[HN Gopher] The Inside Story of Microsoft's Partnership with OpenAI
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The Inside Story of Microsoft's Partnership with OpenAI
Author : jyunwai
Score : 102 points
Date : 2023-12-01 13:26 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| gwern wrote:
| Further confirmation of what I said 9 days ago
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38373572) based on the NYT
| (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/21/technology/openai-altman-...)
| followed by WSJ (https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/altman-firing-
| openai-520a3a8c): the firing was over Sam Altman's attempt to
| takeover the board by firing one of the holdouts (Helen Toner),
| which would secure him a majority indefinitely (especially after
| packing the board further by filling vacancies), thereby
| neutering all remaining governance controls over Altman. In
| particular, in this piece, Altman acknowledges on the record that
| he was trying to fire Toner and went about it in a 'ham-fisted
| way'.
|
| Excerpts: "...Some members of the OpenAI board
| had found Altman an unnervingly slippery operator. For example,
| earlier this fall he'd confronted one member, Helen Toner, a
| director at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology, at
| Georgetown University, for co-writing a paper that seemingly
| criticized OpenAI for "stoking the flames of AI hype." Toner had
| defended herself (though she later apologized to the board for
| not anticipating how the paper might be perceived). Altman began
| approaching other board members, individually, about replacing
| her. When these members compared notes about the conversations,
| some felt that Altman had misrepresented them as supporting
| Toner's removal. "He'd play them off against each other by lying
| about what other people thought", the person familiar with the
| board's discussions told me. "Things like that had been happening
| for years." (A person familiar with Altman's perspective said
| that he acknowledges having been "ham-fisted in the way he tried
| to get a board member removed", but that he hadn't attempted to
| manipulate the board.) ...His tactical skills were
| so feared that, when 4 members of the board---Toner, D'Angelo,
| Sutskever, and Tasha McCauley---began discussing his removal,
| they were determined to guarantee that he would be caught by
| surprise. "It was clear that, as soon as Sam knew, he'd do
| anything he could to undermine the board", the person familiar
| with those discussions said...Two people familiar with the
| board's thinking say that the members felt bound to silence by
| confidentiality constraints...But whenever anyone asked for
| examples of Altman not being "consistently candid in his
| communications", as the board had initially complained, its
| members kept mum, refusing even to cite Altman's campaign against
| Toner. ...The dismissed board members, meanwhile,
| insist that their actions were wise. "There will be a full and
| independent investigation, and rather than putting a bunch of
| Sam's cronies on the board we ended up with new people who can
| stand up to him", the person familiar with the board's
| discussions told me. "Sam is very powerful, he's persuasive, he's
| good at getting his way, and now he's on notice that people are
| watching." Toner told me, "The board's focus throughout was to
| fulfill our obligation to OpenAI's mission." (Altman has told
| others that he welcomes the investigation---in part to help him
| understand why this drama occurred, and what he could have done
| differently to prevent it.) Some A.I. watchdogs
| aren't particularly comfortable with the outcome. Margaret
| Mitchell, the chief ethics scientist at Hugging Face, an open-
| source A.I. platform, told me, "The board was literally doing its
| job when it fired Sam. His return will have a chilling effect.
| We're going to see a lot less of people speaking out within their
| companies, because they'll think they'll get fired---and the
| people at the top will be even more unaccountable."
| Altman, for his part, is ready to discuss other things. "I think
| we just move on to good governance and good board members and
| we'll do this independent review, which I'm super excited about",
| he told me. "I just want everybody to move on here and be happy.
| And we'll get back to work on the mission"."
| omeze wrote:
| Yea, this turned out to be the simplest explanation... try to
| undermine board, get fired, win anyway (lol)
|
| Lesson here is... the next time a startup CEO gets fired they
| should try the social media spam gambit...? Depends on how much
| $ is on the line but worked at least once!
| ianmcgowan wrote:
| I think the lesson is that after firing your CEO and 80% of
| the organization threatens to quit, then maybe don't do that.
| Though if MSFT wasn't there for a soft landing ($), not sure
| the number would be as high as that.
| logicchains wrote:
| The lesson is if you're going to fire your CEO for alleged
| unethical behaviour, make sure you're willing to actually
| argue why you fired him, to convince people it was a
| reasonable decision.
| starttoaster wrote:
| Agreed. The board's public note about all this basically
| read as, "Sam is not able to do his job." They made this
| public note during a time of generally high praise for
| OpenAI's success, so nobody believed it. I hate to side
| in either direction here, but the board really showed
| incompetence with public relations here. Having said
| that, I'm sure there's some poor PR person at OpenAI
| sweating over exactly this, and to them I say, it's not
| your fault, every single person in the board should have
| been involved in that public notice, and everyone
| apparently agreed this was a sufficient explanation for a
| bunch of people with no internal context.
| foobarian wrote:
| The lesson is if your relatively unknown little nonprofit
| startup stumbles into a giant pile of gold, it doesn't
| matter how pure and ethical your intentions are.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| And the irony is, that's the main plot and lesson of like
| half of fables, legends, fantasy and sci-fi stories ever
| made.
| rurp wrote:
| I think Matt Levine covered it well. Having technical control
| is all fine and dandy, but having the backing of money
| usually matters more than anything. Microsoft was firmly
| behind Sam, which made all the difference.
| Towaway69 wrote:
| > Helen Toner, a director at the Center for Security and
| Emerging Technology, at Georgetown University, for co-writing a
| paper that seemingly criticized OpenAI for "stoking the flames
| of AI hype." Toner had defended herself (though she later
| apologized to the board for not anticipating how the paper
| might be perceived)
|
| Wait, what? Apologise for doing your job or did the board fail
| to read Helens current job description? Or is Helens position
| on the board of openai meant to prevent criticism of openai?
| vivekd wrote:
| I mean wouldn't you fire her? Imagine someone in Ford's board
| wrote an article criticizing Ford's approach to cars and
| saying that Mazda was doing a much better job
| g-b-r wrote:
| Is Ford a non profit?
| rvba wrote:
| Yes. Taxpayers had to bail it out
| infecto wrote:
| This is a poor comparison. Even in a non-profit, if your
| board wrote anything that went against the non-profit, it
| would certainly rile up other members.
| adolph wrote:
| In effect although not structure.
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/F/ford-
| motor/profi...
| peteradio wrote:
| Yes this was a coup no doubt orchestrated by Microsoft with
| eager participation by Alternative Man. No sarcasm there,
| Microsoft should inspire the deepest cynicism in any who view
| their dealings.
| chollida1 wrote:
| How did you come to the conclusion that this was orchestrated
| by Microsoft?
| peteradio wrote:
| I feel comfortable concluding that the serial arsonist seen
| throwing molotav cocktails at the building was the actual
| cause of the fire and there wasn't some coincidental
| electrical fire.
| logicchains wrote:
| >Alternative Man
|
| That sounds like the kind of name an AI incompetently trying
| to disguise itself would use.
| worik wrote:
| > Yes this was a coup no doubt orchestrated by Microsoft
|
| Really?
|
| How did you reach that conclusion?
|
| All the evidence points to MS being blindsided
| peteradio wrote:
| Correct, Microsoft and Alternative Man have excellent PR
| campaigns.
| worik wrote:
| So no evidence for your opinion
| peteradio wrote:
| See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38493318
|
| When a company of sheisters repeatedly sheists their way
| through history then assume interactions by them will
| generally be sheisty. I'd say this is some sort of
| reverse Hanlon's razor.
|
| As a sailor of yore manning a merchant ship, when
| approached by a frigate flying skull and crossbones I
| suppose you'd say "but captain we cannot know their true
| intentions perhaps they wish for some adhoc trade! It
| would be premature and I dare say prejudiced to assume
| otherwise!"
| ChatGTP wrote:
| "super excited"
|
| This is funny language, it's been adopted into the corporate
| bullshit buzz phrase guide thanks to Altman.
| ChatGTP wrote:
| _Altman began approaching other board members, individually,
| about replacing her. When these members compared notes about
| the conversations, some felt that Altman had misrepresented
| them as supporting Toner's removal. "He'd play them off against
| each other by lying about what other people thought", the
| person familiar with the board's discussions told me._
|
| Psychopath.
| xianshou wrote:
| Now that this and other articles have established that the
| board's actions were based not on a single event but rather on
| general, long-term, underspecified concerns, no one captures the
| essence of what happened more perfectly than Matt Levine:
|
| "Well, sure, but [the board not trusting Altman] is a fight about
| AI safety. It's just a metaphorical fight about AI safety. I am
| sorry, I have made this joke before, but events keep sharpening
| it. The OpenAI board looked at Sam Altman and thought 'this guy
| is smarter than us, he can outmaneuver us in a pinch, and it
| makes us nervous. He's done nothing wrong so far, but we can't be
| sure what he'll do next as his capabilities expand. We do not
| fully trust him, we cannot fully control him, and we do not have
| a model of how his mind works that we fully understand. Therefore
| we have to shut him down before he grows too powerful.'
|
| I'm sorry! That is exactly the AI misalignment worry! If you
| spend your time managing AIs that are growing exponentially
| smarter, you might worry about losing control of them, and if you
| spend your time managing Sam Altman you might worry about losing
| control of him, and if you spend your time managing both of them
| you might get confused about which is which. Maybe Sam Altman
| will turn the old board members into paper clips."
|
| (Link: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-11-29/the-
| ro...)
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| That's pure gold, and I'm even more impressed at Levine finding
| time and will to understand enough about AI x-risk arguments to
| not just speak the language, but make a joke in it.
| foobarian wrote:
| Makes me wonder, has anyone actually physically seen Sam A.
| lately? :-)
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| That's hilarious, though it also demonstrates the AI Safety
| problem in another way - If true, Sam made a stupid mistake in
| assuming he could lie/fudge/exaggerate each board member's
| position to the others and that they wouldn't eventually talk
| amongst themselves and compare notes. That suggests he's either
| really not that smart, or he's overconfident and sloppy. An
| AGI, or especially an ASI, would presumably avoid such easily-
| detectable mistakes.
| acl777 wrote:
| https://archive.ph/s2CdK
| denton-scratch wrote:
| The general consensus (in the places I've read) is that the old
| board were incompetent blunderers. TFA seems to agree, without
| saying so outright.
|
| I don't see how you can build an $80 billion operation, with a
| board full of blunderers. I get that it was those blunderers AND
| sam, until about a year ago; and I get that a year earlier still,
| they had several experienced businessmen on the (then larger)
| board.
|
| None of the "blunderers" has spoken yet, AFAIK; I doubt they've
| taken the cloth and become Trappists, so I assume they're keeping
| their powder dry, and waiting to see how the situation shakes
| out.
| rvba wrote:
| CEO and employees are the ones that build the company.
|
| In many places the role of the board is just to fire / hire the
| CEO. In some orgs they have more roles: getting financing,
| customers, audit, agreeing on certain things (e.g. investments,
| or contracts). Sometimes the board also has more prerogatives.
|
| But in general the role is a more ceremonial role that once per
| year chooses the audit firm (one of the big 4 companies.. so
| not very hard), maybe makes some obligatory resolutions, like
| confirming the audit result. Their biggest power is to remove
| the CEO and choose the CEO's compensation.
|
| Getting a seat on a board of a public company is like free
| money. Most boards dont meet often. Typical boards in companies
| represent the shareholders (aka remove the CEO if they want to
| do something crazy), while in non profits they are usually
| there to find financing or networking.
|
| So yes, you can get very far with a bad board, because most
| boards are quite inactive. The members read some documents,
| maybe sometimes request some data - and that's all.
| upwardbound wrote:
| Some members of the OpenAI board had found Altman an unnervingly
| slippery operator. For example, earlier this fall he'd confronted
| one member, Helen Toner, a director at the Center for Security
| and Emerging Technology, at Georgetown University, for co-writing
| a paper that seemingly criticized OpenAI for "stoking the flames
| of AI hype." Toner had defended herself (though she later
| apologized to the board for not anticipating how the paper might
| be perceived). Altman began approaching other board members,
| individually, about replacing her. When these members compared
| notes about the conversations, some felt that Altman had
| misrepresented them as supporting Toner's removal. "He'd play
| them off against each other by lying about what other people
| thought," the person familiar with the board's discussions told
| me. "Things like that had been happening for years."
| stainablesteel wrote:
| it honestly seems like the board isn't a good fit, and they tend
| to have crazy mental breakdowns that caused the entire company to
| lose stability
|
| i agree sam is too smart for them, they need to replace the board
| gumballindie wrote:
| There are more mental health issues around that company than
| breakdown. The constant bombardment of schizofrenic doomerism
| is a good indicator of what the issues may be. Altman on the
| other hand is just a bro wanting to make money by inflating the
| capabilities of a chat bot through fomo fud and an army of
| incel spammers.
| rat9988 wrote:
| I'm not why we should see him as a "bro".
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