OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO(theverge.com)
theverge.com
OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO
https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/18/23967199/breaking-openai-board-in-discussions-with-sam-altman-to-return-as-ceo
1,611 comments
Update on the OpenAI drama: Altman and the board had till 5pm to reach a truce where the board would resign and he and Brockman would return. The deadline has passed and mass resignations expected if a deal isn’t reached ASAP
https://twitter.com/alexeheath/status/1726055095341875545
https://twitter.com/alexeheath/status/1726055095341875545
The board seems truly incompetent here and looking at the member list it doesn't seem very surprising. A competent board should have asked for legal and professional advice before taking a drastic step like this. Instead the board thought it was a boxing match and tried to deliver a knockout punch before the market closes with blunt language. This might be the most incompetent board for an organisation of this size.
New developments faster than you can read the stories about them... https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/18/technology/ousted-openai-... (https://archive.vn/4U6tu)
This makes sense. The board thinks they're calling the shots, but the reality is the people with the money are the ones calling the shots, always. Boards are just appointed by shareholders aka investors aka capital holders to do their bidding.
The capped-profit / non-profit structure muddles that a little bit, but the reality is that entity can't survive without the funding that goes into the for-profit piece
And if current investors + would-be investors threaten to walk away, what can the board really do? They have no leverage.
Sounds like they really didn't "play the tape forward" and think this through...
The capped-profit / non-profit structure muddles that a little bit, but the reality is that entity can't survive without the funding that goes into the for-profit piece
And if current investors + would-be investors threaten to walk away, what can the board really do? They have no leverage.
Sounds like they really didn't "play the tape forward" and think this through...
This suggests a plausible explanation that Altman was attempting to engineer the board’s expansion or replacement: After the events of the last 48 hours, could you blame him?
In this scenario, it was a pure power struggle. The board believed they’d win by showing Altman the door, but it didn’t take long to demonstrate that their actual power to do so was limited to the de jure end of the spectrum.
In this scenario, it was a pure power struggle. The board believed they’d win by showing Altman the door, but it didn’t take long to demonstrate that their actual power to do so was limited to the de jure end of the spectrum.
My first thoughts yesterday were: Some really bad scandal happened at OpenAI (massive data leak, massive fraud, or huge embezzlement), or the board is really incompetent and doesn't know what they're doing. But an organization as big as OpenAI, with the backing of Microsoft and other big players would never make such a big decision without a really good reason.
Seems like Hanlon's razor won once again.
Seems like Hanlon's razor won once again.
This is unfathomably depressing for me; I am solidly in the non-profit, open etc. camp, and the way the board has handled the situation seems to be putting a tombstone to any opponents to Altman's way of doing things: profits uber alles, moats galore, non-profit-wink-wink-nudge-nudge; an unmitigated disaster.
If the reports are true, and Ilya led the coup, then either him or Sam can be at OpenAI going forward but not both. The rest of the board members who sided with him are gone either way.
Regardless of who ends up at the helm, OpenAI is going to be a different place on Monday than it was on Thursday, and not for the better.
Regardless of who ends up at the helm, OpenAI is going to be a different place on Monday than it was on Thursday, and not for the better.
If Altman gets to return, it’s the goodbye of AI ethics within OpenAI and the elimination of the nonprofit. Also, I believe that hiring him back because of “how much he is loved by people within OpenAI” is like forgetting that a corrupt president did what they did. In all honesty, that has precedent, so it wouldn’t be old news. Also, I read a lot of people here saying this is about engineers vs scientists…I believe that people don’t understand that Data Scientists are full stack engineers. Ilya is one. Greg has just been inspiring people and stopped properly coding with the team a long time ago. Sam never did any code and the vision of an AGI comes from Ilya…Even if Mira now sides with Sam, I believe there’s a lot of social pressure for the employees to support Sam and it shouldn’t be like that.
Again, I do believe OpenAI was and is a collective effort. But, I wouldn’t treat Sam as the messiah or compare him to Steve Jobs. That’s indecent towards Steve Jobs who was actually a UX designer.
Pay attention here kids. Even in the hottest yet most experienced startups it is amateur hour. Never expect that “management” knows best. Everyone just takes wild guesses and when the dice roll their way they scream “called it!”
Hilarious. And sad. But mostly hilarious.
Hilarious. And sad. But mostly hilarious.
Man, the board already looked reckless and incompetent, but this solidifies the appearance. You can do crazy ill-advised things, but if you unwaveringly commit, we’ll always wonder if you’re secretly a genius. But when you immediately backtrack, we’ll know you were a fool all along.
The current deal with MSFT is cut by Sam is in such a way that Microsoft has huge leverage. Exclusive access, exclusive profit. And after all the profit limit is reached OpenAI sill need to be sold to msft to survive. This is like a worst deal for OpenAI whose goal is to do stuff open source way and it can’t do so due to this deal. If it is not for the MSFt deal, OpenAI could have open sourced and might have resorted to crowdsourcing which might have helped humanity. Also, quickly reaching profit goals is only for good for MSFT. There is no need to actually send money to OpenAI team, just provide operating expenses with 25% profit and take 75% profit. OpenAI has built a great software due to years of work and is being simply being milked by MSFt when the time comes for taking profit.
And SAM allowed all this under his nose. Making sure OpenAI is ripe for MSFT takeover. This is a back channel deal for takeover. What about the early donors who donated with humanity goal whose funding made it all possible?
I am not sure Sam has any contribution to the OpenAI Software but he gives the world an impression that he owns that and built the entire thing by himself and not giving any attribution to fellow founders.
I don’t understand why and how they didn’t consider this sort of discussion before so unceremoniously firing him. The others on the board outside Ilya need to go.
I don’t consider anybody beyond forgiveness and if Ilya takes a professional lesson from this and Sam learns to be more mindful of others’ concerns, I consider this a win for all. Starting over in a new entity sounds great but would be years of setback.
I hope they work this out.
I don’t consider anybody beyond forgiveness and if Ilya takes a professional lesson from this and Sam learns to be more mindful of others’ concerns, I consider this a win for all. Starting over in a new entity sounds great but would be years of setback.
I hope they work this out.
It could be that Microsoft is leveraging them to bring him back. This board may seem mercurial at the moment, but we really, truly, and honestly still do not have the big picture yet.
With the way they fired him and the statement they made, it's hard to see how any of the remaining four could stay on if he did come back... as was previously mentioned, if you shoot at the king, don't miss.
This saga is somehow more absurd than HBO's Silicon Valley.
I'd bet money Satya was a driver of this reversal.
I genuinely can't believe the board didn't see this coming. I think they could have won in the court of public opinion if their press release said they loved Sam but felt like his skills and ambitions diverged from their mission. But instead, they tried to skewer him, and it backfired completely.
I hope Sam comes back. He'll make a lot more money if he doesn't, but I trust Sam a lot more than whomever they ultimately replace him with. I just hope that if he does come back, he doesn't use it as a chance to consolidate power – he's said in the past it's a good thing the board can fire him, and I hope he finds better board members rather than eschewing a board altogether.
EDIT: Yup, Satya is involved https://twitter.com/emilychangtv/status/1726025717077688662
I genuinely can't believe the board didn't see this coming. I think they could have won in the court of public opinion if their press release said they loved Sam but felt like his skills and ambitions diverged from their mission. But instead, they tried to skewer him, and it backfired completely.
I hope Sam comes back. He'll make a lot more money if he doesn't, but I trust Sam a lot more than whomever they ultimately replace him with. I just hope that if he does come back, he doesn't use it as a chance to consolidate power – he's said in the past it's a good thing the board can fire him, and I hope he finds better board members rather than eschewing a board altogether.
EDIT: Yup, Satya is involved https://twitter.com/emilychangtv/status/1726025717077688662
Microsoft is in a difficult position here.
With Altman gone and the direction of the board being to limit commercial growth, their investment is at risk, and their competitive edge will evaporate, especially if businesses switch to other LLMs as they surely will over time. Altman will also become a competitor.
If instead they are able to pull off a complete transformation of the nonprofit and oust Ilya, they will also lose a core technical leader and risk their investment while being left with the odd dynamic of a parent nonprofit.
Perhaps they could orchestrate some kind of purchase of the remaining portion of the subsidiary. Give Altman the CEO title and move forward while allowing the nonprofit to continue their operations with new funding. This doesn’t solve the Ilya problem but it would be cleaner to spin it off.
With Altman gone and the direction of the board being to limit commercial growth, their investment is at risk, and their competitive edge will evaporate, especially if businesses switch to other LLMs as they surely will over time. Altman will also become a competitor.
If instead they are able to pull off a complete transformation of the nonprofit and oust Ilya, they will also lose a core technical leader and risk their investment while being left with the odd dynamic of a parent nonprofit.
Perhaps they could orchestrate some kind of purchase of the remaining portion of the subsidiary. Give Altman the CEO title and move forward while allowing the nonprofit to continue their operations with new funding. This doesn’t solve the Ilya problem but it would be cleaner to spin it off.
Bloomberg now reporting the board "balking" at resigning. I suspect they never intended to resign. They fully expected this firestorm.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-18/openai-bo...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-18/openai-bo...
This is one of those things that I'll ignore. Just tell me the outcome when it's over. The older I get, the more I can't stomach this stuff. It applies to pretty much all news recently.
I mean, I don't see how anyone can expect him to come back after the public bridge burning and condemnation. I think it's reasonable to think that, if anyone were in his shoes, they, too, would feel too hurt/exasperated to go back to the people who caused all of... this to them.
Back in the days it used to take a decade to get back a legendary CEO.
On a more serious note though, I hope this stirs some discussion on remembering why there's Open in the name of the OpenAI.
On a more serious note though, I hope this stirs some discussion on remembering why there's Open in the name of the OpenAI.
Whether or not you agree about the board's decisions, you cannot deny that this has been some excellent drama to gossip over the past 24 hours, like a soap opera but with real consequences that might only be apparent years from now.
I don't trust Sam Altman since he reacted this way on people worried about privacy:
https://youtu.be/4HFyXYvMwFc?t=3201
I am not sure it really makes sense for the investors to continue with OpenAI. It seems like this incident proved that the constitution of the company wasn't really compatible with a profit focus. It was a split from the beginning, and obviously a questionable arrangement. It just came to a head to make it obvious.
The business and investment people want to make money. Many of the researchers want to take their time and build better and safer models and don't care about money in the short term at all. They are two different goals.
It's easy for business and investment people to say that they are concerned with safety and research, and I believe them to a certain degree. But they have $10 billion reasons to focus on the actual business instead of research and safety.
The business and investment people want to make money. Many of the researchers want to take their time and build better and safer models and don't care about money in the short term at all. They are two different goals.
It's easy for business and investment people to say that they are concerned with safety and research, and I believe them to a certain degree. But they have $10 billion reasons to focus on the actual business instead of research and safety.
Satya be like, fine, it’s time for adults to take over.
Sutskever’s coup went about as well as Prigozhin‘s coup.
Some articles that came out around the same time as this piece:
- https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/18/technology/ousted-openai-...
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2023/11/18/openai-in...
- https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/18/technology/ousted-openai-...
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2023/11/18/openai-in...
Dang.
I owe Mr. Altman an apology. I didn't think a startup board would be so mindexplodingly stupid and figured some toxic skeleton fell out of his closet.
Well, I'm sorry. Its a lesson to not speculate in public.
I owe Mr. Altman an apology. I didn't think a startup board would be so mindexplodingly stupid and figured some toxic skeleton fell out of his closet.
Well, I'm sorry. Its a lesson to not speculate in public.
To explain, it's the board of the non-profit that ousted @sama .
Microsoft is not a member of the non-profit.
Microsoft is "only" a shareholder of its for-profit subsidiary - even for 10B.
Basically, what happened is a change of control in the non-profit majority shareholder of a company Microsoft invested in.
But not a change of control in the for-profit company they invested in.
To tell the truth, I am not even certain the board of the non-profit would have been legally allowed to discuss the issue with Microsoft at all - it's an internal issue only and that would be a conflict of interest.
Microsoft is not happy with that change of control and they favourited the previous representative of their partner.
Basically Microsoft want their shareholder non-profit partner to prioritize their interest over its own.
And to do that, they are trying to impede on its governance, even threatening it with disorganization, lawsuits and such.
This sounds like highly unethical and potentially illegal to me.
How come no one is pointing that out?
Also, how come a 90 billion dollars company hailed as the future of computing and a major transformative force for society would now be valued 0 dollars only because its non-technical founder is now out?
What does it say about the seriousness of it all?
But of course, that's Silicon Valley baby.