He rubs elbows with very powerful people including CEOs, heads of state and sheiks. They probably want 'one of them' in charge of the company that has the best chances of getting close to AGI. So it's not his technical chops and not even 'vision' in the Jobs sense that keeps him there.

Are they really the ones with the best chance now though?

They're basically owned by Microsoft, they're bleeding tech/ethnical talent and credibility, and most importantly Microsoft Research itself is no slouch (especially post-Deepmind poaching) - things like Phi are breaking ground on planets that openai hasn't even touched.

At this point I'm thinking they're destined to become nothing but a premium marketing brand for Microsoft's technology.

I thought we had already established this when the previous board tried to oust him for failing to stick to OpenAI’s charter. This is just further confirmation.

> The new board should act

You mean like the last board tried? Besides the board was picked to be on Altman’s side. The independent members were forced out.

And almost every thread on HN had its top-voted comments defending and praising Altman, while shrugging off Ilya et al. It was bizarre and disheartening to see that from this community, of all places.

He has “The Vision”… It’s the modern entrepreneurship trope that lowly engineers won’t achieve anything if they weren’t rallied by a demi-god who has “The Vision” and makes it all happen.

Probably not wrong. Lots and lots of examples of that being true.

There is something to it. Someone has to identify the intersection between what the engineering can do and what the market actually wants, then articulate that to a broad enough audience. Engineers constantly undervalue this very fuzzy and very human centric part of the work.

I don't think the issue is that Vision doesn't matter. I think the issue is Sam doesn't have it. Like Gates and Jobs had clear, well defined visions for how the PC was going to change the world, then rallied engineering talent around them and turned those into reality, that's how their billions and those lasting empires were born. Maybe someone like Elon Musk is a contemporary example. Just don't see anything like that from SamA, we see him in the media, talking a lot about AI, rubbing shoulders with power brokers, being cutthroat, but where's the vision of a better future? And if he comes up with one does he really understand the engineering well enough to ground it in reality?

I don’t know enough about him or his vision. It doesn’t seem he’s as clear as say Jobs in the past. But I do look at all the amazing things openai has done in a short period of time, and that the employees overwhelmingly backed him with the whole board chaos issue. He also has fundraised a lot money for the company. It appears he’s doing more right than wrong, and openai pulled everyone else’s pants down.

I roll my eyes when somebody says that they’re “the idea person” or that they have “the vision”.

I’d wager that most senior+ engineers or product people also have equally compelling “the vision”s.

The difference is that they need to do actual work all day so they don’t get to sit around pontificating.

Ideas are a dime a dozen. The value of "idea men" isn't their ideas, it's their ability to rally people around them. It's the exact same skill that con men use for nefarious purposes.

I mean, there's already been some yellow flags with Altman already. He founded Worldcoin, whose plan is to airdrop free money in exchange for retinal scans. And the board of OpenAI fired him for (if I've got this right) lying to the board about conversations he'd had with individual board members.

WorldCoin is how I first heard of him, and it's what made me think he was a bad actor. I think of it as a red flag, not yellow.

It shouldn’t be forgotten that his sister has publicly accused him and his brother of sexually abusing her as a child.

I didn't know about that, strange:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QDczBduZorG4dxZiW/sam-altman...

"Some commenters on Hacker News claim that a post regarding Annie's claims that Sam sexually assaulted her at age 4 has been being repeatedly removed."

Whelp. Let us see if this one sticks.

He must be bringing something to the table as they tried to get rid of him and failed spectacularly. Business is not only about technical know how.

Microsoft. They are protecting their investment.

> if this account is true, Sam Altman is a deeply unethical human being.

This isn’t even close to the most unethical thing he has done. This is peanuts compared to the Worldcoin scam.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40427454

because so many people ran cover for him, from paul graham to whos-who of silicon valley.

> if this account is true, Sam Altman is a deeply unethical human being

I thought this when he didn't launch Worldcoin in the US but Africa, and consistently upped the ante to the point where he was offering people in the poorer parts of the continent amounts that equalled two months wages or more to scan their retinas.

Why was that necessary? It wasn't to share the VC windfall.