Comment by nopinsight | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nopinsight | Hacker News Reader

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OpenAI’s board previously consisted of 6 people, incl Sam Altman and Greg Brockman. Two of them are more involved in technical matters at OpenAI than Sam. Now there are only four members on the board.

At least one of them must jointly make this decision with the three outside board members. I’d say it’s more likely to be business related. (In addition, the CTO is appointed as the interim CEO.) (Edit: But obviously we currently don’t really know. I think the whistleblower theory below is possible too.)

The announcement: https://openai.com/blog/openai-announces-leadership-transiti...

“OpenAI’s board of directors consists of OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, independent directors Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo, technology entrepreneur Tasha McCauley, and Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology’s Helen Toner. …..

As a part of this transition, Greg Brockman will be stepping down as chairman of the board and will remain in his role at the company, reporting to the CEO.“

Previous members: https://openai.com/our-structure

“Our board OpenAI is governed by the board of the OpenAI Nonprofit, comprised of OpenAI Global, LLC employees Greg Brockman (Chairman & President), Ilya Sutskever (Chief Scientist), and Sam Altman (CEO), and non-employees Adam D’Angelo, Tasha McCauley, Helen Toner.”

The tone used by OpenAI (their distrust of Sam Altman) tells me that they did not simply decide they need different leadership. The statement by the board seriously damages his career. Why else would they burn bridges and oppose themselves on ethical grounds? Or they are trying to blame and sac Altman.

> The statement by the board seriously damages his career.

You misunderstand how these corporate situations work. He will fall upward to a better job someplace else if he chooses.

Adam Neumann, who started then destroyed WeWork, already raised $350 million from Andreessen Horowitz for another real estate company called Flow.

> Adam Neumann, who started then destroyed WeWork, already raised $350 million from Andreessen Horowitz for another real estate company called Flow.

Well, he did get a few billion dollars of lesson on how to not run such a company, making him quite uniquely qualified for this position.

Adam also managed to get almost half a billy worth of money out from Softbank as a corporate loan for himself

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/softbank-takes-14b-hit-wework...

Adam is good making people rich, but those people are not his investors.

I assume he has trademarked the word "Flow" and is licensing it to the company for a few million dollars.

I like how CEO performance has no null hypothesis

> upward to a better job

Not a whole lot of up to go from CEO of OpenAI right now...

except founding a new startup with a bunch of top level players who recently left top level companies.

A better job than CEO of a company that has a chance to be the dominant company of our generation? I doubt that.

His next CEO gig might come with equity...

With a16z's crypto ventures, scams on top scams is not surprising

Are you seriously comparing OpenAI to WeWork? I'm not particularly bullish on AI but you have to give OpenAI credit for what they've accomplished under Altman.

Comparing two things is not the same as saying they're the same in all respects.

He said they both involved failing upwards...

OpenAI is not a failure.

Nobody said that.

> He will fall upward to a better job someplace else if he chooses.

I take "fall upward" to be a typo of "fail upward".

The next sentence explicitly compares the situation to WeWork.

My interpretation is correct, it's a bizarre post, I'm done with this thread, have a good day.

The first word there, "he" will fall upward.

Not OpenAI will fall upward. Sam Altman is not OpenAI, especially after this latest announcement.

The next sentence compares him to the WeWork CEO.

It's not OpenAI is like WeWork. It's the disgraced CEO of OpenAI is like the disgraced CEO of WeWork.

There’s a famous NFL quote from a former general manager of the Arizona Cardinals that goes, “If Hannibal Lecter ran a 4.3 (40-yard dash) we'd probably diagnose it as an eating disorder.”

I'll argue in this day and age, that any founder/C-level person who has "created" billions in value, no matter how much of a paper tiger it is, will almost always get another shot. If SBF or Elizabeth Holmes weren't physically in prison, I bet they'd be able to get investment for whatever their next idea is.

This comparison makes no sense. Hannibal Lecter would be helping the team by being able to run fast.

Neumann and Holmes and SBF lost their benefactors money.

The point of comparison in the analogy is "founder/C-level person who has "created" billions in value, no matter how much of a paper tiger it is."

The claim is that investors are interested in executives who they perceive to have created billions in value, and that's analogous to how NFL teams are interested in people who run fast.

Investors are not interested in executives that “create” billions, they are interested in investors that create billions.

NFL teams are interested in players that can actually run fast, not players that can say they do, but are found to be lying and it turns out they cannot run fast causing the team to lose.

> Investors are not interested in executives that “create” billions, they are interested in investors that create billions.

Investors are interested in people they can use to make money. The latter are easier to use, but the former will suffice. It just depends on when you sell.

Would you say the same thing for Enron execs? For Bernie Madoff?

I think the business of running a scam or a fraudulent company is quite different to an actual business.

20 years ago? No for either.

Now? Yes for Kenneth Lay (assuming he was still alive and/or not hiding on a desert island under a new identity if I put on my tin foil hat)... Madoff, probably not.

Why a yes for Kenneth Lay? Do you think the experience of running a scam is transferable to a real business? Or do you not consider enron a scam? Or do you think the line between scams and businesses is so blurred that the skill doing them is the same?

I would say yes for madoff . Lots of people made a ton of money of him for decades , and losses were not as bad as originally thought.

There is bound to be a few people who have a soft spot and will give him money again .

Look at the comment two levels above about Adam Neumann.

Adam Neumann is not a good example. While he has proven good at raising money he has not been proven at running a business or even finding successful ones. My comment was exactly about that difference.

I completely agree with your assessment of Adam Neumann.

AND ... post the WeWork debacle, Neumann has once again succeeded in raising a massive investment.

Fall upwards to a better job than CEO of OpenAI circa 2023? What job is that?

> You misunderstand how these corporate situations work. He will fall upward to a better job someplace else if he chooses.

I have no doubt that Altman is deeply embedded in the techbro good old boys network to get another job, but that doesn't change the fact his (now previous) employer released a blog post saying he LIED TO THE BOARD about something severe enough that they had to insta-sack him.

Lied to the board and they _rushed_ to oust him.

No clear transition plan. In what situations world a board fire the ceo from the worlds greatest tech sensation since who knows when, in a matter of hours ?

> The statement by the board seriously damages his career

Yes: suggesting he was not as candid as necessary is business libel unless true.

And since Brockman was also booted, he may have been involved.

It's not clear what the Board was trying to do that he interfered with. There is no clear legal standard on what a CEO must divulge, and CEO's often get to wait to tell board members bad news until the whole board meets and the issue has been investigated.

Whatever it is, Open AI need to disclose the reason soon, otherwise speculation will undermine the whole AI market.

However big his transgressions may be, it's actual impact is finite, while the speculation can be infinite.

The whole ai market is rife with ip theft and privacy violations. The cat’s out of the bag.

Nobody will give a sht in a month.

Love your quote there: impact finite when speculation isn’t infinite

Hi fellow Zappa fan.

The average user of ChatGPT has no idea who Sam Altman is.

My view is that medium- and long- terms are determined by fundamentals of what the technology actually delivers.

OpenAI and ChatGPT are great and gets a lot of mind-share. But they are far from the only game in town and, at this still very-early stage of the tech cycle, the outwardly-visible leader can easily change in months.

Two predictions:

(1) Unless there is public litigation in involved, OpenAI will not disclose the reason in susbtantial detail.

(2) It will not, more than momentarily, disrupt the whole AI market if they do not.

(If it is something that will disrupt the whole AI market, there is likely to be litigation and public information about the basis of the firing.)

Kara swisher is reporting it’s a conflict between business goals and nonprofit goals. Unless there’s some conflicting reporting coming out soon, that probably enough to tamp down any speculation that will undermine the whole ai market.

In the scenario where a security incident is the cause, the CTO might have been the one blowing the whistle

Exactly. Which is why they trust her in the interim CEO role.

While there is no evidence to back this, I wouldnt be surprised if the CTO made a for the CEO role. I mean shes a great fit for the role

From another post on their structure[1]

> Only a minority of board members are allowed to hold financial stakes in the partnership at one time. Furthermore, only board members without such stakes can vote on decisions where the interests of limited partners and OpenAI Nonprofit’s mission may conflict—including any decisions about making payouts to investors and employees.

So given the latest statement from the board emphasizing their mission, it could be that Brockman and Sutskever were not able to participate in the board decision to fire Altman, making it a 3-to-2 or 4-to-1 vote against Altman.

[1]: https://openai.com/blog/openai-lp

I did a similar analysis to you about how the board must have voted and initially concluded that Ilya likely voted against Sam. However, without seeing the actual governing documents for OpenAI, we can't rule out the possibility that personnel decisions are made solely by the independent directors.

Never raise money from a competitor...

Is it possible that the Open AI employees had to recuse themselves from the vote?

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