Sam Altman and Greg Brockman Joint Statement | Hacker News Reader

Sam Altman and Greg Brockman Joint Statement

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153 pointsaliabd74 comments

I think we just experienced an all-time moment in corporate politics. It's kind of like Steve Jobs being fired, but if it happened immediately after the Apple II. It feels like OpenAI has already cemented its place in history, whether or not it becomes a titan for the long run.

It's very, very common.

Remember when Jack Dorsey was ousted from Twitter and replaced by Evan Williams, who was himself ousted and replaced by Dick Costolo, who was replaced when Dorsey came back? Or the drama around Yishan Wong's sudden resignation as Reddit CEO, to be replaced by Ellen Pao, to be replaced as the founder Steve Huffman came back? The Flexport drama last month where the hired CEO was replaced by the founder? The movie "The Social Network"? Going back a bit, Sandy Lerner and Leonard Bosack's ouster from Cisco, or Diane Green and Mendel Rosenblum's ouster from VMWare?

Build something successful and there will be a lot of infighting about who gets to control it.

I don't know much about the Cisco or VMWare examples. I recall the Twitter and Reddit situations as being more like the products having reached a plateau where people generally knew what it was and how it fit into the world. What feels remarkable to me is where OpenAI is in its potential trajectory as leader of a possible revolution in IT.

But I guess the amount of contingency in how all this might play out may well be the reason for the ouster.

>Or the drama around Yishan Wong's sudden resignation as Reddit CEO, to be replaced by Ellen Pao

you're missing one noteworthy name who was CEO between those two people :)

If this was a palace coup based on a disagreement on direction, then OpenAI is done. Microsoft won’t be able to trust the board going forward, and so the money will dry up. Most of the talent will follow Sam/Greg. OpenAI will wither on the vine.

That said, I feel like more is to come out still. The board made serious accusations.

I agree this is likely disastrous for OpenAI's current corporate structure, and Microsoft will be very unhappy. But as an ML researcher, I suspect lots of researchers are going to continue to follow Ilya, unless his reputation has significantly changed (he does seem a lot more doomer-y recently ...)

It just doesn’t matter what his reputation is if the money dries up. To play in the big leagues you need deep pockets, regardless of how talented your staff is.

The money won't dry up because of his reputation and team.

Microsoft won't trust the board regardless because they weren't in-the-loop for a material event which tanked their stock.

Down 2% is tanking a stock?

It appears the reporting was accurate: Ilya staged a coup.

Notably, Sam/Greg do not guess or insinuate why he did a coup.

Apparently due to Sam's ego and wanting to use OpenAI to achieve a Musk-like cult status: https://old.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/comments/17xoact/sam_altman_...

Source: trust me bro, I'm a random reddit user.

It's harder to tell now, but from a timeline of events, that supposed OpenAI insider on Reddit had key details of the 'palace coup' that reputable journalists like Kara Swisher (and now a primary source of Greg Brockman) have largely confirmed.

I think the Reddit user is legitimate.

No that's horseshit since it does not constitute a valid legal reason for his removal nor it's inline with their blog post. They would get sued out of their a* if they acted based on this.

unfortunately, that is also how reddit roleplay works too.

front-running scoops from journalists?

yeah, often times that is the case. Because reddit is antonymous and free, people can and do make all kinds of claims, some of which come true. If you have 500 people making up different claims, it is likely that one of them will come true, even if that person was guessing/lying.

Im not saying that real leaks dont happen, but that pre-running the news is really weak evidence the on reddit, unless the claims are incredibly specific.

I dont think there was anything they said on reddit that was very specific, and several posters in the HN thread speculating the same thing, just without claiming to be "in the room".

It is kind of like publishing multiple weather predictions, and then claiming credit for the one that is correct.

The consistent detail about the store breaking the camel's back sounds rather specific. I guess time will tell whether more claims by this user hold up.

>I guess time will tell whether more claims by this user hold up.

Thats the point, it doesnt matter if they do or dont.

If you read through their post history, they have a comment or sentence for almost every possible reason:

Difference in vision

forcing development to fast

Didn't listen to safety concerns

Lying about finances

Making deals without the board

Hiding financial matters.

It is like someone is rattling off the top 10 guesses for the reason from HN or predication markets.

Now if they said something like Ilya Sutskever called Sam at 1215 on hangouts to tell him, That would be a be pretty solid proof.

The user just made some new comments that lack credibility. I think that seals whatever doubts I had.

yeah, the new comments look like more of the same to me. A lot of not-so-subtle self aggrandizement, vague claims, and of course a "big secret" that they cant share.

They could still be some kind of insider, but they never added any new information beyond what was publicly speculated, and clearly have an axe to grind.

There is something about reddit that just attracts and promotes a lot of juvenile attention seeking behavior. My default assumption is that content is fictional unless it passes a pretty high bar.

I mean Ilya said it himself in a roundabout way https://twitter.com/ilyasut/status/1707752576077176907

This is too incomplete to reach any conclusions. The board made claims about a specific class of activity. They may or may not have been more specific in their conversations with Sam and Greg. Either way the credibility accusation needs more than just a timeline to refute it.

Maybe it was a coup as per some reporting; maybe it wasn’t. I’m reluctant to make a decision here based on who got to the reporters first. There is some asymmetry in media savvy between Sam and the board.

I’m with you on this. OpenAI’s board publicly stated that Sam Altman had lied to them, and that they no longer have confidence in his ability to continue leading the company. I find it really hard to believe they just made that up. They could have just said that they lost confidence in Sam’s leadership. But they also said he had lied to them. And that’s a big deal.

This just happened. We don’t have all the facts.

Yes. It’s also true that the board made decisions I would not expect from a competent board, like not giving any investors a heads up about this.

One thing we’ll know by tomorrow morning: was Swisher right when she said there’d be more top level resignations? That will tell us a certain amount about her credibility/sources.

(Also, obviously, my opinion about any of this is worth what you pay for it.)

Apparently, an internal memo at OpenAI states that Sam was not fired for malfeasance.

Unbelievable.

See https://www.axios.com/2023/11/18/openai-memo-altman-firing-m...

You’re taking the word of the fired verbatim on Twitter? There are multiple sides to every story. For legal reasons, the board may never give exact details.

What I still don't get about all this is if this is just a case of Ilya deciding to play board room Game of Thrones because he has a different vision for OpenAI than Sam and Greg, why throw Sam under the bus with this line in the announcement:

"Mr. Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities."

This really reads like Sam did something wrong and had it coming. But Greg and Sam's statement make it sound like Ilya just wanted to go another direction and got the votes. Why make Sam out to be the bad guy if there was no wrongdoing?

This is why I think there are more shoes to drop still. That language is exceptionally specific and harsh.

Or the board is not entrenched in typical corporate cultural/lingo and did not know how their language would stand out.

This statement makes it sound like they're confused about why Sam was fired, but Sam's original tweet does not convey any hint of that. Compare:

https://twitter.com/sama/status/1725631621511184771

The joint statement was still intentionally refraining from the details, merely revealing the manner the firing decision was delivered. Ilya & rest of the board had a reason to do this and that reason isn't being disclosed by any involved party yet.

Why is everyone talking about Sam like he's the scientist and engineer behind OpenAI?

I seen people compare him to Oppenheimer lol.

Did he actually build anything at OpenAI or did he just manage it?

Ilya just self-immolated the hottest company of the decade with an 80 billion dollar valuation, all to make a point that he thinks AGI is too close and that safety needs to come first before all else. That’s quite the statement!

Sounds to me like it wasn't just Ilya, but the whole research and engineering team that was tired of his shit. See: https://www.reddit.com/user/Anxious_Bandicoot126

Yeah… I don’t know. A lot of engineers miss the forest for the trees when it comes to business demands. Very possible that a return to a “safety oriented” culture means that OpenAI fades slowly into obscurity.

A lot of engineers are interested in working on important things, not growing at all cost in hope of a large exit.

Fundamentally, if revenue is not more than expenses, then the organisation won't last long, relying as it does on the kindness of strangers.

Yeah I read that and it really came off like a salty engineer who was tired of being pushed by the exec team to crank out more business value. Sounds like this person’s position is that OpenAI should have been a cozy little research lab where the scientists got to play with their cool toys, not ruthlessly execute on a product vision. Billion dollar business are built out of ego. If you want to work in a lab that can’t ship, head over to Deep Mind (that’s a joke, even Deep Mind needs to ship now).

At this point whenever I see someone concerned about "safety" with respect to AI, I assume it's either someone who wants to:

a) Make sure it's sufficiently neutered as to not say something offensive or incongruent with certain ideologies, make certain topics off-limits

b) Scare lawmakers into making it impossible for anyone to catch up to OpenAI et al, so they can reap the benefits of cutting-edge AI while keeping the public placated with incremental improvements to outdated and sufficiently hobbled models

Neither apply to myself or thousands, so reevaluate your flawed thinking.

Something to consider: the post announcing his firing is now the 7th most upvoted post on hacker news and climbing. Does Sam Altman really deserve that much attention for his role in OpenAI, and is the fact that it's getting this much attention part of the reason he was kicked?

Zuckerberg started Fb in his dorm and Steve Jobs left his mark on every inch of their flagship products. Altman was positioned to be the next "Jobs / Zuckerberg" but I can't say I know he really deserved it as much as people seem to think. Obviously open to completely changing my mind.

The news is getting extra attention because it's bizarre, unexpected, and could possibly take down a multi-billion dollar company.

It's probably more the tone of the firing letter, with the accusation about some scandal that we've yet to hear about, from a company that from the outside seemed to be at the top of its game.

It's a lot more popcorn than we usually get from corporate announcements.

I don't particularly care about Sam Altman but seeing turbulence at OpenAI is interesting news.

This is hacker news. Sam was the founder of a startup in the very first round of YC. He then later became president of YC. I expect news of him to resonate more around here.

And OpenAI have been the most exciting tech company of the last 12 months.

I find this absolutely baffling to have occurred.

Even more so now than ever, I don't think this corporate structure will survive.

They found the shift key!!

More accurately, their lawyers did.

Ilya is an idealist. I respect it

we don't know anything right now

... If this was supposed to clear things up, it didn't. I'm even more confused now.

The whole sequence of events sounds amateurish and extremely unprofessional!

These people in the Twitter thread are distracted by use of Google Meet. Have they never compared it to Micrsoft Teams. Or Zoom. All these are painful to use, if for nothing else besides the companies behind them, but there's quite a difference between Meet and the others.

Sounds exactly like a coup despite Ilya claiming it wasn't one.

But other than that, the details are still pretty lacking. The drama is only getting started and whatever comes next from both sides will be even more interesting.

1) What

"more to say about what's next" in Sam's tweet earlier, and now,

"greater things are coming"

huh, do they already have a plan or is this just generic optimism?

Clearly they will have a new AI startup by Monday.

Plot twist: They hire all the laid off Alexa people and make the world's best voice controlled light switch

Howdy-doodly-do, how's it going?

Probably generic optimism backed by realistic track records. If you spend 20 years founding and running companies, it stands to think there will be another one.

Maybe after Sam Altman and Greg Brockman leave, people will realize how important they are to OpenAI.

Possibility of @karpathy leaving and joining them to form a viable competitor?

Meh, I think Ilya and John Schulman (TRPO, PPO, RLHF) are way more important. There are many others of course

That's just a technical perspective, but when it comes to developing advanced artificial intelligence industries, technology doesn't determine everything.

I'm sure they can get funding at this point if needed.

Even an investor with deep pockets like Microsoft would be shocked by such a sudden action by the board of directors,and Microsoft will treat its money more carefully.I don't think Microsoft can pretend nothing happened.

if they don't screw up again, it will eventually be forgotten as all things are and business as usual.

Their main value add was Sam's network, which is probably why they were able to raise so much money, close the deal with Microsoft and get a ton of YC companies to sign on early on.

Now that they're so well established and intertwined with Microsoft Sam's personal network is not as important.

This reminds me of the time at Facebook when one of OpenAI’s current board members was upset that the Director of Facebook Platform was getting more praise and attention than he was, in his role as Co-Founder and CTO (or whatever). That caused a lot of problems, from which the Facebook Platform never recovered.

People who start out petty usually remain that way. There’s a lot of people in this world whose happiness depends on others doing just a little bit worse-off than them.

If I was a developer building on OpenAI’s platform today, I would begin putting my contingency plans into place.

Caesar stabbed right in the back and the coup had been made clear by their closest founders.

Jealously and greed strikes once again, someone was more greedier than the rest.

Also why are all the links and sources from Twitter / X? We were told repeatedly it was dead? It seems that this drama suggests that it isn't.

Caesar was a total asshole

There was a quotation from The Books of Bokonon on the page before me. Those words leapt from the page and into my mind, and they were welcomed there.

The words were a paraphrase of the suggestion by Jesus: “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s.”

Bokonon’s paraphrase was this:

“Pay no attention to Caesar. Caesar doesn’t have the slightest idea what’s really going on.”

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