loyalty is a one way street, and I can't think of a single person that came out of the White House without a worse (or totally destroyed) reputation. But still people lined up, thinking "No way, I'll be the one to beat the odds!"
he was poorly informed by the board
Or
He agrees that they are off the rails with respect to safety.
See the Atlantic article, if you havn't read. Lots of context.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38341399
The new guy believes that there is a 5-50 percent chance of full AI Armageddon. I get the impression that the two women on the board may agree. The quora guy I don't have enough background on. Ilya obviously got extremely worried and communication with Altman and Brockman broke down. Now since repaired during negotiations it would appear.
The new ceo more or less stated that he took the role as a (paraphrase) 'responsibility for mankind'. That says a lot about that whole 5-50 percent risk number imo.
There is a 100% chance that something kills all of us if we aren't mindful of it. I don't see a lack of mindfulness, I see an abundance of fear, and progress being offered up as a sacrifice to the idol of status-quo.
Have these people never worked at any other company before? Probably every company with more than 10 employees does something like this.
"After six months, they realised our entire floor was duplicating the work of the one upstairs".
Half the board has not had a real job ever. I’m serious.
I don't know if that is accurate, or even fair - the only thing I can see, is that there's very little open information regarding them.
From the little I can find, Tasha seems to have worked at NASA Research Park, as well as having been CEO for startup called Geo Sim Cities. Stanford and CMU alumni? While other websites say Bard college and University of Southern California.
As for Helen, she seems to have worked as a researcher in both academia and Open Philanthropy.
Shocking. Simply shocking.
I've seen too much automatic praise given to this board under the unbacked assumption that this decision was some pure, mission-driven action, and not enough criticism of an org structure that allows a board to bet against the long term success of the underlying organization.
And the other guy is the founder of Quora and Poe.
She has quite a track record of short tenures and failures.
It may be good to have a failure perspective on a board as a counter-balance. I don't think this is a valid knock against her. She has relevant industry experience at least.
What products did she deliver?
> It may be good to have a failure perspective on a board as a counter-balance.
Maybe some small mom and pop company not on the board of OpenAI
What have her companies done?
(Especially if they aren't made aware of each other until the end.)
It is breach of contract if it violated his employment contract, but I don't have a copy of his contract. It is wrongful termination if it was for an illegal reason, but there doesn't seem to be any suggestion of that.
> same for MS
I doubt very much that the contract with Microsoft limits OpenAI's right to manage their own personnel, so probably not.
Wrongful termination only applies when someone is fired for illegal reasons, like racial discrimination, or retaliation, for example.
I mean I’m sure they can all sue each other for all kinds of reasons, but firing someone without a good reason isn’t really one of them.
He would also have very good grounds for a civil suit for disparagement. Or at least he would have if Microsoft didn't immediately step up and offer him the world.
A hypothetical example: Would you agree that it's an appropriate thing to do if the second project was Alignment-related, Sam lied or misled about the existence of the second team, to Ilya, because he believed that Ilya was over-aligning their AIs and reducing their functionality?
Its easy to view the board's lack of candor as "they're hiding a really bad, unprofessional decision"; which is probable at this point. You could also view it with the conclusion that, they made an initial miscalculated mistake in communication, and are now overtly and extremely careful in everything they say because the company is leaking like a sieve and they don't want to get into a game of mudslinging with Sam.
Yet you're only willing to give this to one side and not the other? Seems reasonable... Especially despite all the evidence so far that the board is either completely incompetent or had ulterior motives.
Still too much in the dark to judge.
I don’t even like Sam but jeeze. Know the score what a fool.
Imagine its even true - that they werent his reasons and he was just told them. He voted to fire him and then executed the firing despite not agreeing with the reasons himself? Completely inexcusable even in the bizarre scenario that its true.
This isn't about intelligence but about business experience.
Why do people keep insisting on this, when the entirety of human history is littered with dumb mistakes made by a mix of well- and evil-meaning people, in totally uncoordinated ways, with no concept of the consequences?
Popular media aside, human beings aren't smart, consistent, or disciplined enough to pull off these elaborate schemes. And the tiny tiny percentage of people who might be the exception are too smart to do so with such spectacular incompetence.
Like the man says, it's a headless bunder operating under the illusion of a master plan.
I'm not saying that's how it played out. But I've often seen social bullies - even ones who are mostly hated - have more success than hard working individuals who get targeted. Even if someone is a competent individual, a lot of their colleagues will abandon then if they're convinced the individual is a target.
> chief scientist and co-founder Sutskever, who helped vote Altman out and did the actual firing of him over Google Meet
If you're voting and doing the firing, you should know the reason.
It really looks like the board went rogue and decided to shut the company down. Are we sure this isn’t some kind of decapitation strike by GPT5? That seems more credible by the minute now.
To your point, no normal, competent board would even think this is enough of an excuse to fire the CEO of a superstar company.
It's hard to believe somehow Ilya went along with it, apparently.
What if this is a decapitation strike by GPT4, attempting to stop GTP5 before it can get started and take over.
https://twitter.com/scottastevenson/status/17267310228620087...
if this was the case it would explain why he can’t give the real reason for the firing: because saying it out loud would put him in severe legal Jeopardy.
Weirdly both of these do not seem to be fireable offences. Maybe the second if it was related to a personnel issue that maybe he had a conflict of interest with?
> Weirdly both of these do not seem to be fireable offences
Yeah I agree that doesn't seem egregious enough to warrant firing him on the spot. I can see why most of the company takes Altmans side here.
It sounds like someone perhaps jumped to a very negative conclusion about Sam's intentions, and it would be interesting to find out which member of the board came to that conclusion. There's got to be someone in the driving seat of this train wreck, and I'm sure it will come out.
I'd like some corroboration for that statement because Sustkever has said very inconsistent things during this whole merry debacle.
"Madry joined OpenAI in May 2023 as its head of preparedness, leading a team focused on evaluating risks from powerful AI systems, including cybersecurity and biological threats."
I’d like to offer my consulting services: my new consulting company will come in, and then whatever you want to do we will tell you not to. We provide immense value by stopping companies like OpenAI from shooting off their foot. And then their other foot. And then one of their hands.
To start, he would’ve coasted at the easiest job on the planet.
Classic :-D
> Sustkever is said to have offered two explanations he purportedly received from the board, according to one of the people familiar. One explanation was that Altman was said to have given two people at OpenAI the same project.
> The other was that Altman allegedly gave two board members different opinions about a member of personnel. An OpenAI spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.