Kara Swisher: there will be more departures of top folks at OpenAI tonight
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What did Sam lie to the board about that caused them to basically eject him like he’s radioactive? Why did Greg take his toys away and quit on the spot? Are the other departures “solidarity exits”, or because they’re possibly involved in whatever got Sam ejected??
Tune in at 11 to find out more!
Like, doing that is just actively making your own life difficult.
Edit: thinking about it more: lying to the board, even if they suck, seems like the fast-track to completely blowing away your own reputation.
- Manage upwards, like everyone else
- figure out how to communicate effectively with them, educating and bringing them up to speed where necessary so you’re all on the same page.
I’m not even a C-level, but “communicating effectively” should absolutely be a part of your skill set by this level.
"I think you're wrong, so let me lie and manipulate to get my way."
Utter toxic twattery.
"I firmly believe in my right, and will do whatever it takes to get my way" is one of the quicker ways to completely corrupt both the general conversation and yourself. Because what if you're wrong? I can no longer address your actual arguments, because you keep them hidden from me. We can no longer compromise because I no longer know what you want.
Take a look at the board composition and its recent actions.
All your messages in this thread strongly suggest you do. e.g. "What’s he supposed to do?" certainly does not come across as a mark of disapproval and I have no idea how else to interpret this.
If you meant to say something else then you should have said something clearer than a string of vague one-liners that signal approval in any common sense reading.
They got rid of a guy for lying to them: seems reasonable
Promoted an interim CEO in the interim: yep
His mate took his toys and left in response: seems OTT but that’s his problem.
Not seeing the problem here?
Most easily identifiable by the 'familiar' first name use.
* The Heroic CEO toils against naysayers and unbelievers to deliver on his immaculate vision. It's too important to follow the rules.
/duck
id suspect exfiltrating tech to a more cultish and probusiness platform with a copilots.
Vending Machines used to be called robots. Then they stopped seeming magic.
Like everything else that was ever called AI then realized, the goalposts move to exclude it.
It's become increasingly clear that they're two different concepts so we need two different names.
And nobody involved with currently commercialized projects is going to stop using the term AI, so a new term was needed. AGI seems as good as any other -- do you object?
I see no reason we'll need a third term as you suggest, unless we come to a new gigantic breakthrough that is miles beyond our current conception of AI, but is not yet AGI.
Here's a suggestion; stop calling LLMs "AI". Yes, I know; the shareholders will hate it. But then, you're not building towards any expectation of intelligent behavior. The fact that we have to qualify the existence of intelligence with a different acronym says it all; people are disappointed with what we have. AI simply isn't enough, we need it to be generalized before we get reliable results!
So... yeah, I do object. Users won't object because they're hungry for a better experience, and developers won't because they need every excuse they can get to charge recurring service revenue. Suspicious onlookers like me and the parent are the only ones who end up questioning the whole thing.
Yeah, the shoe fits.
Once I heard Altman suggest "with AI" should be replaced with "using a computer".
If there was a real running ideological factional conflict inside OpenAI, that's not at all implausible to have occurred as part of the maneuvering.
for those who never read the actual content.
* They say in the statement that Sam "was not consistently candid in his communications with the board" which is pretty strong and sounds like lying. If it was just a disagreement in direction it feels like they would have said something about vision here
* This happened supper abruptly, it sounds like maybe the head of the board wasn't even told earlier or maybe was mad enough to wait to announce he was quitting? Idk, regardless it doesn't seem like anything that was brewing for awhile, because if it was why not wait half an hour for the markets to close?
edit: I guess she addresses some of this and said this in reference to why they said Sam was lying "Not sure. About plans for development day. Unless their statement was just cloddish. They certainly have made it feel sorted. Unless it was that it is a loaded word."
"This journalist" is Kara Swisher, probably the most prominent tech journalist since the dot com boom. She's known for her deep knowledge of the silicon valley tech world, her sharp commentary, and not letting charismatic executives get away with bobbing and weaving around tough questions in her interviews.
I don't really enjoy her writing or interviews because she's so willing to take the conversations to uncomfortable places, but sometimes that's what's required to cut through all the bullshit and dig up the truth.
She's a good journalist, and I'd be quite surprised if she didn't verify this information from more than one quality source before tweeting about it.
Am I the only one who remembers the numerous takes describing how GPT-4 was going to automate all jobs and possibly end the world? They have proven themselves completely incapable of evaluating the impact of their technology.
There’s probably an evolutionary basis. If you mistake a bush for a lion you are fine. If you mistake a lion for a bush you are dead. We are all descendants of the former not the latter.
btw these are the people who are convinced they can align artificial super intelligence
Humans tend to "align" with the greediest and/or most functionally pathological who accumulate wealth and influence.
We should not expect tooling to have a distinct fate.
Imagine if all the top talent from multiple agencies united for the coming Senescent Wars.
popcorn.GIF
Notes to self:
A. Go the Google route with a board that can't fire you.
B. Avoid dealing with all of the BS of publicly-traded C-corps with private equity. Instead of a board of directors, have a board of advisors and listen to their feedback.
C. Transparency and avoid surprises.
D. Know when a different style of leader is necessary for the phase of a venture and proactively succession/transition plan.
E. Don't get financially involved with other people without interest alignment, or you could end up being fired by a conspiracy theorist.
All things said and done, I'm glad it turned out this way. Sam Altman reeked of scummy "tech-bro" vibes, not to mention the whole WorldCoin debacle (no offense to any "techbros" who might actually be building cool stuff to actually improve humanity and aren't only in it for the money)
No he wouldn't. This is the definition of a biased source. I am sure he would provide a totally unbiased view of why his own Board found it necessary to suddenly take him out completely of his own company when he is THE public face of a massively growing industry.
This space is so incestuous and protecting of its own at its own expense. Good grief.
Swisher is reporting what her sources say - not writing an encyclopedia article. Sam would've been a good source - even if a biased one. Looks like it was true by the way, even if Sam was her source.
Still very confused as to how you could think "unbiased" would even be a possible qualification for a source here much less a necessary one. Just curious - do you think news articles are unbiased too?
Oh come on, Swisher has been a tech journalist for 20 years. She has actual documented credibility. Now whether or not she holds up Altman as the next Jobs or SBF, yeah who fucking knows. But to dismiss her integrity as a journo is going to require some evidence.
Firing Sam is absolutely one of the dumbest things a BOD has ever done in history. He's the founding CEO of the company that is insanely successful, he is the company. If you wanted him gone for some trivial reason you needed to get him onboard first, "here's a billion dollars, now spend more time with friends and family for the next 18 months".
You sure about that? This take is going to age like milk once facts come out.