I think we just experienced an all-time moment in corporate politics. It's kind of like Steve Jobs being fired, but if it happened immediately after the Apple II. It feels like OpenAI has already cemented its place in history, whether or not it becomes a titan for the long run.
Remember when Jack Dorsey was ousted from Twitter and replaced by Evan Williams, who was himself ousted and replaced by Dick Costolo, who was replaced when Dorsey came back? Or the drama around Yishan Wong's sudden resignation as Reddit CEO, to be replaced by Ellen Pao, to be replaced as the founder Steve Huffman came back? The Flexport drama last month where the hired CEO was replaced by the founder? The movie "The Social Network"? Going back a bit, Sandy Lerner and Leonard Bosack's ouster from Cisco, or Diane Green and Mendel Rosenblum's ouster from VMWare?
Build something successful and there will be a lot of infighting about who gets to control it.
I don't know much about the Cisco or VMWare examples. I recall the Twitter and Reddit situations as being more like the products having reached a plateau where people generally knew what it was and how it fit into the world. What feels remarkable to me is where OpenAI is in its potential trajectory as leader of a possible revolution in IT.
But I guess the amount of contingency in how all this might play out may well be the reason for the ouster.
If this was a palace coup based on a disagreement on direction, then OpenAI is done. Microsoft won’t be able to trust the board going forward, and so the money will dry up. Most of the talent will follow Sam/Greg. OpenAI will wither on the vine.
That said, I feel like more is to come out still. The board made serious accusations.
I agree this is likely disastrous for OpenAI's current corporate structure, and Microsoft will be very unhappy. But as an ML researcher, I suspect lots of researchers are going to continue to follow Ilya, unless his reputation has significantly changed (he does seem a lot more doomer-y recently ...)
It just doesn’t matter what his reputation is if the money dries up. To play in the big leagues you need deep pockets, regardless of how talented your staff is.
This is too incomplete to reach any conclusions. The board made claims about a specific class of activity. They may or may not have been more specific in their conversations with Sam and Greg. Either way the credibility accusation needs more than just a timeline to refute it.
Maybe it was a coup as per some reporting; maybe it wasn’t. I’m reluctant to make a decision here based on who got to the reporters first. There is some asymmetry in media savvy between Sam and the board.
I’m with you on this. OpenAI’s board publicly stated that Sam Altman had lied to them, and that they no longer have confidence in his ability to continue leading the company. I find it really hard to believe they just made that up. They could have just said that they lost confidence in Sam’s leadership. But they also said he had lied to them. And that’s a big deal.
Yes. It’s also true that the board made decisions I would not expect from a competent board, like not giving any investors a heads up about this.
One thing we’ll know by tomorrow morning: was Swisher right when she said there’d be more top level resignations? That will tell us a certain amount about her credibility/sources.
(Also, obviously, my opinion about any of this is worth what you pay for it.)
It's harder to tell now, but from a timeline of events, that supposed OpenAI insider on Reddit had key details of the 'palace coup' that reputable journalists like Kara Swisher (and now a primary source of Greg Brockman) have largely confirmed.
No that's horseshit since it does not constitute a valid legal reason for his removal nor it's inline with their blog post. They would get sued out of their a* if they acted based on this.
You’re taking the word of the fired verbatim on Twitter? There are multiple sides to every story. For legal reasons, the board may never give exact details.
What I still don't get about all this is if this is just a case of Ilya deciding to play board room Game of Thrones because he has a different vision for OpenAI than Sam and Greg, why throw Sam under the bus with this line in the announcement:
"Mr. Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities."
This really reads like Sam did something wrong and had it coming. But Greg and Sam's statement make it sound like Ilya just wanted to go another direction and got the votes. Why make Sam out to be the bad guy if there was no wrongdoing?
The joint statement was still intentionally refraining from the details, merely revealing the manner the firing decision was delivered. Ilya & rest of the board had a reason to do this and that reason isn't being disclosed by any involved party yet.
Ilya just self-immolated the hottest company of the decade with an 80 billion dollar valuation, all to make a point that he thinks AGI is too close and that safety needs to come first before all else. That’s quite the statement!
Yeah I read that and it really came off like a salty engineer who was tired of being pushed by the exec team to crank out more business value. Sounds like this person’s position is that OpenAI should have been a cozy little research lab where the scientists got to play with their cool toys, not ruthlessly execute on a product vision. Billion dollar business are built out of ego. If you want to work in a lab that can’t ship, head over to Deep Mind (that’s a joke, even Deep Mind needs to ship now).
Yeah… I don’t know. A lot of engineers miss the forest for the trees when it comes to business demands. Very possible that a return to a “safety oriented” culture means that OpenAI fades slowly into obscurity.
At this point whenever I see someone concerned about "safety" with respect to AI, I assume it's either someone who wants to:
a) Make sure it's sufficiently neutered as to not say something offensive or incongruent with certain ideologies, make certain topics off-limits
or
b) Scare lawmakers into making it impossible for anyone to catch up to OpenAI et al, so they can reap the benefits of cutting-edge AI while keeping the public placated with incremental improvements to outdated and sufficiently hobbled models
Something to consider: the post announcing his firing is now the 7th most upvoted post on hacker news and climbing. Does Sam Altman really deserve that much attention for his role in OpenAI, and is the fact that it's getting this much attention part of the reason he was kicked?
Zuckerberg started Fb in his dorm and Steve Jobs left his mark on every inch of their flagship products. Altman was positioned to be the next "Jobs / Zuckerberg" but I can't say I know he really deserved it as much as people seem to think. Obviously open to completely changing my mind.
It's probably more the tone of the firing letter, with the accusation about some scandal that we've yet to hear about, from a company that from the outside seemed to be at the top of its game.
It's a lot more popcorn than we usually get from corporate announcements.
This is hacker news. Sam was the founder of a startup in the very first round of YC. He then later became president of YC. I expect news of him to resonate more around here.
And OpenAI have been the most exciting tech company of the last 12 months.
These people in the Twitter thread are distracted by use of Google Meet. Have they never compared it to Micrsoft Teams. Or Zoom. All these are painful to use, if for nothing else besides the companies behind them, but there's quite a difference between Meet and the others.
Sounds exactly like a coup despite Ilya claiming it wasn't one.
But other than that, the details are still pretty lacking. The drama is only getting started and whatever comes next from both sides will be even more interesting.
Probably generic optimism backed by realistic track records. If you spend 20 years founding and running companies, it stands to think there will be another one.
Their main value add was Sam's network, which is probably why they were able to raise so much money, close the deal with Microsoft and get a ton of YC companies to sign on early on.
Now that they're so well established and intertwined with Microsoft Sam's personal network is not as important.
That's just a technical perspective, but when it comes to developing advanced artificial intelligence industries, technology doesn't determine everything.
Even an investor with deep pockets like Microsoft would be shocked by such a sudden action by the board of directors,and Microsoft will treat its money more carefully.I don't think Microsoft can pretend nothing happened.
This reminds me of the time at Facebook when one of OpenAI’s current board members was upset that the Director of Facebook Platform was getting more praise and attention than he was, in his role as Co-Founder and CTO (or whatever). That caused a lot of problems, from which the Facebook Platform never recovered.
People who start out petty usually remain that way. There’s a lot of people in this world whose happiness depends on others doing just a little bit worse-off than them.
If I was a developer building on OpenAI’s platform today, I would begin putting my contingency plans into place.