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Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

>This coup is badly executed though

I've seen this language used a few times now. A company's CEO is appointed by, and serves the goals of the board. Not the other way around. When the board perceives that the CEO isn't doing this, they can fire him. That's neither metaphorically or literally a coup.

Especially bad narrative in this case because openAI has given itself a charter (and legal structure that subjects the for-profit arm to the non-profit) that stresses safe and broadly beneficial AI development. If this is Ilya, the chief scientist, wanting to take it back into that direction, from Altman, a salesman, that will not hurt its reputation. (maybe it's stock value)

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It will be viewed this way by the public, and media, and yes me.

Unless they can bring solid evidence of Sam has some irredeemable misconduct to the table. Otherwise, this is exactly what a coup is, a grab of power, with the current power center, not knowing about it.

The board needs to explain themselves immediately, if they think this is idealogical disagreement, they should come clean, and tell us so. Not some nefarious language on Sam's candidance.

I am nobody, just a user of OpenAI's API. However, if this is how the current management structure functions in OpenAI, I will have serious concern over OpenAI's ability to execute next.

The exit of talents is now destined, OpenAI as a company is hurt irreparably.

They said it in the statement, they quoted to chapter of the company that they should focus on AI for the betterment of humanity.

I can't say if this will work, but I think the message is pretty clear. No more random product launches like the GPT store, but rather focus on the core: building the AI, testing it and launching when it's safe.

To be honest, I've also found them getting too diluted in offerings. Why not let other startups focus on those things? Let Openai focus on the core models and give tools to others to build/finetune things. They can be the infrastructure of the AI world, they don't need to create every product.

Again, we will only know in the future if this is the right decision. But there is a strong case to be made here, especially with the company's original mission and non-profit status.

Aren't director boards majoritarian? Isn't the whole point that the board has the power? A coup or power grab would be if the CEO managed to convince a minority of the board to work in the CEO's favor, to the detriment of the majority. I'm not even sure how that would work.

The non-tech media and public have literally no idea who Sam Altman is and realistically whatever happens here isn’t going to change whether people like ChatGPT or not.

It will affect Microsoft's view, and developers view as to whether the company is stable. I use the GPT-4 api for a number of processes and this makes me assume it's less stable than I otherwise assumed.

I second this.

This coup or ousting of Sam, isn’t boosting my faith in this company at all.

Talents exit is a serious concern

If core talent leaves I’ll agree. This was a business guy.

Firing a CEO is an extraordinary measure only taken in dramatic situations. Yes, the board can do it, but the legal and reputation risks are such that at the very least you let the CEO resign and pass the torch down.

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