Failed coup? Altman managed to usurp the board's power, seems pretty successful to me

I think OP means the failed coup in which they attempted to oust Altman?

Yeah the GP's point is the board was acting within its purview by dismissing the CEO. The coup was the successful counter-campaign against the board by Altman and the investors.

The successful coup was led by Satya Nadella.

Let's be honest: in large part by Microsoft.

Does it matter? The board made a decision and the CEO reversed it. There is no clearer example of a corporate coup.

For fun:

> In the sentence, the people responsible for the coup are implied to be Murati and Ilya. The phrase "Murati (and Ilya for that matter) took their shot to remove Sam" suggests that they were the ones who attempted to remove Sam (presumably a leader or person in power) but failed, leading to a situation where they had to cooperate temporarily despite tensions.

This is the likely scenario. Every conflict at exec level comes with a "messaging" aspect, with there being a comms team, and board to manage that part.

>but were never seriously going to work together again after the failed coup.

Just to clear one thing up, the designated function of a board of directors is to appoint or replace the executive of an organisation, and openAI in particular is structured such that the non-profit part of the organisation controls the LLC.

The coup was the executive, together with the investors, effectively turning that on its head by force.

Highly speculative.

Also highly cynical.

Some folks are professional and mature. In the best organisations, the management team sets the highest possible standard, in terms of tone and culture. If done well, this tends to trickle down to all areas of the organization.

Another speculation would be that she's resigning for complicated reasons which are personal. I've had to do the same in my past. The real pro's give the benefit of the doubt.

What leads you to believe that OpenAI is one of the best managed organizations?

Many hours of interviews.

Organizational performance metrics.

Frequency of scientific breakthroughs.

Frequency and quality of product updates.

History of consistently setting the state of the art in artificial intelligence.

Demonstrated ability to attract world class talent.

Released the fastest growing software product in the history of humanity.

We have to see if they’ll keep executing in a year, considering the losses in staff and the non technical CEO.

I don't get this.

I could write paragraphs...

Why the rain clouds?

This feels naive, especially given what we now know about Open AI.

If you care to detail supporting evidence, I'd be keen to see.

Please no speculative pieces, rumor nor hearsay.

Well why was sam altman fired. it was never revealed.

CEOs get fired all the time and company puts out a statement.

I've never seen "we won't tell you why we fired our CEO" anywhere.

now he is back making totally ridiculous statments like 'AI is going to solve all of physics' or that 'AI is going to clone my brain by 2027'

This is a strange company.

> This is a strange company.

Because the old guard wanted it to remain a cliquey non-profit filled to the brim with EA, AI Alignment, and OpenPhilanthropy types, but the current OpenAI is now an enterprise company.

This is just Sam Altman cleaning house after the attempted corporate coup a year ago.

When the board fires the CEO and the CEO reverses the decision, that is the coup.

The board’s only reason to exist is effectively to fire the CEO.

I think thats some rumors that they spread to make this look like a "conflict of philosophy" type bs.

There are some juicy rumors about what actually happened too. much more belivable lol .

Did you also try to oust the CEO of a multi-billion dollar juggernaut?

Sure didn't.

Neither did she though... To my knowledge.

Can you provide any evidence that she tried to do that? I would ask that it be non-speculative in nature please.

Below are exerts from the article you link. I'd suggest a more careful read through. Unless out of hand, you give zero credibility to first hand accounts given to the NYT by both Mirati and Sustkever...

This piece is built on conjecture from a source whose identify is withheld. The sources version of events is openly refuted by the parties in question. Offering it as evidence that Mirati intentionally made political moves in order to get Altman ousted is an indefensible position.

'Mr. Sutskever’s lawyer, Alex Weingarten, said claims that he had approached the board were “categorically false.”'

'Marc H. Axelbaum, a lawyer for Ms. Murati, said in a statement: “The claims that she approached the board in an effort to get Mr. Altman fired last year or supported the board’s actions are flat wrong. She was perplexed at the board’s decision then, but is not surprised that some former board members are now attempting to shift the blame to her.” In a message to OpenAI employees after publication of this article, Ms. Murati said she and Mr. Altman “have a strong and productive partnership and I have not been shy about sharing feedback with him directly.”

She added that she did not reach out to the board but “when individual board members reached out directly to me for feedback about Sam, I provided it — all feedback Sam already knew,” and that did not mean she was “responsible for or supported the old board’s actions.”'

This part of NYT piece is supported by evidence:

'Ms. Murati wrote a private memo to Mr. Altman raising questions about his management and also shared her concerns with the board. That move helped to propel the board’s decision to force him out.'

INTENT matters. Mirati says the board asked for her concerns about Altmans. She provided it and had already brought it to Altmans attention... in writing. Her actions demonstrate transparency and professionalism.

"When you strike at a king, you must kill him." — Emerson

or an alternate - "Come at the king - you best not miss" -- Omar Little.

the real OG comment here

“How do you shoot the devil in the back? What if you miss?”

“the King stay the King.” —- D’Angelo Barksdale

“Original King Julius is on the line.” - Sacha Baron Cohen

King Julien

"When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die." - Cersei Lannister

Why is it so hard to just accept this and be transparent about motives ? It's fair to say 'we were not aligned with Sam, we tried an ouster, didn't pan out so the best thing for us to do is to leave and let Sam pursue his path", which the entirely company has vouched for.

Instead, you get to see grey area after grey area.

Because, for some weird reason, our culture has collectively decided that, even if most of us are capable of reading between the lines to understand what's really being said or is happening, it's often wrong and bad to be honest and transparent, and we should put the most positive spin possible on it. It's everywhere, especially in professional and political environments.

For a counter example of what open and transparent communincation from a C-level tech person could look like, have a read of what the SpaCy founder blogged about a few months ago:

https://honnibal.dev/blog/back-to-our-roots

Stakes are orders of magnitude lower in spaCy case compared to OpenAI (for announcer and for people around them). It's easier to just be yourself when you're back on square one.

McKinsey MBA brain rot seeping into all levels of culture

That's giving too much credit to McKinsey. I'd argue it's systemic brainrot. Never admit mistakes, never express yourself, never be honest. Just make up as much bullshit as possible on the fly, say whatever you have to pacify people. Even just say bullshit 24/7.

Not to dunk on Mira Murati, because this note is pretty cookie cutter, but it exemplifies this perfectly. It says nothing about her motivations for resigning. It bends over backwards to kiss the asses of the people she's leaving behind. It could ultimately be condensed into two words: "I've resigned."

It's a management culture which is almost colonial in nature, and seeks to differentiate itself from a "labor class" which is already highly educated.

Never spook the horses. Never show the team, or the public, what's going on behind the curtain.. or even that there is anything going on. At all time present the appearance of a swan gliding serenely across a lake.

Because if you show humanity, those other humans might cotton on to the fact that you're not much different to them, and have done little to earn or justify your position of authority.

And that wouldn't do at all.

> Just make up as much bullshit as possible on the fly, say whatever you have to pacify people.

Probably why AI sludge is so well suited to this particular cultural moment.

It is human nature to use plausible deniability to play politics and fool one’s self or others. You will get better results in negotiations if you allow the opposing party to maintain face (i.e. ego).

See flirting as a more basic example.

not for two sigma

This is not a culture thing imo, being honest and transparent makes you vulnerable to exploits, which is often a bad thing for the ones being honest and transparent in a high competition area.

Being dishonest and cagey only serves to build public distrust in your organization, as has happened with OpenAI over the past couple of months. Just look at all of the comments throughout this thread for proof of that.

Edit: Shoot, look at the general level of distrust that the populous puts in politicians.

hypocrisy has to be the core of every corporate or political environment I have observed recently. I can count the occasions or situations where telling the simple truth is helpful. even the people who tell you to tell the truth are often the ones incapable of handling it.

From experience unless the person mention their next "adventure"(within like a couple of months) or gig it usually means a manager or c-suite person got axed and was given the option to gracefully exit.

true

By the barrage of exits following Mira's resignation, it does look like Sam fired her, the team got the wind of this and are now quitting in droves. This is the thing about lying and being polite. You can't hide the truth for long.

Mira's latest one liner tweet 'OpenAI is nothing without it's people" speaks volumes.

Because if you are a high level executive and you are transparent on those things, and if it backfires, it will backfire hard for your future opportunities, since all the companies will view you as a potential liability. So it is always safer and wiser option to not say anything in case of any risk of it backfiring. So you do the polite PR messaging every single time. There's nothing to be gained on the individual level of being transparent, only to be risked.

I doubt someone with Mira or Ilya’s calibre have to worry about future opportunities. They can very well craft their own opportunities.

Saying I was wrong should not be this complicated, or saying we failed.

I do however agree that there is nothing to be gained and everything to be risked. So why do it.

Their (Ilya and Mira) perspective on anything is so far remote from your (and my) perspectives that trying to understand their personal feelings behind their resignation is an enterprise doomed to failure.

“the entire company has vouched for” is inconsistent with what we see now. Low/mid ranking employees were obviously tweeting in alignment with their management and by request.

id imagine that level of honesty could still lead to billions lost in shareholder value - thus the grey area. Market obfuscation is a real thing.

It's in nobodies best interest to do this especially when there is so much money at play.

A bit ironic for a non-profit

As I understand they are going to be stop being non-profit soonish now?

Everyone involved works at and has investments in a for-profit firm.

The fact that it has a structure that subordinates it to the board of a non-profit would be only tangential to the interests involved even if that was meaningful and not just rhe lingering vestige of the (arguably, deceptive) founding that the combined organization was working on getting rid of.

People, including East Asians, frequently claim "face" is an East Asian cultural concept despite the fact that it is omnipresent in all cultures. It doesn't matter if outsiders have figured out what's actually going on. The only thing that matters is saving face.

We lie about our successes why would we not lie about our failures?

> Why is it so hard to just accept this and be transparent about motives

You are asking the question, why are politicians not honest?