[HN Gopher] No "malfeasance" behind Sam Altman's firing, OpenAI ...
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No "malfeasance" behind Sam Altman's firing, OpenAI memo says
Author : Amorymeltzer
Score : 131 points
Date : 2023-11-18 18:24 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.axios.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.axios.com)
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| I think this will ultimately be good for everyone, however I can
| imagine there's a huge populace of OpenAI employees hoping this
| was a get rich quick route and are rethinking that. I know OpenAI
| has a different structure for reward than typical equity, but
| there had to be the thought this was going to be bigger than
| Apple and Google combined and there would be legions of
| billionaires in the making. If I were one of them, I would be
| seriously thinking about how to value my future at OpenAI.
| shinryuu wrote:
| I'm sure they are pretty well paid either way. It's not like
| they would easily be able to go to another company and get
| better paid?
| rbera wrote:
| Good. Considering they're already getting millions in comp, I'd
| rather have people working on AGI that aren't in it solely for
| the money. And it's not like Cohere or Sam's next company won't
| be trying to poach researchers anyway, but at least one company
| (OpenAI) isn't going for profit for sure now.
| almost_usual wrote:
| Brought this up in another thread and was downvoted. But yes
| the 900k compensation package was probably more than 600k PPU
| equity which is worth who knows what now.
|
| https://www.levels.fyi/blog/openai-compensation.html
|
| Only a few days ago there was a post here about them poaching
| researchers with "10M" equity compensation packages..
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38258406
| lumost wrote:
| This could yield a lawsuit at some point if those PPUs are
| worthless due to the board refusing to allow profits...
| almost_usual wrote:
| Right, PPUs are worthless until profitability but the board
| doesn't want to be profitable?
| lumost wrote:
| I don't believe offering PPUs as compensation when you
| intend never to be profitable is entirely legal
| dragonwriter wrote:
| For a salaried position where the base salary is above
| the legal minimum salary for wage & hour exemption, I
| don't see what the legal problem would be.
| peyton wrote:
| Tortious interference? It's pretty textbook right?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Tortious interference?
|
| How?
|
| > It's pretty textbook right?
|
| No? Offering a compensation package can't be tortious
| interference, tortious interference requires an
| _existing_ contract, and action by a third party that
| (along with a whole bunch of other conditions) causes a
| breach of that contract.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > This could yield a lawsuit at some point if those PPUs
| are worthless due to the board refusing to allow profits...
|
| A lawsuit based on what? The OpenAI Global LLC operating
| agreement has a prominent notice...
|
| https://images.openai.com/blob/142770fb-3df2-45d9-9ee3-7aa0
| 6...
|
| from https://openai.com/our-structure
| almost_usual wrote:
| OpenAI recruits employees based on equity packages that
| will not amount to anything based on their operating
| agreement.
|
| Live and learn I guess.
| realce wrote:
| I hear Cyberdyne is hiring if that's your attitude about
| creating AGI.
| zeven7 wrote:
| And now Sam is free to start another company which is
| incentivized by profit, giving him the ability to easily gobble
| up the part of the talent at OpenAI that was hoping for that.
| ChildOfChaos wrote:
| Really? I'd be way more inclined to be pessimistic about it.
|
| OpenAI is massively ahead of anyone else in the AI space,
| anything that shows problems in the organisation seems like it
| could set us back massively in the development of AI.
|
| Several key people at OpenAI have also resigned, including Greg
| Brockman who was removed from the board but told he was too
| important so would remain in his other roles, he also tweeted
| not to worry bigger things are coming.
|
| If Sam breaks away and does something else in this space, I can
| see others joining him and although competition is deathly, I
| feel like it is just going to fracture our AI developments,
| everyone is trying to catch up with OpenAI, any new company
| would be starting from scratch and be years away from anything
| useful while also leaving OpenAI a shell of it's former self.
|
| Hopefully not the start of bigger issues at openAI.
| TillE wrote:
| This seems to align with the stuff Kara Swisher was hearing, and
| suggests Sam was "not consistently candid" about product
| announcements or something similar.
| waihtis wrote:
| They can spin it how they want, but it'll 100% turn out to be a
| AI doomerist panic reaction. They didn't even inform MSFT about
| it which is absolutely ridiculous
| nvm0n2 wrote:
| Yeah it seems like not entirely candid may turn out to be
| something like "he said he was a super-doomer and pinky swore
| it to us, but then we realized he wasn't doomer enough for us".
|
| If it's not malfeasance about finance, business, safety or
| security practices and is merely a "breakdown in
| communications" then that rules out virtually everything that
| could justify such an abrupt firing. Sounds like there's no
| legal problems to worry about, leaving an incompetent board as
| the only obvious possibility left.
|
| When I was younger I remember thinking non-profit orgs were
| awesome and hoping to work in that space one day. This + the
| Wikimedia Foundation funding scandal + the proliferation of
| "misinformation" NGOs has really turned me off the whole
| concept. Nonprofits seem to have more than their fair share of
| problematic governance. There's something about commercial
| trade that grounds people.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| > There's something about commercial trade that grounds
| people.
|
| It's called shareholder lawsuits. I really do wonder about
| boards of non-public companies, though. I'd expect them to
| be, on balance, not much different from NGO boards or even
| HOA boards.
| basisword wrote:
| In retrospect, it wasn't the brightest move for Microsoft to be
| baking this in to their OS, Office suite, search engine, etc.
| Having a core feature of your core products depend on a startup
| with a bizarre profit/non-profit structure is idiotic. Amazing
| they haven't been building this tech themselves - maybe that's
| their next move. Poach as many of the OpenAI staff as they can
| and build in-house.
| ilikehurdles wrote:
| I think MSFT has full access to the underlying tech, not just
| a strategic partnership with OpenAI. I think their AI/LLM
| offerings have a future even in a future without OpenAI.
| intellectronica wrote:
| Serious wrongdoing with smoking gun would have been the only
| justification for the board acting the way they did. This
| reflects very poorly on the OpenAI board. And makes it more
| likely that this affair is far for complete.
| fulladder wrote:
| Agree completely. Badmouthing someone as you fire them is
| immature, and would only be warranted in some kinds of very
| extreme circumstances, which this does not appear to be.
|
| I predict that this is the beginning of the end for OpenAI. The
| company won't collapse overnight or anything, but its best
| people will start leaving in January, then its average people
| will leave over the course of 2024, and there will be little
| left by 2025. They may have enough money to live on as a zombie
| company for several years after that, but everyone will know
| that it is no longer what it once was or could have been.
| intellectronica wrote:
| That sounds very plausible. Another option is that as more
| information like this becomes public pressure will mount next
| week to restructure the board and the organisation and try to
| repair things.
| ansk wrote:
| One conceivable situation in which the board's behavior could
| be justified is if Ilya presented them with an urgent
| ultimatum: either Sam goes or I go. If the rift between Sam and
| Ilya was growing to the point that Ilya would rather leave the
| company than continue with Sam, it's a rational move for him to
| propose this. At this point the remainder of the board would be
| forced to make a decision as to whether Sam or Ilya is more
| vital to advancing OpenAI's mission. Choosing Ilya over Sam
| would certainly be a justifiable decision in such a scenario.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It would be unprecedented for a board to act in this way
| without proper reflection and consultation of various
| stakeholders. It seems all much too sudden and even though
| Ilya is an important person he does not by his lonesome
| overrule everybody else who has a stake in OpenAI and even if
| he did it could have - and should have - been handled more
| gracefully.
|
| If the board ended up acting rashly I expect the next thing
| to happen is that the board itself is exiled.
| jaxr wrote:
| Sounds like a discussion that can be held maturely, and
| evolve in the course of a couple of months, with the board
| trying to settle the argument, or putting pressure on Sam to
| leave. The MO just looks ridiculous.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, absolutely. If there is no serious smoking gun made public
| in the next couple of days OpenAI will be damaged beyond easy
| recovery.
| leroy_masochist wrote:
| I can't find the exact quote, but I distinctly remember Sam
| giving founders advice along the lines of, "operate under the
| assumption that co-founders and investors are not going to screw
| you". Pretty sure it was a Startup School lecture at some point.
|
| That still may be good life advice in general (even if it wasn't
| for Sam in this case) but what I really don't get is the fact
| that OpenAI's board governance was structured in a way such that
| this was even possible.
|
| I also don't understand what is to be gained from the perspective
| of the remaining senior leaders at the company. This is a
| tremendously momentum-killing event. I cannot think of a single
| facet of their day-to-day operations, product roadmap,
| competitive position, etc. that would be improved by this
| decision.
|
| Yesterday, when this was announced, I was bracing myself for some
| truly awful news about something that Sam had done in his
| personal life that was about to be divulged, since that is the
| _only possible rational reason_ for the board to make the
| decision it did.
|
| What am I missing? It's all so strange.
| psadri wrote:
| Ultimately one important job of the board is to be able to
| replace the CEO. So it would be odd if it was structured in a
| way that this wasn't possible.
| leroy_masochist wrote:
| > Ultimately one important job of the board is to be able to
| replace the CEO.
|
| This is true in the abstract but it is not common to see the
| narrowest possible majority on a six-person board oust the
| co-founder/CEO (also a board member) while excluding the
| board chair (who was also the company's President and co-
| founder) from the process.
|
| > So it would be odd if it was structured in a way that this
| wasn't possible.
|
| You are wrong here. Boards are usually structured so that
| what just happened at OpenAI is not possible. The exclusion
| of the board chair from the process is especially egregious
| and the involvement of board chairs in decisions of this
| magnitude is often mandated in documents of incorporation.
|
| Matt Levine is going to have a field day with this, LOL.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| You're missing that boards have fiduciary obligations to govern
| and cannot do so when the CEO isn't fully communicative with
| them.
|
| Yet another reason why it's a bad idea for a CEO to also be on
| the board. And probably also evidence that it's a bad idea for
| conflating the jobs of CEO and chief spokesperson.
| leroy_masochist wrote:
| Nope. This is a 501c3 board, so it explicitly doesn't have
| any Revlon or other fiduciary responsibilities.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38323470
|
| Dropping this link to another comment I made because people
| often forget what "fiduciary" actually means.
|
| You see it all the time in legal dramatizations where the
| lawyer is telling the client that they can get more money,
| but the client tells the lawyer they just want the legal
| process to stop. The client gets their way because the
| lawyer has a fiduciary duty to them.
|
| Edit to add: I'm curious what word "Revlon" was supposed to
| be.
| jrapdx3 wrote:
| Having served 20+ years as a director on various 501c3
| boards, I'm pretty familiar with the requirements of the
| role. Fundamentally, directors have the duty to serve the
| interests of the _organization_ vs. the interests of
| directors. This quote [0] sums it up succinctly:
| Board members are the fiduciaries who steer the
| organization towards a sustainable future by
| adopting sound, ethical, and legal governance and
| financial management policies, as well as by making sure
| the nonprofit has adequate resources to advance its
| mission.
|
| So yes indeed, board members serve with the burden of
| explicit fiduciary duties to the organization.
|
| [0] https://www.councilofnonprofits.org/running-
| nonprofit/govern...
| nvm0n2 wrote:
| > I cannot think of a single facet of their day-to-day
| operations, product roadmap, competitive position, etc. that
| would be improved
|
| If the dispute is over whether they should be a pure research
| nonprofit or not, then operations, product roadmaps and
| competitive positions are things they would not even want to
| begin with. It was only four of them that booted the other two
| out, and of those at least two seem to be professional non-
| profit board sitters. The transition of OpenAI into an actual
| product company doing something useful for other people is
| incredibly recent, it's barely a year old. It may be that they
| simply felt that offering products isn't what OpenAI is meant
| to be doing.
|
| Alternatively it could be some blowup related to doomerism,
| although the memo saying it's not related to "safety practices"
| may rule that out.
| latchkey wrote:
| My favorite NDA: https://friendda.org/
| dieselgate wrote:
| > "operate under the assumption that co-founders and investors
| are not going to screw you"
|
| Think this is good advice for day-to-day interactions for
| everyone but it will always run into limitations. Especially
| for an edge case like OpenAI
|
| I'm unbiased and not super familiar with this situation either
| but the quote above makes me think of "Never attribute to
| malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
| fragmede wrote:
| that's Hanlon's razor
|
| imo "never" ignores cases where malice can be proven, so i
| don't like it as a saying
| qball wrote:
| >Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained
| by stupidity.
|
| Sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from
| malice.
| CPLX wrote:
| > I cannot think of a single facet of their day-to-day
| operations, product roadmap, competitive position, etc. that
| would be improved by this decision.
|
| This is a genuine question, can anyone explain to me what the
| actual value of San Altman is?
|
| I don't know anything about the guy except the core public
| outline of his career but I find his timeline confusing.
|
| He founded Loopt which by all accounts was unremarkable.
|
| Then he ran YC during a period where at best you can say it
| didn't get wrecked, though it seems to have lost focus and
| influence. He left YC in a situation that seems similarly
| abrupt minus the PR drama which was kept completely under
| wraps.
|
| Then OpenAI which is a genuinely impressive organization but by
| now he's been in personal conflict with basically everyone
| involved and doesn't seem to have been a driver of the actual
| technology.
|
| Other than that there's world coin which is a total grift at
| best and dystopian at worst. And stuff like Bohemian Grove or
| whatever.
|
| With all that said I don't have a personal opinion just
| observing the broad strokes and trying to figure out how
| exactly he ended up some kind of kingpin.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > can anyone explain to me what the actual value of San
| Altman is
|
| Weird as it may seem: that's not all that important. What is
| important is that the rest of the world sees OpenAI as a
| mature and stable organization and that image has now been
| seriously damaged. Even if they wanted to fire Sam there must
| have been a dozen ways in which that could have been done
| more effectively and without this much damage to the OpenAI
| brand. It's almost comical, they were on track to outrun
| Google and Facebook combined and now they're on track to be
| an also-ran. You can expect a large number of resignations
| because no matter what you think of Sam Altman you want to
| work for a company that is mature and stable, not one where
| execs are replaced on a moments notice on a clear and sunny
| day without a direct and clear cause.
| CPLX wrote:
| > they were on track to outrun Google and Facebook combined
|
| But what if they don't want that. Those are rapacious and
| malevolent organizations.
|
| Regardless, even if that is the goal what's the evidence
| Altman is the right guy for that? It's not like he's done
| that before. The relationship between his stature and his
| track record is the part that's confusing me.
| jacquesm wrote:
| They are. But who is 'they'? The board? The shareholders
| of the for-profit? The rest of the people working there?
|
| And if the board wanted the company to be a pure research
| organization they should have acted much, much earlier,
| and the company probably should not have hired Sam Altman
| in the first place but someone like Geoffrey Hinton or
| another respected name from academia, provided they would
| be available in the first place.
| CPLX wrote:
| > And if the board wanted the company to be a pure
| research organization they should have acted much, much
| earlier
|
| I mean sure. But if true that's hardly an argument for
| why they shouldn't do it now as the stakes grow
| increasingly higher.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Agreed, but then they did it in the worst possible way.
| You don't create a crisis around your brand like this on
| purpose. Much better to get everybody to play along and
| make it look as if Sam really wanted to spend more time
| with his family. Short of a cold body in his freezer this
| was done carelessly. But let's wait and see how it all
| develops because it is more than just a little strange to
| see it play out like this without a good enough reason
| for the haste, if it turns out there wasn't I expect the
| board to be axed.
| CPLX wrote:
| > I expect the board to be axed
|
| By whom?
| jacquesm wrote:
| It could be as simple as using the bylaws as the chair of
| the board to point out a violation of the bylaws. It all
| depends, but at the end of the day board members that try
| to cling to their seats usually fail to do so. Ultimately
| their position could be challenged in court but most
| board members of non-profits are not that anxious to see
| their reputation destroyed that they'll let that be the
| deciding factor.
|
| Either way, normally you'd have a pre-written resignation
| letter drafted where the only thing missing is their
| signature, and you'd confront them in a meeting: resign
| voluntarily or we'll put your continued presence up for a
| vote at the next board meeting. Of course the board could
| try to eternally vote itself back in but that usually
| doesn't work because a board has to be able to serve in
| its oversight role and one part of that is that the board
| has to have broad support, both legally and from within
| the organization. For instance: the board might no longer
| be able to find a CEO that is acceptable to the rest of
| the C-level. That would be a major problem.
|
| Corporate governance is hard, non-profits have a bunch
| more twists but in the end nobody's position is carved in
| stone. Note that even non-profits have bylaws and these
| usually detail clearly how board members are to be
| proposed and what the procedure is to get them to become
| established as well as how they can be removed. If it can
| be proven that a board member has acted against the
| interests of the legal entity they represent then they
| usually can be removed even easier because that's a clear
| conflict with the statues of the non-profit, then there
| are potential conflicts of interest (for instance sitting
| on the board of another entity that has goals that are
| not compatible with those of the non-profit).
| CPLX wrote:
| Yeah but the board just took this action on purpose and
| decisively.
|
| Who outranks them? I don't get the premise. You've
| implied twice that they could lose their seats over it.
|
| How? By what mechanism? Challenged in court or presented
| with a resignation letter by whom?
|
| Seems to me they're the top of the org chart. They're
| only accountable in the sense that employees can quit or
| they can run out of money.
|
| But they happen to have direct control of one of the most
| valuable pieces of technology ever created so what
| exactly are you suggesting will happen.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Nobody, including a board of directors is inviolable, it
| all depends on who the stakeholders of the non-profit
| are, the board is in principle independent but ultimately
| the judiciary still has more power than they do.
|
| Depending on the bylaws it could be stakeholder: donors,
| beneficiaries or the employees of the non-profit in some
| organized form. All of these could petition the court if
| they feel that the non-profit wasn't governed properly.
| Note that it isn't known if the board acted unanimously
| (likely it it didn't) and what the grounds were. That
| will make a big difference to any outcome.
|
| Non profits that lose their donors (especially if the
| money was pledged but not yet committed) usually don't
| live long so the board has some incentive to play ball.
| CPLX wrote:
| I mean yeah anyone can sue anyone, that's a generally
| known fact.
|
| But you said: "I fully expect the board to be replaced"
|
| Ok, sure. By who? When?
|
| I don't see any reason to think that unless there's a
| really genuinely large scale staff revolt.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > unless there's a really genuinely large scale staff
| revolt
|
| That's already underway, see other news about
| resignations at OpenAI, also donors have a very strong
| play to make.
|
| Donors could simply withhold the next tranche, but
| possibly they can funnel enough money upwards from the
| for-profit to compensate for that.
|
| Even so I would expect the other shareholders in the for-
| profit to be furious, especially those that liked Altman.
| So they're going to have to do some explaining because
| right now this does not deserve the beauty prize, to put
| it mildly.
| kaoD wrote:
| > Those are rapacious and malevolent organizations.
|
| Isn't that exactly why you should outrun them?
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| > this much damage to the OpenAI brand
|
| Can you quantify and specify the brand damage? I only see
| some possible damage to current and possible future
| employee morale (in that some of them are quitting and
| others may be less inclined to take a job there). Do you
| see this as seriously affecting relationships with
| companies such as Microsoft? With end-users?
| jacquesm wrote:
| > Do you see this as seriously affecting relationships
| with companies such as Microsoft? With end-users?
|
| Absolutely. If there isn't a _very_ good reason why they
| did this in this way then I fully expect the board to be
| replaced.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Who is going to be replacing the board? Who has that
| authority?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Depending on how the bylaws are put together: the donors,
| the beneficiaries, the employees of the non-profit and
| any other stakeholders. Any of those acting alone or in
| concert could petition a court if the board doesn't
| voluntarily resign. And if the board split on this issue
| is a close one then that might happen easier.
| swalkergibson wrote:
| Their relationship with MSFT is now effectively over.
|
| They will remain aboard for as long as it takes to find a
| suitable replacement.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I'd love to know how necessary the donations to the non-
| profit still are now that the commercial venture has
| picked up. But MSFT might want to re-think their OpenAI
| integration efforts at this point.
| karmasimida wrote:
| Being leader himself is the value, first and foremost.
|
| It is like saying Jobs doesn't make iPhone, so he is not
| useful either. I don't like the Sam is the new Jobs narrative
| but here it fits.
|
| OpenAI is no small company now, it needs a head to pull
| itself in a single string.
|
| In real world, power or trust goes to the person people who
| actually trusts. A manager isn't a manager just by calling
| oneself manager. Without trust, people will find or form
| other decision centers around them. The result is execution
| became watered down or outright not being executed.
|
| That is how I see the value those high level executives
| really offer. They are the center of trust and
| accountability. If people trust them, people beneath him will
| make sure things happen fast and hold themselves accountable.
| On the other hand, you just end up with an ineffective
| company
| CPLX wrote:
| Yeah I get the concept. But this guy didn't launch the
| first viable personal computer from a garage he made Loopt
| and then has been aggressively promoted ever since.
|
| He's run exactly two impressive organizations, wasn't the
| rainmaker at either, and left both somewhat abruptly. I
| don't quite get it.
| shrimpx wrote:
| Sam Altman is a typical fast-growth guy and this is the
| opportunity of a lifetime to cement himself in the pantheon of
| high growth tech gods -- Jobs, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Musk,
| Hoffman, etc.
|
| But aw shucks it's a terrible fit actually, because this
| company has a non-profit, idealistic mission. In the face of
| unprecedented high demand, Sam Altman is like fuck the
| nonprofit hippie shit, let's launch this thing into outer
| space. Let's build fast and ship too many products too early,
| use investor money to give discounts and build moats, let's go
| for regulatory capture! It's the opportunity of a lifetime
| guys!
|
| But the board is like nah, fuck that tiring 'ship broken shit'
| tech bro shit, let's stick to our vision. This is too serious
| and important to treat it like a fucking Airbnb or Coinbase.
| CPLX wrote:
| This is the most on point comment I've seen in the dozen
| threads on this topic.
|
| I think the reason so many people on HN can't come to this
| obvious conclusion is they share the same sociopathic Silicon
| Valley worldview he does.
| skygazer wrote:
| That's a broad, uncharitable brush with which to paint
| everyone else. Maybe we need a razor: hesitate to attribute
| to sociopathy that which can reasonably be explained by a
| benign difference of opinion.
| solardev wrote:
| In two decades of tech booms, when have we seen a huge
| company actually do what's good for society? Our economy
| and society elevates sociopathy by design.
|
| The "difference of opinion" is a fundamental difference
| in ideology and motivations, not to mention day to day
| operating differences.
| skygazer wrote:
| I think the opinion that the grand parent identifies as
| sociopathic wasn't the board's or even Altman's, but of
| the masses on HN shocked by the event. The opinions of
| the majority here are the "sociopathy."
| CPLX wrote:
| I'm not painting that broadly I'm talking about
| participants in the comments section on the website of
| one specific private equity firm.
| solardev wrote:
| It could also be cynicism and not naivete? It'd be pretty
| amazing if OpenAI actually wrested away control for the
| betterment of humanity. That'd be the good news of the
| decade... just hard to imagine in this world.
| jaybrendansmith wrote:
| There's a vast ocean of difference between 'growth at all
| costs' and 'good corporate governance'. OpenAI is bleeding
| cash. Sama knows that you need to bring money in to build
| important new technology, especially in this non-frothy
| high interest rate economy. So while it's not critical to
| make a profit, you need to keep the lights on to keep the
| new research and development going. What Ilya and the board
| have done is completely wrecked OpenAI's momentum at a
| critical time. Unless they are sitting on world-changing
| AGI, this move made no sense and they don't have the
| company's best interests at heart.
| jacquesm wrote:
| This may well be the case, and the one that I would hope is
| underlying all of this. But until the board clearly states
| this it is also speculative.
| karmasimida wrote:
| There is no board, only Ilya
| username332211 wrote:
| > What am I missing? It's all so strange.
|
| That they weren't concerned about day-to-day operations,
| employee morale, product roadmaps or any of that boring stuff.
| They were operating on the precarious calculus of their
| "friendships" and commitments.
|
| They had to act fast. It is possible, if Altman or Brockman had
| more chance to talk to board people, they could have changed at
| least one member's mind.
| fragmede wrote:
| That the board is not very good at their job. A more
| experienced board would have been more professional and less
| dramatic, but we're in the stupidest timeline.
| ssivark wrote:
| > This is a tremendously momentum-killing event. I cannot think
| of a single facet of their day-to-day operations, product
| roadmap, competitive position, etc. that would be improved by
| this decision.
|
| What you're missing is that the board (at least what remains)
| seems to disagree strongly with the direction in which the
| organization was headed -- then why would they care to maintain
| momentum along the "wrong" roadmap? The changes seem
| (deliberately) driven by the intent to steer in a different
| direction and with slower momentum. Others might disagree with
| that vision, but the board feels that it aligns better with the
| founding charter.
| leroy_masochist wrote:
| > the board (at least what remains) seems to disagree
| strongly with the direction in which the organization was
| headed
|
| Yeah that is clearly the case, but when you have a situation
| where four of the six board members execute a coup against
| the two most powerful and important board members (the CEO
| and the chair), the company looks like a shitshow and nobody
| is going to want to work there or partner with them, at least
| until they are able to present a credible narrative about
| what they did (which may never happen).
|
| Totally get the fact that the four remaining board members
| didn't like where things were headed, but their actions
| yesterday created a tremendous amount of collateral damage
| that will massively impede OpenAI in its journey toward
| whatever new azimouth they choose.
| logifail wrote:
| > a situation where four of the six board members execute a
| coup against the two most powerful and important board
| members (the CEO and the chair), the company looks like a
| shitshow
|
| Umm, if it's "one human, one vote" then the board was
| working exactly as designed.
|
| Being "important" may not save your job. Been there, done
| that.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > What am I missing?
|
| That 501(c)3s like OpenAI are entities where the shared
| interests they are designed to serve are ideological, not
| generating profits to return to investors; OpenAI (the
| governing nonprofit) is in some respects more like a church
| than a commercial enterprise.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Wow, I'm pretty shocked how this all went down. Given the abrupt
| nature of the announcement and the pointed message in it
| (essentially accusing Altman of lying), I was sure there must
| have been some big scandal, not just normal boardroom differences
| of opinion and game-of-thrones-style maneuvering.
|
| Even if I agree with Sutskever's general position, I think his
| actions here were colossally stupid. He's basically managed to
| piss off a ton of people, and I have no doubt lots of employees
| will just shift to whatever Altman and Brockman end up doing, or
| else there will otherwise be some huge splintering of OpenAI
| talent.
| ChildOfChaos wrote:
| Yeah, I see this as a pretty bad day for the AI world, the
| splintering of talent could very much hold back development,
| considering how OpenAI is so far ahead of everyone else,
| anything that slows them down while others start up, means
| slower benefit to society.
| layer8 wrote:
| The disagreement seems to be exactly about whether OpenAI's
| recent trajectory is beneficial to society at large.
| analognoise wrote:
| After Silicon Valley gave everyone terrible gig jobs and
| disastrous social media that amplified polarization then
| ended privacy to sell ads, does anyone really think anything
| they produce is a "benefit to society"?
|
| Like how much damage do they have to do in the name of
| efficiency, profit, "the future" before the "benefit to
| society" meme dies?
| j_maffe wrote:
| Because obviously the faster we develop tools for the rich
| and powerful to make more money and have more control, the
| better it is for society.
| ChildOfChaos wrote:
| OpenAi's tools are available to most people, not really
| just the rich and powerful.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Google's tools are available to most people, yet the
| lion's share of the money still ends up with Google.
| singularity2001 wrote:
| maybe it's a good day for the AI world if stopping this
| rocket means exploring other architecture venues like maybe
| Hintons forward forward networks on other hardware.
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| OpenAI was another pseudo monopoly in the making. They were
| pretty explicitly trying to scare congress into regulatory
| capture over (very misleading) fears of AGI danger.
| swalkergibson wrote:
| OpenAI is not far ahead of Google. In fact, they are within
| reasonable distance.
|
| Although now Google is the undisputed leader, given that
| Microsoft does not have the internal resources to maintain
| this thing.
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| Maybe that's the reason Ilya did this, he supposedly was
| worried about moving too fast.
| lumost wrote:
| Also raises deep concerns on governance structure. That the
| board took this action without consultation with key investors
| is madness. That they wrote up something which made it sound
| like a disaster internally further eroded trust that they
| actually know what they are doing.
|
| I'd expect a tough challenge ahead as msft/other stakeholders
| try to put guardrails in while dealing with the fact that
| whoever's bright idea this coup was - is now in charge.
|
| What a mess.
| CPLX wrote:
| Non profits don't have investors.
| mmcwilliams wrote:
| In a non-profit the role of a board is oversight, not
| appeasement of "investors" or stakeholders/donors. Why would
| going to them be required to determine if an executive had
| lied to the board?
| mlyle wrote:
| In any board, the board's role is not strictly oversight
| but also working to preserve the health of the organization
| and to meet meet organizational goals.
|
| Pissing off all your stakeholders with a snap decision
| isn't great governance. Particularly egregious
| circumstances might make it necessary.
|
| Finding something wrong might require action, but a board's
| responsibility is also to make the corrective action in a
| responsible manner that is in the organization's interests.
| Hadriel wrote:
| Yes but they also Determine the organization's interests
| dathinab wrote:
| more likely I think they found that not letting him go
| isn't and option due to a breakdown of communication (a
| formulation which normally implies a fundamental break
| down of trust)
|
| but the trust of the board completely braking down
| doesn't mean that e.g. MS doesn't trust or want him
| anymore as in the end the interest the board have to
| defend and the ones which stake holder like MS have might
| be in conflict
|
| so even if it has negative consequences if it must be
| done it might be easier to get it done fast and then
| resolve the mess instead of giving other a chance to turn
| it into an even bigger mess
| mike_d wrote:
| > a board's responsibility is also to make the corrective
| action in a responsible manner that is in the
| organization's interests.
|
| That very well may have happened here. It is important to
| consider that this is effectively an HR matter and that
| the results of employee investigations cannot be made
| public.
| blazespin wrote:
| Yeah, the seed of this disaster was probably planted a long
| time ago, like when they created the hybrid, when they got
| money from MSFT.
|
| Maybe Ilya doesn't want to be at the forefront of AI
| building I guess. He probably thinks he can lead it better
| by not being at the table.
|
| Or who knows.
| dathinab wrote:
| the hybrid structure was intentional (and known by MS
| etc.) created to be able to do things like rain in (or
| fire) a CEO which is more representing the interests of
| the other minority stake holders then the interests of
| the non-profit.
|
| So depending on the exact non-public reasons for the
| communication breaking down it might not be a disaster
| but the hybrid doing exactly what it was intended to do.
|
| Now the real interesting question is how much MS must
| have been afraid to be technologically left behind to
| knowingly enter such a deal with such a huge investment?
| deeviant wrote:
| The problem here is: Who watches the watchers?
|
| To my eyes, and to many others, it appears the board is
| power-tripping. Also, OpenAI's unique structure means they
| have no checks on the board that an investor class would
| normally give.
|
| It's difficult to envision a thriving future for OpenAI
| under these circumstances or a world in which they are a
| significant factor in AI policy. Their early market lead,
| still a considerable advantage, will not be sufficient to
| weather the storm brewed by the board's own actions. Losing
| their market leverage would mean ceding the influential
| role in shaping AI's future, potentially leaving the giants
| such as Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and others assuming
| control and steering the future course of AI, but without
| the creed to make AI "good."
| jaybrendansmith wrote:
| Put another way, as seen on X: "The AI industry would
| like to thank the board of OpenAI for giving all of us a
| chance to catch up"
| jldugger wrote:
| > That the board took this action without consultation with
| key investors is madness.
|
| It's a non-profit board, yea?
| layer8 wrote:
| They created the for-profit subsidiary for the express
| purpose of raising more investments.
| potatopatch wrote:
| But the CEO that was done under was not sufficiently
| candid with the board.. I think they realized they have
| some risk being only a technicality that does whatever
| the CEO and Microsoft tell them is aligned with their
| mission.
| bmitc wrote:
| The they in this sentence refers to the CEO the board
| just fired and not the board.
| bink wrote:
| > That the board took this action without consultation with
| key investors is madness.
|
| Are you expecting them to reach out to Microsoft and ask
| "we're thinking of firing our CEO. How does that grab you?"
|
| I don't think this is the type of thing you can really do by
| consulting outside groups.
| jacquesm wrote:
| OpenAI is privately held so there would be no reason for
| the board to announce this publicly before consulting with
| / informing the shareholders. Short of an impending media
| crisis that they needed to get ahead of this was
| mishandled. That doesn't mean it _was_ mishandled, just
| that I don 't see any evidence just yet of a valid reason
| to do this, they've done absolutely enormous damage to the
| OpenAI brand by doing this in this hamfisted way, you'd
| hope they at least had a good reason.
|
| Note that the non-profit doesn't have shareholders, but the
| effect is much the same because the two are linked closely
| together and you can't affect the non-profit in such a
| drastic way without also affecting the for-profit arm. So
| they just pointed the double barrelled shotgun at their
| feet and pulled the trigger, twice. It will take a massive
| effort to restore trust in the brand, both on the
| commercial side and on the side of the people working
| there.
| bink wrote:
| I don't disagree that this may have been ham-fisted or
| that it may have been a huge mistake. But I do think that
| talking to investors in the for-profit arm of the company
| about potentially removing the figure head has an even
| greater potential to backfire. There's absolutely zero
| chance that information wouldn't leak before they could
| make their move. And while it might be a nice gesture to
| Microsoft to inform them of their decision, the truth is
| that Microsoft has no stake in the non-profit OpenAI and
| did not have any right to know of these decisions as they
| were being made.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, agreed this is also perilous. But in my opinion
| absent a very clear and very public reason doing it this
| way was a huge mistake.
| username332211 wrote:
| Since Microsoft is paying the bills, yes, I'd expect them
| to be consulted.
|
| Really, most organizations try to maintain at least some
| facade of predictability and transparency.
| patcon wrote:
| Yeah, it strikes me as a rather absurd proposal as well.
| woeirua wrote:
| I don't see a world where MSFT invests more money into OpenAI
| with the current governance structure after this. The fact
| that MSFT didn't have a board seat was unusual before this.
| Now it just makes MSFT look like fools.
| cedws wrote:
| Hopefully MSFT just goes off and does their own thing. I
| find this holier-than-thou "we're non profit and we're
| going to save the world how we see fit" irritating. Talking
| about AGI like it's an animal ready to pounce when we're
| quite obviously nowhere near it. Machine learning
| development has been sluggish for the longest time and the
| moment it was commercialised, there was an explosion in
| possibilities and development.
|
| "AI safety" is a euphemism for "aligns with our interests."
| "Roko's basilisk" is nonsense science fiction babble.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Don't these events prove pretty conclusively that AI
| safety is _not_ a euphemism for "aligns with our
| interests"? There's no way anyone at OpenAI could have
| expected to benefit professionally or financially from
| this.
| cedws wrote:
| It can also mean "does/doesn't do things as we see fit."
| They want to build a model without bias, but they've
| elected themselves as moderators.
| fullspectrumdev wrote:
| AI safety basically is bullshit FUD spread by people
| hoping to gain a monopoly through regulatory capture.
|
| Or people who are mentally deficient and actually believe
| in rokos basilisk and its ilk.
| davorak wrote:
| > The fact that MSFT didn't have a board seat was unusual
| before this. Now it just makes MSFT look like fools.
|
| It is a 501(c)(3) even if they had all of the board members
| Open AI, Inc can not be run for MSFT benefit or for profit.
| A sympathetic board member might have tipped MSFT off about
| the firing ahead of time though.
| himaraya wrote:
| The board of the non-profit doesn't answer to Microsoft etc.
| The investors own stakes in the for-profit subsidiary.
| kelnos wrote:
| MS may not have any legal sway over the non-profit, but I
| wouldn't be surprised that in most cases they'd at least be
| consulted or given a heads-up on something like this, since
| it affects the for-profit bits of the org as well.
| himaraya wrote:
| OpenAI's corporate structure doesn't fall under "most
| cases"--I assume the board wanted to demonstrate
| independence from investors.
| sampo wrote:
| > I assume the board wanted to demonstrate independence
| from investors.
|
| They just might get that now.
| swalkergibson wrote:
| And now I expect that we see this "board" dissolved.
|
| Frankly, as it should. If you are going to take $10B from
| another organization and you nuke the CEO during market
| hours and then later it turns out that it was just an
| ordinary disagreement, then you should answer for that
| action.
|
| On a Friday, no less. This is actually the kind of thing
| that can sink MSFT's apparent "first mover" advantage in
| the eyes of big money. OpenAI is now fractured, and
| whatever work they were going to be doing on tech is now
| going to be devoted to figuring out WTF to do with this
| mess the board just created all by themselves for no
| apparent reason.
| davorak wrote:
| > And now I expect that we see this "board" dissolved.
|
| The board has the power to dissolve itself, I am sure
| there(edit typo) are legal mechanisms for illegal acts, I
| think the IRS can revoke 501(c)(3) status but not
| dissolve, not sure if there are other mechanisms.
| karmasimida wrote:
| Yup.
|
| OpenAI might just show the world how the naive ideal we are
| not driven by profit but spending billions every year is
| never a good idea.
|
| Those board has no stake in the company, on the other side
| means their have no accountability either. It is like they
| remote controlling the titanic, and who cares it crashes,
| because they are not on it.
|
| Regardless, they made very stupid decisions now sabotaging
| interests and the company itself, brutally beheaded itself.
| CPLX wrote:
| > they made very stupid decisions now sabotaging interests
| and the company itself, brutally beheaded itself
|
| By firing the guy who founded Loopt?
|
| I'm genuinely mystified, where does this theory come from.
| What makes this guy essential?
| karmasimida wrote:
| > What makes this guy essential
|
| He elected himself to be the face of OpenAI
|
| That is why he is now essential. He is the hinge of
| trust, and people believed his vision of OpenAI, as a
| company.
|
| Ilya might be the science guy, but he 0 track record to
| run a company. And now he executes this badly planned
| coup, how would people trust him not to play such shticks
| in the future?
| CPLX wrote:
| It's not a company it's a non profit organization.
| karmasimida wrote:
| The world perceive the way how it wanted to and in this
| case legitimately so
|
| Arguing about semantics is useless
| CPLX wrote:
| The world, or the HN comments section?
| bmitc wrote:
| Do most users of ChatGPT even know who he is?
| davorak wrote:
| > Regardless, they made very stupid decisions now
| sabotaging interests and the company itself, brutally
| beheaded itself.
|
| The board in a real way decides what the interests of the
| company are since they are the majority owner. The
| interests they set however may or may not bring about the
| results they want though.
| dathinab wrote:
| Honestly given all what I have heard about Sam Altman I
| wouldn't be surprised (i.e. speculative) if he did
| systematically manipulate and deceived the board (but subtle
| enough to not be legally "lying" or fraud) with the intention
| to forth through his goals no matter weather they agree or
| not.
|
| Assuming such situation happens in is noticed there is no
| reason to consult because it wouldn't change anything and
| just make things more complicated as the only action which
| can be taken is to fire the manipulator in power asap.
|
| Especially some recent actions where not so much in line with
| the mission the board is supposed to protect push for but
| very much in line with giving especially Microsoft a
| additional competitive advantage (i.e. additional to what
| Microsoft payed for).
|
| And I have seen many comments like but MS and other stake
| holder should have been part of the decisions and similar.
| But here is the think, with the specific structure of OpenAI
| MS and other knew from the get to go that it's a high risk
| investment where even through they in vest a ton of money
| they won't have _anything_ to say at all when it comes to
| decision done by the outer non-profit which is implicitly the
| majority owner of the for-profit OpenAI.
| bmitc wrote:
| > Also raises deep concerns on governance structure.
|
| It's so strange to hear this regarding a CEO, a single
| person, effectively going rogue against a company's charter,
| but then layoffs of tens, hundreds, and thousands of workers,
| on the basis of zero fault of their own, by these CEOs and
| boards are considered good governance.
| btbuildem wrote:
| Companies are by and large communist dictatorships -
| usually there is a Great Leader (CEO), at best there's the
| Central Committee (board of directors). Effectively, nobody
| else decides the direction of the company, or makes any
| impactful decisions.
|
| The rank-and-file serfs don't matter, they're expendable
| and interchangeable. When Dear Leadership is shaken up,
| it's newsworthy. When ten thousand labourers are let go,
| it's just a statistic.
| peyton wrote:
| I have to downvote. I don't think this kind of agitprop
| belongs on this site.
| PhasmaFelis wrote:
| Do you feel the comparison is unfair to corporations, or
| to communism?
| istinetz wrote:
| The primary purpose of a company is not to take care of
| employees. It is to make money by providing valuable
| services to society.
|
| Yes, it is good governance to cut unproductive jobs.
| swalkergibson wrote:
| MSFT dropped over 1% in two minutes, and Monday is almost
| certainly going to feature more selling.
|
| If I am Vanguard, I am on the phone right now with Satya
| telling him to get control of this shitshow of a BOD before
| it nukes my positions.
| acheong08 wrote:
| Why should Ilya care about Vanguard's positions? The board
| he sits on is the non-profit one.
| swalkergibson wrote:
| Nothing happens in a vacuum.
|
| Professional boards of directors are supposed to be
| attentive to the risks to the organization as a whole,
| regardless of whatever weird ass governance structure
| exists.
|
| Blowing out your CEO on a Friday afternoon and then
| accusing him of lying is not the way to do this, and they
| are likely to find out why come Monday morning at about
| 9:30AM Eastern.
| takinola wrote:
| That's not how this works. OpenAI took investments for a
| reason. They benefit from the MSFT relationship. Harming
| that relationship will be bad for them (maybe not
| catastrophically bad, but significantly bad). I would be
| surprised if the relationship is not strained after this
| event since they have almost certainly created a major
| headache for MSFT (Satya is almost certainly fielding
| questions from his own board about this).
| andkenneth wrote:
| It's non-standard but I'd argue that the weird structure was
| designed to enable this exact type of decision to be made by
| the board. The non-profit board is a peer of investors like
| microsoft, not answerable to them like a normal company.
| cortesoft wrote:
| > Given the abrupt nature of the announcement and the pointed
| message in it (essentially accusing Altman of lying), I was
| sure there must have been some big scandal, not just normal
| boardroom differences of opinion and game-of-thrones-style
| maneuvering.
|
| If it was a normal boardroom difference of opinion, how would
| it have gone down? You think there would have been public along
| the process?
|
| From an outsiders perspective I think both situations would
| have looked the same; we have no idea how long the process went
| on. If the board wanted to get rid of Altman but couldn't
| convince him to resign, the announcement was always going to
| look like this.
| ithkuil wrote:
| They could just have said that they are iterating on the CEO
| value alignment problem.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| To the broader public, maybe, but certainly not to OpenAI's
| biggest partner, and certainly not to their own _board
| chief_.
|
| And if Sutskever's beef was that OpenAI was going too fast at
| the expense of responsible AI development, he just completely
| screwed himself, as basically everyone who wants to move fast
| now will leave OpenAI and join the companies that do move
| fast. This is basically exactly what happened to Google Brain
| going too slowly so everyone leaving to join OpenAI and
| others. At least OpenAI was previously in the position of
| being able to guide responsible AI development, now companies
| will probably all go by the "drive fast or die" ethos.
| swalkergibson wrote:
| You make such announcements outside of trading hours, and you
| damn sure don't imply that he was lying about something.
| dathinab wrote:
| > (essentially accusing Altman of lying),
|
| the thing is there is (legally) a huge gap between lying and
| "not being candid"
|
| in the later case you can have a lot of subtle manipulative
| formulations, phrasing misleading emphasizing and de-
| emphasizing of parts misleading representation of what certain
| decisions imply, intentional not correcting when you notice
| that someone did misunderstand something and it will lead to
| them supporting decisions of you they would normally not have
| supported etc.
|
| all of this are legal actions (and in-actions; at least if
| subtle done) which still can get you fired for "breakdown of
| communication and/or trust" in pretty much any job, especially
| a position like CEO
|
| outright lying on the other hand likely can entail a lot of
| legal trouble in many ways
|
| so them saying that he "wasn't candid and there was a break
| down in communication" then it likely means that and a break
| down in trust but not outright lying (except if they want to
| downplay the situation, but why should they)
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| This "legal nitpicking" is pretty much irrelevant, _even in a
| court of law_ :
|
| 1. The OpenAI board certainly gave the impression that
| something egregious had occurred (just look at all the
| speculation on HN and elsewhere). I have literally _never_
| seen a separation announcement that was that pointed where
| there _wasn 't_ significant malfeasance. In the US, basically
| anyone can sue anyone else for anything. It would be quite
| easy to argue in court that the board gave the impression to
| a reasonable observer that Altman lied over something
| important - Kara Swisher tweeted that basically the board is
| screwed unless they have an extremely unambiguous smoking
| gun.
|
| 2. On a practical level, the legalese really doesn't matter.
| Then general SV opinion already seems to be that the board
| did Altman and Brockman dirty, it's already been reported
| that Altman is starting a new company, and I have no doubt
| heaps and heaps of OpenAI employees will jump ship to this
| new venture, as many high level employees have already
| announced their departure.
| dathinab wrote:
| yes the legalese doesn't matter
|
| but there is still a huge different between something which
| is done subtle enough to not realistically be able to be
| pinned down by any court but entails a fundamental break of
| trust (which is egregious) and what legally could count ad
| fraudulent actions and similar (and is eregious and can
| additional lead to legal cases being brought against you)
| dathinab wrote:
| > Then general SV opinion
|
| through AFIK the general opinion I have heard outside of SV
| by people working with AI is that Altman is the one who had
| been acting "dishonest, manipulative" in a way which
| endangers open ai (not OpenAI but AI which is open) in
| recent times
|
| and lets be honest SV isn't really known for caring about
| morals and bad consequences their tech can have, but the
| non-profit which made the decision has roughly committed to
| upholding such standards
|
| > that basically the board is screwed unless
|
| I highly doubt this, probably his comments (some of which
| where very misleading and manipulative i.e. not candid at
| all AFIK) in front of congress in context with the goals of
| the (non profit parent of) OpenAI which fired him has
| committed to would be enough reason to fire him. If we used
| similar manipulative speech also in board meetings this
| would be a pretty clear open and shut case in favor of the
| board which also would thoroughly destroy his reputation
| (iff that is the case and it's brought in front of court)
| so from an outsider perspective this would be a very
| interesting case.
| takinola wrote:
| The board may come off looking pretty bad after all is said and
| done. It is reasonable to fire a CEO if there is a strong
| disagreement on strategy and direction but it seems
| unreasonable to do so without adequate planning and
| preparation.
|
| The typical approach is to let the CEO know they are being
| replaced, line up a successor (even if temporary) and arrange
| an orderly transition (message key partners, customers, etc).
| This avoids the narrative getting away from you ("omg, the
| product is just mechanical turk, about to go bankrupt, have
| some serious accounting issues, CEO did crimes, etc"). These
| bad vibes have a way of persisting and can cause a loss of
| trust with key stakeholders (previously overlooked issues now
| get revisited with a more jaundiced eye)
|
| The way the action was taken (suddenly and with accusations)
| gives the appearance of personal animos rather than measured,
| sober judgement. Of course, there might still be good reason
| for taking this approach but so far, it is not looking good.
| jojosbuddy wrote:
| I agree, the abrupt nature sort of indicates something serious.
|
| But I've seen "on the spot firings" somewhat with Open Source-
| based, high profile startups. There's always a point in a FOSS
| startup's life where Investors/Board/Founders/SrStaff have core
| communications break down in one day (aka yelling matches) and
| people leave immediately--typically from debate on GPLv3, legal
| violations w/GPLv3, profit strategy, and 'community' support.
| Makes me now wonder what was the orig exit strategy for OpenAI.
| eastbound wrote:
| If it happens to only be miscommunication, that will be the
| biggest blunder of economic history caused by misunderstandings.
|
| If true, Sam would have kept his job just by communicating more
| and better.
|
| If true, the board wouldn't have a lose CEO in the wild and
| talents now possibly trying to build a competitor...
| basisword wrote:
| Either the board is now lying to the employees, or the board
| monumentally fucked up with their communication publicly (vaguely
| indicating some serious wrongdoing in their statement yesterday).
| Either way, the board look like morons. Concerning they're now in
| charge of some pretty powerful and important tech.
| solarkraft wrote:
| I agree that this looks ... weird and uncool.
|
| But on a cursory look it seems to me like the boards'
| intentions are the right ones, while Sam seemed intent on
| making the most money possible with no regard for any of the
| Org's founding principles. It's why the "Open" in the name had
| become a joke.
|
| I had no hope that OpenAI would ever deliver on its original
| mission, because when has a commercial takeover ever been
| reversed?
|
| This may or may not kill OpenAI's lead, but maybe at least it
| will bring back openness ...
| laurels-marts wrote:
| and what will you do with all that openness? i personally
| hoped that openai would continue to innovate and ship at
| insane speeds, continue to cut costs so i can continue to use
| their apis. providing the best ai for the lowest possible
| price is how they would have made me and the rest of the
| world better and more prosperous. now we'll have to wait and
| see what they actually deliver.
| rbancroft wrote:
| I'm not a lawyer but their original announcement seemed very
| close to libel and I would think Sam has some legal options
| should he choose to pursue them.
| fudged71 wrote:
| I think the fact that their largest partner and shareholder,
| Microsoft, wasn't made aware of this earlier, or even given the
| chance of having this news drop after trading hours, shows the
| incompetence.
| martythemaniak wrote:
| I'm curious what recourse Microsoft has, if any. Presumably
| there's some clause protecting them against openAI self-
| immolating?
|
| Interestingly, the situation is fully reversible for now:
|
| 1. Majority of employees sign a strong letter condemning the
| board and calling for their resignation. 2. MSFT threatening to
| activate whatever protective clause they have 3. Other
| investors/donors threatening lawsuits. 4. Sustkever et all
| resign, new board appointed and Sam and Greg come back.
|
| Things could be back to business as usual by Monday morning.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I'm curious what recourse Microsoft has, if any. Presumably
| there's some clause protecting them against openAI self-
| immolating?
|
| Given the disclaimer attached to the OpenAI Global LLC (the
| entity Microsoft is directly invested in) operating agreement
| that is also reposted on OpenAI's own description of its
| structure about how investment in the firm should be treated as
| a donation, and that the firm has no obligation to seek profit,
| and its primary goal is to serve the charitable mission of the
| nonprofit and that that will trump all other concerns including
| profit, I doubt very much that that is the case.
|
| Now, if there was actual evidence that the board (which is,
| remember, the board of the nonprofit) was _not_ making a bona
| fide effort to serve its understanding of the charitable
| purpose of the nonprofit, but instead serving some unrelated
| (especially profit-oriented) reason, that _would_ perhaps be
| grounds of the lawsuit, but most of the concerns being
| expressed are exactly the opposite -- that the board is putting
| its view of the nonprofit 's purpose ahead of commercial
| interests that people wish the firm would pursue. Which is
| exactly what the entire structure (and the laws governing
| charities) are set up to assure...
| cthalupa wrote:
| > Sustkever et all resign, new board appointed and Sam and Greg
| come back. > Things could be back to business as usual by
| Monday morning.
|
| How in the world is losing Sutskever business as usual?
| thatha7777 wrote:
| This memo creates more questions and answers, and it hints at the
| forming of internal factions in OpenAI.
|
| Who's the COO talking on behalf of when he says "we have had
| multiple conversations with the board"?
|
| Who's full support does Mira (Ilya's choice) have? Why does it
| need saying?
|
| The rapid escalation from "we seem to disagree on this" to "walk
| them off the premises" was standard practice at OpenAI, along
| with firing people on Friday, at noon.
|
| Many people were "resigned" while they were actively discussing
| (or at least so they thought) any disagreements with their
| immediate management, or the higher echelons of OpenAI.
|
| Coordinating this internally took more than a few days, and there
| must have been a few middle-managers involved in several meetings
| to coordinate this.
|
| Details on Ilya's selection function on who to read in to this
| would inform a lot of his most intrinsic motivations for this.
|
| It's a pity to see brilliant minds unravel under the pressure of
| their own invention . . . and so publicly.
| dinobones wrote:
| You see unraveling, I see a highly performant R&D organization
| being steered back on the right direction. GPT store? Give me a
| break.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| If this is true, I think it's a mistake that they fail to
| publish a clear letter saying this in plain terms. The sooner
| the better.
| blazespin wrote:
| Yeah, the message from the board hinted at something very
| bad. Why scare people like that?
|
| If they just said philosophical differences or something
| that would have been sufficient.
| thatha7777 wrote:
| Shooting from the hip with a shotgun ... is performant, but
| it often wounds innocent bystanders.
| sigmar wrote:
| They have benefactors that are funding their R&D and,
| reportedly, those benefactors are not happy about how this
| went down.
| https://twitter.com/wired/status/1725945700930724124
| swalkergibson wrote:
| Microsoft has spent the past 12 months absolutely PUMPING
| their share price talking about AI on every single earnings
| call.
|
| Now that is over, and Google has taken the lead now that
| Microsoft crashed into the wall.
| meiraleal wrote:
| Benefactors? They got the deal they could to get onboard an
| benefited a lot from it.
| blazespin wrote:
| Well if you have a better business model, we're all ears.
|
| Was OpenAI just supposed to live on the good graces of MSFT?
|
| Do you know how much GPT4 costs? Plus training for GPT5? Plus
| supporting all those alignment efforts which just hinder the
| utility?
| solardev wrote:
| The for profit entity is ultimately controlled by a
| nonprofit, kinda like how Mozilla the nonprofit also owns
| Mozilla the profit-seeking company. Patagonia (the clothing
| company) recent became something similar too.
|
| The onion layers let the for profit subsidiary make some
| money and get taxed on it, but they are ultimately beholden
| to the nonprofit parent's wishes.
|
| I guess OpenAI just expects to get a lot of donations /
| quasi-investments. Hell, Mozilla survived for two decades
| on Google's teat, and all they do is make a browser and act
| as a thinktank.
|
| If OpenAI can keep up the momentum, there'll probably be
| funders lining up for new arrangements after the Microsoft
| one expires. Shrug.
|
| But none of this explains wtf happened yesterday.
| halfjoking wrote:
| No one cared about the GPT store. Just like no one cared
| about Plugins. That was just marketing to show the technology
| is 'accessible' to non-technical people.
|
| The question is how is this going to impact their API and the
| increasing demand for lower-cost, higher-performing models to
| be used by the masses? If they want to be like Google and
| keep everything behind closed doors for years that's their
| decision, but they need clear communication about it.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Who's the COO talking on behalf of when he says "we have had
| multiple conversations with the board"?
|
| My guess (and its a guess, not knowing anything but excerpts
| from the memo which we aren't even told _who it was addressed
| to_ ) is that its on behalf of the executive team of OpenAI
| Global LLC, which, as a reminder, is separated from the OpenAI
| nonprofit by one (by ownership) or two (by control)
| intermediary organizations (the holding company that is the
| direct parent of OpenAI Global LLC, and the OpenAI GP LLC which
| is the organization through which the nonprofit exercises
| control of the holding company.)
|
| > Who's full support does Mira (Ilya's choice) have?
|
| The rest of the OpenAI Global LLC executive team.
|
| > Why does it need saying?
|
| Fairly common thing to say after an externally-imposed change
| of leadership, especially one that is or has the appearance of
| being a radical shift in direction.
|
| > The rapid escalation from "we seem to disagree on this" to
| "walk them off the premises" was standard practice at OpenAI,
| along with firing people on Friday, at noon.
|
| > Many people were "resigned" while they were actively
| discussing (or at least so they thought) any disagreements with
| their immediate management, or the higher echelons of OpenAI.
|
| Where does this come from? Its not from the article (either the
| quotes from the memo or other material in it.
|
| > Coordinating this internally took more than a few days, and
| there must have been a few middle-managers involved in several
| meetings to coordinate this.
|
| Same issue as above, plus this contradicts the information that
| has previously come out that the only person outside the
| participating board members who was told anything before the
| dismissed parties were informed was Mira, and even that wasn't
| days in advance.
| PepperdineG wrote:
| Sounds like Ilya should change his name to Iago
| simonw wrote:
| Honestly at this point the theory that makes most sense to me is
| that OpenAI got a new internal result which was notable enough
| that there was a major disagreement at the board level about how
| to respond to it.
|
| Which feels like complete science fiction, but it comes closest
| to explaining why the non-profit board would move so quickly and
| disruptively.
| woeirua wrote:
| I was hoping that might be the case, but it's sounding more and
| more like this was just pure politics.
| simonw wrote:
| Policial moves are helped if there's some kind of spark to
| change the status quo.
| og_kalu wrote:
| I wholly agree with this.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38314821
| ivraatiems wrote:
| I think a reasonable translation of this is something like: "He
| didn't do anything actually illegal, or outside of the realm of
| what he was empowered to do as CEO, but he was doing things we
| didn't like," and then either didn't tell the board about those
| things, or told them in a way that was framed to make them less
| controversial.
|
| So yeah, to me, really backs up the narrative that the board and
| sama were in disagreement about some key things.
| ianbutler wrote:
| At the risk of getting blasted, I keep seeing all these people
| talking about how it's great OpenAI is being steered back to a
| research organization. How does one expect research to make money
| if not being beholden to a product? Forget whatever your
| immediate reaction to that word is. I can already hear the "who
| needs another SV overhyped product" group, and your ignoring the
| realities that people don't pay so you can sit around thinking in
| industry unless your thinking can generate business value. You
| can not like that, but it's the system we exist in.
|
| So let me frame it another way, how does research expect to be
| supported if it's not providing material value? Research doesn't
| exist in a vacuum, if you don't want to be in industry you don't
| have to, we have academia for that.
|
| I'm cool with OpenAI becoming more like Google brain, but then
| its Microsoft calling the shots. Except wait the company
| structure is weird, so they're not really and after seeing how
| Ilya handled this I don't expect him to be able to stomach that
| relationship long term.
|
| I'm not bullish on OpenAI right now.
| crop_rotation wrote:
| OpenAI exists only due to massive cash injections from MSFT
| (and initially from Musk). Saying that they shouldn't have done
| the MSFT deal is like saying they shouldn't have started the
| thing.
| cco wrote:
| Sorta yes and no. Huge capital injections became a necessity
| _after_ the release of ChatGPT. Pre-ChatGPT capital costs
| were much lower for OpenAI, the popularity of their chat bot
| (100 WAU apparently) created an existential crisis for
| capital.
|
| Before that, as a pure research organization, capital
| requirements were much smaller and (probably) could have
| chugged along without a player like MSFT, or at least a much
| lighter partnership.
| crop_rotation wrote:
| Training GPT3 required massive amount of compute, and not
| to mention paying top salary for top talent. Billions were
| injected even before chatgpt was anywhere near.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| There is a difference between the product being a way to fund
| the research and the direction being driven by the product.
|
| If OpenAI ends up like a Google Brain, that doesn't mean
| Microsoft calls the shots, because Microsoft doesn't own any of
| the IP or researchers. Microsoft just has a a license to
| something that is almost certainly contingent on funding, and
| as long as the research is good, others will be happy to take
| their place.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| This may be the end of OpenAI. OpenAI's big advantage over Google
| was in production using and making the research available
| commercially to the public. I think Sam Altman was a big part of
| that push for commercialization.
|
| Now there is a good chance that the "true believers" in AGI have
| taken over who will want to focus on just trying to achieve that.
| There is a good chance that true AGI is decades or more away (if
| ever). Without a product to push, this pure research organization
| will produce a lot of really cool papers(maybe) but not much
| else. As the talent see that there are better economic prospects
| elsewhere, they will leave.
| jacquesm wrote:
| This all revolves around what precisely it was that they claimed
| Altman wasn't candid about. As long as that isn't clear it is the
| board that has something to explain and in my opinion they don't
| have a whole lot of time and it had better be good because OpenAI
| will be hemorrhaging talent and brand equity until this is
| resolved.
| seydor wrote:
| It seems openAI has ~500 employees (well, 495). This is being
| handled with somewhat enigmatic, ceremonial language fitting to
| an imperial palace with different factions. Interesting to watch,
| but also a bit ridiculous
| 11217mackem wrote:
| To what extent it Ilya the brains behind this entire wave?
|
| As in - without him - this LLM craze, as we know it and as it has
| manifested - would not exist today?
|
| My understanding is that he is at the center of all of it.
|
| NY Mag said that Sam Altman is the Oppenheimer, I think it's
| Ilya.
| crop_rotation wrote:
| The LLM craze would certainly exist without Ilya. Google was
| doing LLMs much before OpenAI and had so many top tier
| researchers including Hinton. OpenAI didn't beat Google in pure
| research, only in product development. And Oppenheimer is known
| more for his leadership at Los Alamos and not due to his
| scientific theories, so a comparison to Altman is apt.
| 11217mackem wrote:
| GPT-2 was the first model that created long-form and coherent
| text.
|
| The research led to a technology with a simple use case:
| input / output.
|
| The "product" is a chatbot. input / output.
|
| There is no innovation in interface or product design.
|
| All the magic - all the "product innovation" is in it
| creating coherent text output.
|
| (OpenAI's UI is not really that great).
|
| All attempts at "product" (as in serving a specific use case
| tailored to a specific business or commercial workflow) that
| OpenAI have led to date - i.e. plugins - have been a huge
| flop.
|
| I am uncertain who is behind assistants interface design to
| make RAG so easy. It's usability is underpinned by the larger
| context window of GPT-4T.
|
| All of the magic is in the underlying technology. And I think
| Ilya's at the core of it. Yes, Attention Is All We Need is
| the Google paper that invented the transformer.
|
| Ilya also worked at Google and was a key part of the
| ecosystem, and I imagine had indirect (and most likely very
| direct) contributions.
|
| He is one of the most cited computer scientists of all time.
|
| Without Ilya, I don't think we'd have the hype right now.
|
| Someone would have come to the same conclusion, I'm sure.
| crop_rotation wrote:
| This looks extremely stupid from the board and validates the
| theory that most of the board has no clue on large organisation
| governance, full of people who have mostly not seen boardrooms in
| action. It will be very very hard for OpenAI to raise money with
| the presence of such a maverick board, and I doubt MSFT would
| want to give a penny more to them without some big changes. For
| the people saying they don't owe anything to MSFT, MSFT is the
| 49% stock holder in the LLC, and a 49% stockholder almost never
| gets treated like this anywhere else, doesn't matter if the
| remaining 51% is held by a non profit or not.
|
| For people saying they shouldn't have done the MSFT deals, how
| else would they have gotten the money to build anything at all
| considering how much GPUs cost? Their competitor Anthropic is
| doing the same raising money from all of big tech, made possibly
| only due to the ridiculous success of ChatGPT. For others saying
| Ilya is the key, Google had a big lead on AI researchers and the
| only reason Google is not the undisputed king is due to bad
| leadership and product development.
| swalkergibson wrote:
| I would venture to say that it is a near certainty that those
| researchers who left Google originally to work for OpenAI are
| going to be wanting to head right back there.
| ilaksh wrote:
| I think we need Sutskever to do a speech now to tell us what
| _his_ vision is exactly and what is going to happen to the GPT
| Store especially.
|
| Possibly followed by Murati, but also maybe her comments won't be
| that relevant if Sutskever is really as into shutting down
| product development as it seems.
| kaycebasques wrote:
| No matter how exactly this all shakes out, I am convinced that
| quote from Sutskever is going to be a legendary summary of the
| saga:
|
| > Ego is the enemy of growth
|
| https://twitter.com/ilyasut/status/1707752576077176907
|
| The real mystery that we're all trying to solve in realtime is:
| who was the biggest ego here? Like a good game of Clue, everyone
| is still a suspect...
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