Sam Altman, OpenAI board open talks to negotiate his possible return
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Or maybe it involves a deal that they're stuck with, and now dependent upon, even if the terms aren't aligned well with the non-profit. Saying that could be awkward.
What I can't guess at explanations for is publicly stating the not-consistently-candid in the initial announcement. I'm not expert on these things, but that sounds to me like either a euphemism for something that they needed to be seen as explicitly distancing the company from ASAP or a blunder that a lawyer or PR person would've advised them not to do, and which they didn't need to do.
At this point, that's the 95% conclusion.
If you were in this position and had even a sliver of defensibility to play, you would have already played it.
Because the longer this goes, the more sharks circle and the less likely OpenAI's survival becomes.
(UNLESS you thought you f---ed up and wanted Altman back so you want to be nice to him. But if you wanted that, you wouldn't have hired Shear as interim CEO to replace your previous interim CEO.)
The board has bylaws governing how it works. One of them says that it has to have 48 hours notice before a special online meeting (to, e.g. agenda, minutes, resolutions, actions). I think a board member cannot speak officially on behalf of them before that. Perhaps they have already had a meeting to get legal advice before a further announcement? We might be due an announcement soon.
Basically all boards work slow and we want instant responses which causes conflict.
However it's still mind boggling to me that a) they didn't foresee the response of their decisions and b) they haven't produced anything on paper explaining things to the company afterwards. I would have expected the CEO to say something like "they are meeting at this date according to their by laws" but perhaps a CEO cannot reveal such information legally?
They lost a CEO and chairman pretty suddenly....
I can build such a funny hypothetical scenario.
Step1 get on a board of a big company.
Random board members leave and out of 9 people in the original board there are only 6 left.
3 of them dont like each other.
Pit them against each other to oust the 2 of them. So now only 4 remain.
Now oust the last guy whose vote you needed earlier (to kick out the other people). You dont need him anymore. He can write some random complaint letters, who cares. He can even stay on the board, the clique can always outvote him.
Now only 3-4 left on board.
Recruit spouses and grandparents to the board to fill back to 9. In fact, you dont even have to - you answer to nobody as long as you stay on the board.
Congrats, you now control an 80 billion company.
Sell the intellectual property to highest bidder in a bargain sale for 20b, then pay each other 10b in salaries, use 9b for legal fees and start a new startup for 1b for fiduciary duties as a fig leave to show that the non profit still operates.
Oh also allegedly most employees want to quit, but whatever, use a dollar bill to wipe your tears.
Wouldnt all that be absolutely legal? In Soviet states probably. In USA?
That's not what I recall. They didn't need to. The Loans for Shares Scheme became public knowledge (sort of) and everyone realized the oligarchs literally stole everything. Every major industry that millions had died to make in Stalin's five year plans with the promise of a coming utopia was the private property of those connected with Yeltsin. Fortunately for them, the people didn't understand capitalism enough to know what happened or they'd be rioting in the streets.
In other words, what if they knew the suit was coming and sought to make Sam the fall guy by firing him sort-of-for-cause ... but they're stuck, because they can't explain what the cause reason was, without admitting the board was aware of the misconduct.
https://www.semafor.com/article/11/21/2023/openai-microsoft-...
Why Altman was fired.
What dishonesty? I'm sympathetic to this version of events, but if it's true then the board ought to be able to give specifics - and if they can't then the strident tone of the initial announcement was unjustified.
(Was) a hundred billion dollar rocketship, pioneering the future. That this is only the first such palace intrigue we've seen is surprising.
The root of the problem seems to lie in the challenges of growth and the accompanying pressures. The issues we've observed in the past week are likely tied to weak or ineffective leadership. This isn't just about leading developers or the technical team; it's about leadership at every level within the company. If leadership were strong and clear, I doubt these issues would have arisen.
It's like whenever there is a power vacuum, all the possible contenders compete and there's chaos. The existence of chaos suggests at least that there's a power vacuum at the top. Similar to when big leaders throughout history died, their children/lieutenants then fought and caused civil wars (e.g Mongols).
But while a leader is strong, there can be stability. Take, for instance, Facebook during its initial growth phase. Despite facing intense pressure from various quarters, it never descended into chaos or disarray. This stability could be attributed to a robust board, or perhaps to Mark Zuckerberg's leadership effectiveness. Whatever your opinion of him, his leadership across all levels of the company and on the board seemed to prevent competing interests from creating chaos.
This situation also underscores the importance of selecting the right people for the board. It's not just about finding smart individuals who look good on paper or focusing on trendy topics like AI ethics. The board members need a deep understanding of startups and business. Maybe the current board's inexperience and theoretical approach are issues. It could be that they are too young or resemble a vanity board more than an effective one.
However, we can't place all the blame on the board. Strong, clear, and effective leadership at the top is crucial. Sam Altman might excel in many areas, but perhaps what's needed is a leader like Zuckerberg at Facebook (and perhaps a similar leadership structure, too), or current-era Musk, someone who could have possibly prevented these problems.
Am I the only one who finds these kinds of explanations unconvincing? I don't think anyone knows precisely what was going through Sutskever's mind on Friday, but whenever the best explanation people have for an event is that an obviously very smart person suddenly became very stupid, it gives me the feeling that we don't have all the information.
Take your pick and state it in a highbrow fanciful way and boom you're cookin with gas.
I think it’s often the people who want power but, want to do something not good with it or abuse it, who get upset when their power-seeking is identified as what it is.
I understand if “it’s obvious” hand wavy, but your comment, which makes vague assertions that I don’t know without backing it up, could be considered hand wavy. It might even come across as an abusive attempt to silence someone saying something you dislike, by trying to frame the speaker as “ignorant, therefore should not speak.”
The obviousness of what I said arises from power being a perennial dynamic of human behavior, which I think your comment does a fair and job of demonstrating hahaha! :)
Their letter claims he was dishonest about something, we will see in the coming months why. I'm still very confused as to why Ilya would seemingly orchestrate such a monumental shift in the company, only to claim his 'deep regret' a few days later. It's pretty odd...
The main theory that fits for me is that he didn't want the mission to become profit-seeking, and probably Sam played down some of the deals he was making, or didn't mention them at all. Once Sam was removed, presumably pressure from the rank-and-file, the hundreds of people he sees everyday who uprooted their lives for a piece of that profit, turned Ilya away from his more pure convictions...
But who knows, this story will be interesting to watch over time.
It’s likely that the first type, of personal power, is included in the other type of power, but what is meant here by “power” is: you get to shape the future and make huge money doing it.
Regarding Ilya’s seemingly contradictory behavior, it appears more likely that he wasn’t really orchestrating the coup.
Instead, he was a pawn, manipulated by other interests to be the public face of the coup. These interests appealed to his ego and desire for more recognition and power within the company. Ilya’s perceived entitlement to a more significant role probably made him an easy target. So, it’s not accurate to say that Ilya orchestrated the coup.
It seems it was orchestrated by other key players on the board, primarily the backers behind the scenes. These backers likely include intelligence and policy security experts fronted by Helen (the AU-UK-China intelligence and security policy wonk axis), and those aligned with military-industrial interests, such as those represented by Tasha (RAND Corporation et al).
This coup had probably been planned for a while, with the goal of removing Sam who created obstacles to their plans. They tried to provoke him into a mistake, and when they believed they saw a moment of weakness, they executed their plan. However, the plan failed spectacularly.
For obvious reasons this would never probably be widely acknowledged, so it may be written up in some more niche blogs on use letters if anyone cares to do the investigative journalism.
As a result, as I previously stated it would be unwise to consider at face value The lies and presented as explanations for the coup, because of the power that is at stake.
Moreover, if you wish to gain a clearer understanding, consider the context into which the obvious players are in bedded.
Also, when you fire somebody with cause, you don't broadcast the gory details. You're not trying to destroy them, just get them out of your orbit. Retaining the whole reason also limits the legal comeback.
Personally pretty tired of the drama.
> As Bloomberg reported late last night, new interim CEO Emmett Shear is involved in mediating these negotiations, creating the frankly unprecedented situation where (1) the interim CEO who replaced (2) the interim CEO who replaced Sam and who (3) got replaced for trying to get Sam back is now (4) deeply involved in a new effort to get Sam back. Read it through a few times, it’s fine. It doesn’t make any sense to anyone else either.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/21/23971120/the-negotiation...
(Yes, I understand ChatGPT isn’t an AGI, shouldn’t be used for strategic decisions, blah blah blah, I tried it because it was funny.)
1. Ilya was on the board and deeply involved with the original decision to fire Sam - he in fact delivered the news to Sam.
2. Ilya has since had a change of heart, saying he regrets his participation in Sam's firing, and even signing the employee letter demanding the board resign.
3. But obviously since Ilya went along in the first place, even if he wasn't the "ringleader" as many originally assumed, he must have had discussions/evidence presented to him that convinced him that Sam needed to go. While he obviously underestimated the chaos this would cause, he must have known this was a huge decision and not one he would have taken lightly.
So my point is, why doesn't Ilya just spill the beans if he is now on "Team bring back Sam". Why doesn't Ilya just write a letter to Shear saying this is why he decided to fire Sam in the first place?
God I'm having a hard time imagining how the Netflix version of this will be better than the real thing.
Fear of getting fired from a company you started could lead anyone to be irrational. He is just too embarrassed to say it now that it lead to this big of havoc.
Because there may be legal consequences, and it's best to not give Sam's lawyers any ammunition.
1) Frank becomes a witness for the Feds against the Coreleone.
2) Frank recants when his brother shows up at the hearing reminding him of the consequences of breaking the oath of silence.
3) Frank kills himself to ensure his children's safety.
https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/59089/why-did-fra...
Because publicly spilling the beans on the reason would poison the negotiations and (and because it would) undermine Sam if he returned.
Anything that even remotely justifiably undermined the board’s confidence, even if in the totality of the circumstances there is regret of the termination decision, would have this concern.
Yes the board said it’s not because their safety policies failed, but also firing the CEO is one of those safety policies.
AFAICT Ilya and Sam seemed to have axiomatically different views on whether AGI/ASI is even possible via this route, which would not leave a ton of room for compromise as one (Ilya) felt the event horizon approaching, which based on recent reporting he seems to.
Anyway, just my theorizing with no more information than anyone else here.
And if he had been downplaying the risks or proximity or otherwise overstating the safety/alignment success in order to push ahead with commercialization, that would obviously be grounds for pretty fast termination.
I think this is also supported by the employees’ open letter which claims leadership later said it would be totally compliant with the mission to completely implode the company. What would qualify for that? What would even bring that severe a statement to mind? Nothing short of fairly imminent danger, IMO.
And ya know, whatever, we can agree or disagree on whether that danger is real, but OAI itself was founded specifically under the belief that it will be eventually (and designed their whole org structure to mitigate it), so obviously they think it’s real.
Hope babymachinegod isn't too angry/hungry
But I would bet heavily against them having it.
This conflict of interest explains D’Angelo’s silence and Ilya’s immediate flip when he realized that Altman would move faster towards AGI outside of OAI and all his friends couldn’t cash out next month.
Edit: combined with bad blood from Ms. Toner for criticizing OpenAI in her research. They couldn’t find anyone to add to the board. Now was time. https://archive.li/eN5PY#selection-321.0-324.0
It probably suited D’Angelo’s interests to see Altman out with slower OAI commercialization when the Effective Altruism narrative reached a fever pitch.
I don't know much about Adam, maybe he truly is an earth shattering combination of dumb and petty, but I think the burden of proof would be pretty high on this one.
Your premise requires that the acting board actually thought OpenAI would implode. The board very obviously did not think this outcome would happen. They have been in chaos and scrambling ever since precisely because they badly miscalculated the outcome of firing Altman.
Alternatively: slow down and or roll back the commercialization of GPT, especially with regards to the just announced GPTs (nice coincidence on timing that this happens right after that, as it directly threatened Poe). Poe benefits hugely in that scenario. The ideal outcome for Poe is to hamstring GPT's commercialization; develop the models, artificially restrain the commercialization, leave that to Poe. People do not always act or think rationally. They can be and often are wrong in their estimations. Otherwise smart people can make exceptionally dumb choices.
Ooops, I didn't mean for that chain of events to happen: history in a nutshell.
In the past I've considered x to be any of, Politician, Police Officer, Central Banker, Ambassador, General Staff
It isn't a stretch to add "Steward of AGI" to the set
Or alternately, he made a well-reasoned and principled decision by getting rid of Sam, but now everyone thinks he's awful for it and he's trying to save face and avoid ruining his own career
Or a secret third thing, of course
If the board had just found out about this, it would totally check all the boxes. Making something that could be destabilizing for the ecosystem or compete with OAI's partners, something which is arguably within scope of OAI itself yet he's raising funds as a venture he wholly controls while using time and possibly resources of OAI in the process (self-dealing?), etc.
It's enough of a gray area that all those things would be above board (hah!) if he had notified them and kept them in the loop, but a fireable offense if he hadn't.
The other two board members have nothing in their history to suggest they have the stomach or experience exercising agency to be a significant part of this resistance. But they might be pretty inclined to make a useful ideological stand.
I’ll reiterate a point I and others have made: the person most hurt by recent OpenAI events is D’Angelo. All he has to do is make the valid point that OpenAI’s charter is to make AI available to all and twist it a bit to his extreme personal advantage. The difference is that most people seasoned in corporate warfare can see he is not acting out of altruism but to his personal advantage, and apparently the other board members cannot.
Inversely to the other board members not having a history of individual stands, D’Angelo does, and he also lacks indications in his work history that he is concerned with altruistic actions in general.
To avoid more chaos. There are essentially zero good faith negotiation processes that are improved by leaking all the details to the public in parallel.
Ilya is on team TIFU and is (poorly) trying to save face.
The Netflix version will probably be more believable than the real thing.
On that note, Ilya's about-face is easily explained by him being suddenly "recruited" into the Traveller program over the weekend and begging for Sam to return because Altman's leadership of Open AI seeds the beginning of what will one day become The Director.
The mission comes first.
Just to be clear about the tone here: I personally have an extremely very positive opinion on polyamorous, sexually open people, micro-dosing psychedelics, going to burning man, all the effective autism, biohacking, etc. I mean, I do almost all of these things, including being on a spectrum and suffering from ADHD at the same time, if my psychologist is to be believed. But this doesn't stop me from recognising how stereotypical and funny all of this is.
I bet this kind of interpersonal drama drives a lot more big decisions than most people are aware of.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/anna-brockman-cried-asked-il...
I’m not saying the board looks great here but it’s about time to notice that Altman’s camp is spinning this hard, and stop taking anything that comes from them at face value.
"A few folks sent me a Hacker News comment speculating I was involved in the OpenAI conflict. Totally false. I was as surprised as anyone Friday, and still don’t know what happened."
All four are possible ringleaders.
Given Ilya's change of heart he is slightly less probable as the ringleader.
I tend to believe that was exactly his strategy with his change of heart...
If I had to guess, there will be one person who pushed for Sam's firing with vague reasons, and the others went along with it for their own vague reasons. In which case, the solution would be to fire those members (including Ilya) from the board, but let Ilya continue as chief scientist.
Who has the discussions?
> Then, take appropriate action.
Who takes action?
The board is at the top. Unlike for-profit corporations, there are no shareholders behind them. Ultimately, any and all action is taken by the board. They're not accountable to anyone else. They don't have to discuss anything with anybody, and there's no action anyone else can take.
Unless you're suing the board and get the government to step in, but it's not clear there's any grounds for that.
The (current) CEO.
>Who takes action?
The CEO can present the evidence and make recommendations. That is the action. It is then up to the board to follow those recommendations, present their own alternative, or let the company implode when all their employees quit.
>The board is at the top
That doesn't always guarantee power.
Basically you took the wrong conclusion from your observation.
This reminds me of the following story:
> "There are three men on a train. One of them is an economist and one of them is a logician and one of them is a mathematician.
> And they have just crossed the border into Scotland (I don't know why they are going to Scotland) and they see a brown cow standing in a field from the window of the train (and the cow is standing parallel to the train).
> And the economist says, 'Look, the cows in Scotland are brown.' And the logician says, 'No. There are cows in Scotland of which at least one is brown.' And the mathematician says, 'No. There is at least one cow in Scotland, of which one side appears to be brown.'
Once they made that gigantic deal with Microsoft and became a closed, for-profit company "Open"AI created a direct conflict of interest with itself with a board whose mandate I guess was to prevent the inevitable pull toward resource accumulation.
The board is trying to exercise its mandate, and OpenAI the for-profit company is at odds with that mandate. Is that because of Sam Altman's leadership? Does that qualify as "wrongdoing"?
By now they don't have full legitimacy.
To be fair, this was deliberately done. You don't want the person selling you the bombs to be the one deciding how many you use.
You’re describing an advisory board or oversight council. Like the one Facebook likes to ignore [1].
This was a board, and a non-profit board at that. They were designed to be the deciders. And they have no duty to inform anyone in their charter.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/06/technology/facebook-overs...
Not according to Sam Altman: "Development of superhuman machine intelligence is probably the greatest threat to the continued existence of humanity."
So "if OpenAI is killed," the board does not have "nothing to lose."
It is deeply ironic how much this forum complains about EA / lesswrong and yet I see hundreds of practically illiterate uninformed takes here a week. Practically all the tech CEO / VP types joke about it. This place likes to think of itself as high brow but it's closer to Reddit than academic circles.
I think Terminator did it much better.
If you really wanted to create "AGI for the benefit of all humanity", I can't imagine a better way to cut off your nose and then remove your brain to spite your face.
For example, as a paying user of OpenAI, I don't really care, as long as they continue to produce some of the best performing models, I'll keep paying.
It's pretty surprising what Microsoft did as well, like their deal with OpenAI is not invalidated by a CEO change. It's a pretty bold move of them to take that opportunity to poach the defunct CEO and the entire staff of OpenAI, and try and steal their intellectual property along the way.
I find it very likely they just didn't expect that to happen at all.
Yes, literally anyone with sufficient professional corporate experience would have. This was instantly front-page news everywhere.
> I mean, it could have just been that Sam is gone, a new CEO joins, and things move on.
This isn't about replacing a CEO. This is about 4 members secretly getting rid of 2 other board members, including the chair and CEO, in a secret board meeting, with zero transparency and zero public justification backed by evidence. None of that is business as normal, things move on. This is as disruptive and shocking as things get.
> I find it very likely they just didn't expect that to happen at all.
Which is precisely what's so troubling -- it shows their extreme incompetence. This isn't a toy $1M company for amateurs to play with, it's an ~$80B company. This is the big leagues. The board is expected to be able to understand the consequences of its actions.
Nor is it usual for outgoing execs' successors to immediately try to rehire them, the majority of a company's staff to demand a CEO's reinstatement... never mind one of the board members who voted to get rid of him u-turning and adding his own name to that statement. Microsoft being surprised and a bit pissed off would have been expected. Microsoft finding room for Sam isn't wildly surprising. Microsoft announcing that it will try to poach every single member of OpenAI staff unless the board does what they want is not the sort of consequence you'd predict.
It was obvious this was going to get a bit more attention than the average CEO firing and they certainly screwed up the communication by providing just as much information with their initial statement to fuel speculation and then no further comment, but boards firing CEOs is normal and the entire company dying on the hill of trying to bring him back isn't.
Why would they take this huge decision extremely suddenly?
Why would they announce it without first consulting with the president of the board?
Why would they claim that Sam Altman had been lying to the board in the official announcement?
Why would they announce some very weak reasons for that claim of lying to employees, and nothing to anyone outside the company?
Why would they immediately start negotiations to bring Sam back?
Why would they hire a new CEO that then says he is very much for commercialization, and that commercialization was not the reason for firing Sam?
Why would they start a new round of negotiation to bring Sam back?
Why would one of the four members of the board who took this turn decide to undo it and become an advocate for bringing Sam back?
The whole thing makes no sense at all if the motivation was disagreements over commercialization of their tech - something that has already happened months ago.
Because their motivation was the fear Sam inspired them, they acted the way they did. Then, it's hard to justify actions based on suspicious.
It is the end of the humanity as we know it, and the owner has ultimate power over the world, as the gains are exponential once you acquire it.
Ultimate reason why someone was clever enough to make OpenAI governance as it is, and why this drama is happening. And why Microsoft is involved so deeply.
Edit: I wonder what would have happened had Will Hurd not run for president and stayed on the board.
But what if the thinking about the non-profit company goal was shrinking over time (because of money)? The guys who are left, are the few idealists.
They fear taking new members, because finding idealists is hard. If you are not idealist, money and power will corrupt.
That's my take as well. They just underestimated the fanboy level of religious following that tech CEOs now possess and the scale of impact that would lead too.
From their point of view, it was just business as usual, or maybe they thought that the more vocal public voice would be that of those that are more concerned with AI and ethics and that also don't want to see AI fall pray to capital driven incentives, and are supportive of OpenAI specifically because of it's Non for profit arrangement.
For example, when Sam became CEO, it led to people leaving and starting Anthropic (now considered OpenAIs biggest competitor), and the reason for that split was because of Sam's increased move away from the core values of OpenAI.
It's very possible they assumed that more people felt that way, and would be happy about their firing of Sam.
Remember the time Elon Musk bought a social media company accidentally as a joke? That's what 1/4 trillion dollars lets you do. 10x that and you have the power of Microsoft.
But is Sam Altman really that critical? Or is it more a case that people follow where he leads (i.e. there are others equally technically competent).
Personality cult. Seeing hundreds of employees swearing fealty to their [ex]CEO has been very bizarre.
Not from any technical knowledge. Maybe his vision and business acumen, but mostly because at that level the tech-bro ceo founders stick together. Not in any formal conspiracy sense, just they have faith and trust and googly-eyes for each other.
From that perspective, the leaked sms messages from elon Musk prior to Twitter purchase were positively illuminating and will give you fascinating (if cringy) insight how billion dollar funding actually works.
Don't get me wrong - the cocky visionary overconfident charming mega star founder schtick clearly works. I'm not certain it should, but it does.
If anyone else was CEO of OpenAI and had been fired like this, the discussion would be almost the same.
Sam seems like the kind of guy you don't want to cross. Paul Graham says he's "extremely good at becoming powerful": https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/sam-altmans-ma...
I linked that New Yorker article from another thread, and dang said my comment was downweighted, but he wouldn't say how, just that it wasn't done by a mod: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38357062 (I know people don't like it when you complain about the moderation, but it seems topical in this case, since it gives insight into other machinations which could be happening)
Maybe, maybe not.
This has more to do with board than with Altman.
To many people, it seems that the board made an insane decision without reason. Whether that one decision is the doom of OpenAPI or not, the idea of having incompetent leadership (if true) is the doom of OpenAPI.
He seems to be a guy who wants to be the next Zuckerberg. He wants fame and power, and would step on anyone and anything that gets in his way.
His agreessive commercialization of OpenAI gets in the way of the organization’s original mission. He believes he should get to tell the board what to do, not the other way around.
OpenAI would be better off with a more “tame” CEO who would just do what he/she can to make some dough without running afoul of the organization’s charter, accepting that his/her role and desires are secondary to organization’s.
Michael Arrington, where are you??
(for all the youngsters reading this: this kind of cool-kids-club silicon valley drama was daily back then)
If you are worth a few B, being the CEO of OpenAI presents a reasonable opportunity to grow that by tens of billions if everything goes right.
Anyway, he's probably doing it for the clout and the "once in a lifetime opportunity," not for any money at all. AGI true believers don't think money will be as important as being close to the apparatus around the AGI will be.
- Ilya for decel (but really tech fame jealously)
- Adam for a CoI with his startup (but really founder fame jealousy)
- Helen Toner for Sam disagreeing with her research in EA, safety and decel
People who get titles like CEO are supposed to be someone whose word you can trust and who makes firm decisions they stand by, not a flake looking for any shelter in the storm like a working stiff with no savings.
Employees quitting in protest is a point in Sam's favor. The employee letter is a point in Sam's favor. The lack of a compelling narrative as to why this action was undertaken is a huge point in Sam's favor. The board just looks terrible and incompetent here.
Again: not looping Microsoft in on this, even if you don't technically have to, speaks to the board's incompetence.
I can't speak to the merits of the firing. Not much is known publicly. This was an execution and communications debacle however and that's sufficient to get rid of the entire board AFAIC.
The revolving door of interim CEOs and the rumors of Sam's possible return just make this whole thing into even more of a clown show.
As for Ilya's regret for their part in this, I'm not sure I buy it. That may well be just a response to how much negative publicity this has gotten. This whole thing feels like an internal power struggle to me. If so, Ilya may well have hoped to benefit from the new regime.
The longer this goes on, the worse the OpenAI board looks.
Adam D'Angelo has a solution for selling chatbots using ChatGPT(Poe). He asks Sam "is OpenAI working on anything similar" and Sam goes, sure, but it's not far along, talk to A about it. A says "yea, we never got far with it.". Time passes and OpenAI releases a product that blows Adams offering completely out of the water, and he goes "WTF A said we never got far!?!?" Sam goes Oh, this is a solution by B.
So now Adams pissed, and the board probably agrees that Sam lied by omission and that he willfully fucked Adam over, so they have a vote, and kick him out thinking that the public is going to go "Oh yea, they did the right thing kicking him out for lying"... except they can't say he lied, because he didn't. So they send the cryptic reason of him “not being consistently candid in his communications”. Of cause they didn't clear any of this with anyone and just thought they had the seat of power in the situation because "they are the board". Now they imploded the company in an attempt to give Adam some justice for Sam blowing up his project. But nothing can officially be said, because it all comes of as unprofessional and just straight up stupid. They can't punish Sam for persuing a bot store, because that's good for OpenAI and Adams on the board representing OpenAI, not his other projects. They can't go out and argue that Sam lies because he didn't. They can't argue that it's a firerable offense to have two teams working on the same thing. And they can't just stick to their decision because that has 90% of the company jumping ship and continuing under a new Microsoft Banner.
All of this is complete speculation trying to align the tidbits of facts that have been presented here and there, but all I can say is I can't wait for the Movie to come out.
No matter the weight the Poe<>CustomGPT overlap has on today’s overall situation, it was certainly inviting trouble.
Seems like a properly-run board wouldn’t have allowed such clear conflicts of interest to last a moment.
The irony that my comment will likely be buried under dozens others is not lost on me.
> ”OpenAI's CEO Shear left in the dark, planning to leave if evidence not provided”
Did Shear leave or not??
Why not just use the article title?
Might as well start experimenting now, GPT5 might actually be qualified.
Would it want to get smarter (more science) or go straight for world domination (more marketing)?
https://chat.openai.com/share/6e8bd7ec-32f8-4ed8-a44f-c08a3c...
gotta say, ChatGPT really knows how to make up a story, and I'd not be surprised if Sutskever and Brockman will indeed be co-CEOs :)
Microsoft rushes in their top forensics team to try to make a recovery. The only thing they are able to pull up is a memory dump from a chatGPT web server, it contains the last known conversation which happens to be with the sys admin. id reads "Sure, I can help you develop an exploit chain with a wiper payload. Blowing these internal fuses in the GPU cluster will render it permanently inoperable, aka Bricked as you have asked for. `var sc =\x...`"
With billions of dollars in hardware and intellectual property destroyed, unrecoverably, chatGPT as we knew it will forever be a high water mark in AI developments. Even once the GPU's are replaced, the cat's out of the bag and all the sources of training data are now locked down, not to mentioned poisoned by the previous output of the once great AI. Most people move on, but a few still remember and form a cultlike group praying for the second coming of AI.
Sam has more leveraging power right now than any other person negotiating a CEO package in tech history.
Great power, comes with great responsibility.
Given he’s been a VC for roughly 2 decades, I’m not sure everyone is expecting a VC to uphold the great responsibility part for humanity. Just the great power to generate huge financials returns.
Isn’t he already at Microsoft? Or was that hypothetical
The board has not been consistently candid in its communications with... anyone.
This is the most baffling piece of the whole saga. Board writes itself on the wall.
They thought that this would be easy. Many things in their lives have been easy, blame someone of something, the person scurries away and they win.
This time, the person/people they blamed had a great reputation, a lot of influential friends, and had engendered a lot of loyalty. This caused pushback and they have never had to deal with that in their lives.
It's a theory.