This should be higher voted. Seems like an internal power struggle between the more academic types and the commercial minded sides of OpenAI.
I bet Sam goes and founds a company to take on OpenAI…and wins.
I bet Sam goes and founds a company to take on OpenAI…and wins.
If the company's 'Chief Scientist' is this unhappy about the direction the CEO is taking the company, maybe there's something to it.
But Altman has a great track record as CEO.
Hard to imagine he suddenly became a bad CEO. Possible. But unlikely.
the guy founded and was CEO of a company at 19 that sold for $43m
It is easy to sell a company for $43 if you raised at least $43. Granted, we don't know the total amount raised but it certainly it's not the big success you are describing. That and I already mentioned that he is good in corporate sales.
Which is a big part of being a great CEO
This isn't a success story, it's a redistribution of wealth from investors to the founders.
I'm curious - how is this easy?
let's see if he can pull it off again or goes all-in on his data privacy nightmare / shitcoin double-wammy
The dude is quite good at selling dystopian ideas as a path to utopia.
This looks like a terrible decision, but I suppose we must wait and see.
It's for-profit (capped-profit) subsidiary exists solely to be able to enable competitive compensation to its researchers to ensure they don't have to worry about the opportunity costs of working at a non-profit.
They have a mutually beneficial relationship with a deep-pocketed partner who can perpetually fund their research in exchange for exclusive rights to commercialize any ground-breaking technology they develop and choose to allow to be commercialized.
Aggressive commercialization is at odds with their raison d'être and they have no need for it to fund their research. For as long as they continue to push forward the state of the art in AI and build ground-breaking technology they can let Microsoft worry about commercialization and product development.
If a CEO is not just distracting but actively hampering an organisation's ability to fulfill its mission then their dismissal is entirely warranted.
Isn't this already a conflict of interest, or a clash, with this:
>OpenAI is a non-profit research organisation.
?
"OpenAI is a non-profit artificial intelligence research company"
https://twitter.com/satyanadella/status/1726509045803336122
"to lead a new advanced AI research team"
I would assume that Microsoft negotiated significant rights with regards to R&D and any IP.
What did Sam Altman personally do that made firing him such a terrible decision?
More to the point, what can't OpenAI do without Altman that they could do with him?
Possibly the board instructed "Do A" or "Don't do B" and he went ahead and did do B.
Real chance of an exodus, which will be an utter shame.
2018 NYT article: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/19/technology/artificial-int...
shows that the demographic here is alienated when it came to their own compensation market value.
* Uber-geniuses that are better than the rest of us pleb software engineers
* Harder workers than the rest of us
* Rich parents -> expensive school -> elite network -> amazing pay
* Just lucky
Step 2 is gaining the skills they are looking for. Appropriate language/framework/skill/experience they optimize for.
Step 3 is to prepare for their interview process, which is often quite involved. But they pay well, so when they say jump, you jump.
I'm not saying you'll find $600k as a normal pay, that's quite out of touch unless you're in Silicon Valley (and even then). But you'll find (much) higher than market salary.
If you're willing to sell your soul, you should at least put a better price on it.
That's hardly any different. Nobody makes a difficult decision without any reason, and it's not like they really explained the reason.
But…smart operator? Based on what? What trials has he navigated through that displayed great operational skills? When did he steer a company through a rocky time?
How? Training sources are much more restricted know.