Sam Altman's constant lies created toxic culture, reveals OpenAI ex-Board member

Re:Sam Altman's constant lies created toxic culture, reveals... by gfourfour on Wednesday May 29, 2024 @10:31PM (#40519548)

To be honest, my bias is against boards, especially non-profit boards who have no skin in the game and often an idealistic view that clashes with operational realities.

The case of Altman seems to be a “where there’s smoke” thing to an extent, but I also am not inclined to trust the board over the employees who do seem to like him.

Insofar as he steered OAI to be a consumer product company rather than a research institution, that’s an acceptable outcome to me. The board had a problem with that, fought him, and lost.

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Re:Sam Altman's constant lies created toxic culture, reveals... by remram on Thursday May 30, 2024 @07:49PM (#40530047)

"trust" is a funny word here. I trust the employees to be good employees, interested in the future of the companies and their jobs. I don't believe for a second that employees would put the non-profit's mission above that. It has nothing to do with trustworthiness.

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Re:Sam Altman's constant lies created toxic culture, reveals... by gfourfour on Thursday May 30, 2024 @10:01PM (#40530745)

I’ve seen boards hinder nonprofits from executing on the mission plenty of times, usually out of ego or general fecklessness.

I wouldn’t assume that boards care about the mission more than the employees. Employees are the ones signing up to implement it, board members are often just in it for status and are total dilettantes.

I think in this case there’s a lot of signs pointing to the board feeling that their status was threatened more than anything. If their reasoning is that releasing ChatGPT without their permission was “unsafe,” give me a break.

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