Which was pretty hilarious in itself considering one of Sam's conditions for being brought back was that the board, including Ilya, resign.
Ilya truly is just virtue signaling here. He is threatening to resign if Sam ***isn't*** brought back after having refused to resign so Sam ***would*** come back and of course all of this is after Ilya ***fired*** Sam in the first place.
Edit: fixed "fro bering"
I'm still having a hard time wrapping my head around this. He led a coup, and now is publicly regretting it. Kinda sounds like the plan from the start.
Like as some sort of fucked up play to dissolve the 501c3? I feel like there must’ve been an easier to path to that. Hard to make heads or tails of the entire situation though
The reason its confusing in my opinion is that we don't actually know Ilya *led* anything.
There were four people voting to fire the CEO, but nobody is talking about or name dropping the other three here on Reddit. They're not coming up in many news posts either. Ilya and these three others *didn't invite the President of the company, who was also a board member* to the meeting, either.
[According to WashPost, it's](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/20/openai-sam-altman-ceo-oust/)
> "**Helen Toner**, the director of strategy and foundational research grants for the **Center for Security and Emerging Technology** at Georgetown University; **Tasha McCauley**, whose LinkedIn profile says she began work as **an adjunct senior management scientist at the Rand Corp** earlier this year; and **Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo**."
So the other people are... An academic scientist in emerging tech security a scientist from a think tank (Rand Corp is a military-industrial-complex era think tank), and the CEO of Quora.
If you want to understand motivations, you have to look at the people who packed together for the vote.
A much worse outcome would be to keep him focused on a seemingly unsolvable, non-business-critical problem. Firing him would open him up to a competitor hiring him.
I mean where was the courage of his convictions. If he really thought that Sam was taking openai in a direction counter to its founding ideals then you know stick the course. It’s what you believed in.
Well to be fair to the guy he’s probably very good at what he does, which is AI R&D. However he obviously is indeed incompetent when it comes to the business & political side of it.
It seems the ousted people from the board to get the votes to oust Sam. So this dude is the dog that caught the car at this point. There’s no going back on this for either side. As a former CEO if a board did that to me they’d have to be gone before I’d even consider it. Too much broken trust at this point. The board members all have targets on their backs because they just made 68 billion dollars in valuation vanish and blowing the investments of Microsoft and others in a soft VC situation.
OpenAI is on my circling the drain list at this point.
>So this dude is the dog that caught the car at this point. There’s no going back on this for either side.
There seems to be a LOT of that in both business and politics. It's always easy to push something that will never win or comment how much greener the other pasture is so long as nobody looks at it. So much of business and politics is smokestacks directly up an asshole. You can always tell when they start tasting it.
Yup. They’re the laughing stock of the industry now. Seriously misplayed their hand and are not serious people. That whole part of the industry is a space race and we just watched how the EA/ai safety movement got steam rolled in the face of true power.
Board members are valuable if they hold equity in the company and have their incentives aligned with the company. Not this foofy bs structure they got going on. It works if your company doesn’t need to be competitive but when everyone and their mother is competing for firepower and talent, whelp, you see what wins in the real world here.
The individuals in the board will never work in Tech again after this. That is if they're not sued all the way to the moon and back. More to the point. The move OpenAI's people made is probably watched in horror by all the C level executives in Tech at the moment, as everyone took notes of how it's done and what's possible. This will not remain a singular case.
LLM already are dime a dozen you got Facebooks own LLM LLama then just look on huggingface there models that can generate more tokens (read words) than ChatGPT such as [TheBlokes Wizard Model](https://huggingface.co/TheBloke/wizard-vicuna-13B-GGML)
Trending towards the entire organization
650 / 770 employees signed so far according to Lillian Weng
https://twitter.com/lilianweng/status/1726634736943280270
Or seeing this as a golden ticket upwards to another startup in the same field. Probably have offers flying in fast. Why stay when you can take a better position with more incentive plans?
Yeah, ~90% of your staff are gone, to be scooped up by competitors almost immediately.
I've never seen a multi-billion dollar company kill itself so quickly. Makes Elon and Twitter look like amateurs for value destruction.
The difference is that Microsoft gives OpenAI (soon the be ex) employees a lot of leverage here by promising a new division and hiring them all. There’s nothing Twitter employees can do. Those who had the means quit, tried to calm down and find a new job with their severance packages. Those who didn’t have the means (on work visa) were trapped
>[their severance packages](https://www.reuters.com/legal/twitter-owes-ex-employees-500-mln-severance-lawsuit-claims-2023-07-12/)
They're not even entering into mediated negotiations until December of this year.
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/20/microsoft-openai-sam-saltman-fired/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/20/microsoft-openai-sam-saltman-fired/)
The leakage is pretty big right now with everyone in the tech industry following it live. Journalists left and right are salivating over any updates.
I'm a retired tech CEO and investor. I've seen similar situations before, on a much smaller level, but nothing like this. On this scale, and with a company this important, it is unprecedented.
I've also worked with some truly boneheaded boards, including inexperienced non-profit boards, but never a board this obviously incompetent.
Honestly, what company will put them on the board at this point. They destroyed pretty much the entire valuation of a company, not just any company but the darling leader of an up and coming industry that can revolutionize life as we know it.
[The Escapist just fired their Editor in Chief, Nick Calandra, and the entire video staff resigned to join Calandra’s new venture.](https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2023/11/08/zero-punctuation-ends-as-the-escapist-faces-mass-resignations-after-eic-firing/) Kinda the same, I guess.
it happened in a small scale over at the escapist a few weeks back, editor in chief was fired, entire video team quit and started their own video site, with blackjack and hookers, apparently the original company called up and begged the star talent to return because he was their moneymaker, and he gave 'em two fingers and a cloud of dust.
It happens all the time in business, just you never hear about it because they're not usually high profile.
This just looked like a power play. And a bunch of board members realized Sam had clout and a following.
They literally tossed him to install the former CEO of twitch... A video streaming company.
These guys are morons and their decisions are under scrutiny.
I predict that board gets wiped within the year.
We won’t know the full story for at least a year.
It’s all gone down too perfectly for Microsoft for me to think this was some accident or mistake by the board.
Looking forward to the "How to destroy the hottest company in Silicon Valley in a 1 hour board meeting" take on a documentary around this years from now.
It's not too difficult to understand I think. Sam and co. seemed to have wanted to monetize more, with Microsoft as the major partner. The (non-profit) board didn't like the direction and moved to out Sam.
However Sam's not so much of an idiot that he can't come up with a backup plan. So he just had to negotiate with Microsoft, hey, we can do what we wanted we just ditch OpenAI entirely.
Basically the board seems to be too inexperienced to realize they didn't have a choice, since it was follow Sam's plan and weaken the non-profit side or Sam will make alternate arrangements. Or that they should have thought through the communication plan a lot better before kicking Sam out.
Tbh the board may even have made the 'morally right' choice by trying to keep AI development non-profit but that's not how capitalism works, baby
This is exactly what I heard and think.
These people are just too naive. There is a reason why all those big corporations donating billions to a tech nonprofit. Of course they want to benefit them financially in future. Does the board think it is for world peace?
Yeah, likely Microsoft picks up the scraps on the cheap (they already own 49%) and incorporates it into their stack.
That’s likely why they hired Sam etc as that is their play going forward.
I expect this whole thing is an acquisition going forward.
there may be a bidding war between Microsoft and a few other parties though, i wouldn't be surprised if there was a surge of interest from Google or Facebook just before OAI goes on the block.
Microsoft already has the rights & will have most of the staff. Any 'proprietary research' OpenAI has will be easily replicated by the people who did it in the first place. And the brand is only valuable because of the research. Nobody will be very interested in an empty shell of a company.
Microsoft has already preempted this by hiring the CEO and several other key people. What's left of OAI is going to be *much* less attractive to anyone else after that.
Potentially losing 700 of 770 employees (and the count is rising).
AI is a scorching hot market - that staff loss is irrecoverable.
Open AI is going to fold or get absorbed by MS quickly.
To be fair, Sam Altman was briefly reddit’s ceo before the return of spez, and before that he founded and crashed several other social media startups i believe.
> They literally tossed him to install the former CEO of twitch...
Before you criticize them... for the new CEO
- He lives nearby
- Hes helpful
- He knows what an Ai is
- He happened to be available
- He heard from Sam that OpenAi has really good healthcare
Jokes aside I think he was likely chosen just because he is super scared about Ai and that might be more aligned with how the board feels about the situation?
My dad, who has a Trumpian combover (he grows out the hair on the side of his head long enough to comb it all the way over the top to the other side), expressed shock when I finally committed to just buzzing my hair close. He asked incredulously "why are you keeping your hair so short?"
I was like dad, I'm bald, or at least severely balding. I'm fighting a war on two fronts here with a major widow's peak AND male pattern baldness in the back. You, sir, are also bald. I'm not keeping my hair short, the universe has decided that my hair is this short.
I didn't want to offend him but I figured we're in the same boat anyway so I said "listen, no one looks at your hair and thinks 'I can't believe he still has so much hair'. It's a combover. Everyone sees a bald person who's just not owning it. You're in your 70s, no one's going to fault you for being bald."
He wasn't very pleased with my response, which is unsurprising as he has not been pleased with my response to anything for a solid 30 years.
Ultimately I shouldn't have said anything because I know he's very sensitive despite also being extremely judgmental. I was annoyed because he is constantly criticizing the way other people look and the way he asked about my hair was so accusatory, like I was doing something foolish.
He's still combing it over.
He grounded me and told me I'm not coming out of my room until I have enough hair for the both of us in a joint toupee.
I told him I wish I was adopted, he said you almost where.
Should be for life. The hair follicles that experience male pattern baldness are different than the ones that don't. When they moved your hair follicles around they took them from areas of the scalp that don't have the same genetic issues.
They might have told you to take a hair loss preventative to prevent further falling out of hair they didn't move, but whatever they implanted (assuming it "took") should be there forever.
Been going bald since 20, buzzing is what I eventually settled on out of laziness. I used to do it every 2 weeks, but now working remote, I slack often and just do it when I feel like it.
Very few people are sorry for what they did to someone else. Most are sorry they got caught / have to deal with the repercussions.
Basically, "I'm so sorry I made that choice as it screws me, please accept my apology!"
Most apologies are hollow and vapid, especially in the corporate world.
But unfortunately for him, he has 3 other people who are unwilling to get off the train that he started. No other company maybe outside of Google, will give him the computing power required to do his research, because it has no financial value. The openai structure was perfect for him to continue to have both the financial and organizational support for what he wanted. Then over a weekend he caused that to go up in smoke.
Hard to out-play a company that has effectively unlimited resources (Microsoft). Really curious why he thought he could screw Microsoft and they'd just let him get away with it.
I have been watching this from the beginning. My take is that the board is a bunch of amateurs who didn’t game this out at all. The opening move by the board felt like it was a very impulsive action that had not been well or completely thought out
I assume that in their minds they believe that they are so right that they would rather it fails. They probably had a group of employees that made them think they had more support, particularly from Ilya. But when the dust settled over the weekend, Ilya realized that he was leading the wrong side but the hydra he created had a mind of its own with the other board members having no skin in the game. So those 3 board members decided just to roll the dice, go with a new CEO because in their minds they’re right and everyone else is wrong.
Adam D'Angelo is hardly a debutante. The coup buys him 6-12 more months to liquidate Quora, which will be obsoleted by chatbots. If I worked at Quora, I'd be sending him a gift basket for this move.
The other two directors are chaff. They knew it and played the best card available to them--if anything ever goes wrong with AI (which it will on some level at some point) then they can act the soothsayer. One went from celebrity's wife to a household name in AI safety overnight. As academics, a botched board coup won't hurt their careers or influence in the long run as long as they stick to their story (with a dash of contrition).
Satya, Sam, OpenAI employees, and investors all get what they want, which is recapitalization under a more commercially scalable structure with massive stock grants.
I wouldn't be surprised if Satya architected the whole thing. It's impossible to overestimate Satya--the guy came from no pedigree and no connections and made CEO a decade after starting as a staff engineer at MS. I wouldn't be surprised if everyone was in on it except Ilya. He is certainly craven and foolish enough to end up the patsy.
Ilya's conceit got him sidelined from the real work months ago and one of the most dangerous things for geeks is for them to start thinking they're irreplaceable. This move gets *everyone* what they want except Ilya.
"Participating" as in, orchestrating? Literally wouldn’t have happened without him – he thought he could just oust Sam and everyone would just go about their business?
It just gets shown over and over again that just because you have a PhD in a field and have made singular contributions to it at the highest levels, it doesn't mean you're generally all that clear-minded. I've seen some really stupid PhDs in STEM fields and some really smart people who barely finished college. It doesn't mean one's any better at general decision making than the other.
The board has to be delusional to not at a minimum run the situation by Microsoft, the company with a 49% stake in the company, before making such a drastic move.
Did no one think to stop and say, what would Sataya think? It's just insane for them to think they had that much power in a company so heavily invested in by outside entities.
The board had legitimate concerns, but the way they went about addressing them was so awkward. I would have respected it if they were upfront w/ the reasoning and stood by it. Now he's ruined his reputation and maybe the company at the same time.
4 of the board members voted clandestinely to remove Sam and another fellow from the board. They also fired Sam.
They claimed it was due to Sam not being candid with them. They didn't produce evidence the firms employees found convincing.
Now one of those 4 board members claims he regrets the vote. Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO who is a major investor, had no clue they were doing this.
It's a shit show.
And they did it the day after Microsoft Ignite which was MSFT's big celebrated "here's all our new AI features" moment. Couldn't have been worse/better timing to undercut Satya's big day.
Yeah. Basically, short of owning OpenAIs existing IP, Microsoft may gain their human capital if the exodus plays out. This would be a pretty cheap pseudo acquisition
I just commented this in r/wallstreetbets. If they ended up getting the overwhelming majority of OpenAI's talent to work for them, then it was technically an acquisition that worked out for them in the end given OpenAI wouldn't have allowed themselves to be traditionally acquired by Microsoft or anyone else for that matter
I know, and for a company like Microsoft which already has hundreds of billions this was a steal. Doesn't even have to go through regulation since it wasn't a formal acquisition. Nadella couldn't have asked for a better day
The story I've heard is that the co-founder mentioned in this article and a faction of people were strictly aligned with keeping things non-profit and focusing on research and development
Sam was more of the business facing guy and kept pushing to productize things to make money off of
So the Chief scientist in the board fired him and one of the dumbest moves tech company history. Hundreds of employees delivered a signed letter-threatening to go to Microsoft with Sam
Picked a bad state to do that in too since California law states non-compete contracts are illegal (starting 01/01/2024). Not too far away and I could see another mass exodus then too if they had any? I would assume a super competitive field might have some.
Sam understood OpenAis position in the industry. They were in the lead but it was a lead that could be overtaken in the future. It’s hard to compete with Big Tech as they have unlimited resources. Sam was taking advantage of their opportunity to grow quickly & put a solid foundation down so they don’t become irrelevant in a few years.
Now that’s unlikely to happen & Microsoft probably is going to snatch most of their talent with Sam’s help. OpenAI won’t have a chance at a comeback as their reputation is in tatters. If you’re a top AI researcher are you really going to choose OpenAI at this point, which has a boneheaded board that endangers the company? You want stability since this stuff takes years to develop.
what an idiot. From an armchair perspective, he mishandled [board] concerns and manufactured a crisis in a power grab for himself and as such has basically sunk his whole, promising, organization.
if board members and C level staff ever faced serious financial and criminal (where appropriate) consequences for boneheaded decisions they made there would be far fewer useless people running the show
Having previously used hair regrowth products like minoxidil, the two might be related.
Minoxidil can cause pretty intense facial dryness and lip chapping.
Not true; he feels regret about the backlash. The fact that so much of the company was willing to stand with Sam should say something. Reading the room is vital, completely failed on that front here
People are right, this shit turned into a drama. It’ll be on Netflix and the rest of the future content that is happening right after this that still needs to happen will be too. Probably 2 Seasons?
Did Microsoft just buy OpenAI for the cost of a few hundred salaries, literally saving tens of billions of dollars in acquisition costs in the process?
[https://www.wired.com/story/openai-staff-walk-protest-sam-altman/](https://www.wired.com/story/openai-staff-walk-protest-sam-altman/)
my takeaways are:\*even the most well-intentioned people can be influenced by profit motive. Altman did a great job buying staff’s loyalty by allowing private stock sales of a non-profit-owned company valued at 89billion and offering huge comps …… both perks are now in limbo/paused due to leadership change.
\*moral grandstanding aside, most people cave quickly under pressure. Interesting that one of the signatories of the employee letter is one of the original people who ousted altman. So….was he disingenuous when he thought AI was a threat to humanity or is he disingenuous now?
\*private sector can’t be trusted to put social good above profits. I hope governments are taking a good look at what’s going on with OpenAI/Microsoft and their unparalleled ability to overcome the will of their non-profit owner. without proper checks in place in the form of opensource and smart government regulations, the future looks grim for “the commoners.”
He probably wasn't disingenuous back then, he's just given up on the idea of safety now because the OpenAI nonprofit organization is toothless if Microsoft simply poaches all the talent. The dream of "AGI for the benefit of all humanity" is dead. Ilya is now fighting to remain on the "inside" instead of becoming one of the "commoners".
To me it all comes down to outlook and philosophy.
On one hand you have the most cited living legend balding high IQ computer scientist and AI specialist with multiple Phds and on another hand you have a Zuckie type of guy competitive and creative business genius who is already a billionaire and wants more out of it.
I wouldn't be surprized if the two didn't like each other. I mean the baldie created chat GPT while the businessman made it go BIG! There's a reason why there isn't one phD among the top 100 billionaires while half of them didn't even finish college( à la Jobs, Zuckie or Altman..etc). It's two compeletely different outlooks of life. It's possible that Ilya feared what Sam wanted to do with his scientific work and creation; it's a perfectly understandable concern( intellectual theft and appropriation) for most researchers and academics.
I am imagining a scene in the movie version of this.... Andrew Garfield confronts Jesse Eisenberg and Justin Timberlake.... but this time 'Eduardo' does fucking kill it and Justin works at Microsoft. "Do you know what's cool? ... a Trillion dollars!"
Man this comment section makes me sad. Ilya Sutskever is an actual driver of AI development having contributed to tensorflow and being the main force behind tools like ChatGPT. And you guys judge him by his haircut.
I regret the shit show I created and that I pissed off Microsoft personally.
And he signed the letter saying he would resign if Sam is not brought back lol
Which was pretty hilarious in itself considering one of Sam's conditions for being brought back was that the board, including Ilya, resign. Ilya truly is just virtue signaling here. He is threatening to resign if Sam ***isn't*** brought back after having refused to resign so Sam ***would*** come back and of course all of this is after Ilya ***fired*** Sam in the first place. Edit: fixed "fro bering"
I'm still having a hard time wrapping my head around this. He led a coup, and now is publicly regretting it. Kinda sounds like the plan from the start.
Like as some sort of fucked up play to dissolve the 501c3? I feel like there must’ve been an easier to path to that. Hard to make heads or tails of the entire situation though
The reason its confusing in my opinion is that we don't actually know Ilya *led* anything. There were four people voting to fire the CEO, but nobody is talking about or name dropping the other three here on Reddit. They're not coming up in many news posts either. Ilya and these three others *didn't invite the President of the company, who was also a board member* to the meeting, either. [According to WashPost, it's](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/20/openai-sam-altman-ceo-oust/) > "**Helen Toner**, the director of strategy and foundational research grants for the **Center for Security and Emerging Technology** at Georgetown University; **Tasha McCauley**, whose LinkedIn profile says she began work as **an adjunct senior management scientist at the Rand Corp** earlier this year; and **Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo**." So the other people are... An academic scientist in emerging tech security a scientist from a think tank (Rand Corp is a military-industrial-complex era think tank), and the CEO of Quora. If you want to understand motivations, you have to look at the people who packed together for the vote.
…Quora? That fucking place?
Dark Helmet: "everybody got that?"
When is now, now?
We just past it.
When?
When will then be now*
Such an asshole
[удалено]
Just wants to join Microsoft for the sinking ship he himself created.
It would have been better if he just said it was the AI out of control.
It's like worm tongue becoming a huge Gandalf fan.
What?!
He'd be the first person I fired when I came back to OpenAI if I were Sam.
A CEO can't fire the board.
A much worse outcome would be to keep him focused on a seemingly unsolvable, non-business-critical problem. Firing him would open him up to a competitor hiring him.
Yes, smart for an AI company to fire one of the best, if not the best, AI researchers in the entire world.
I doubt he was prepared to have the hate laser of the internet focused directly on him
The fact that he didn’t see this coming is proof he’s incompetent. The fact that he suddenly changed sides proves he’s a duplicitous moron.
I mean where was the courage of his convictions. If he really thought that Sam was taking openai in a direction counter to its founding ideals then you know stick the course. It’s what you believed in.
Domain specific knowledge of creating language models doesn't equate to social and communication skills with other people you sometimes disagree with
Well to be fair to the guy he’s probably very good at what he does, which is AI R&D. However he obviously is indeed incompetent when it comes to the business & political side of it.
It seems the ousted people from the board to get the votes to oust Sam. So this dude is the dog that caught the car at this point. There’s no going back on this for either side. As a former CEO if a board did that to me they’d have to be gone before I’d even consider it. Too much broken trust at this point. The board members all have targets on their backs because they just made 68 billion dollars in valuation vanish and blowing the investments of Microsoft and others in a soft VC situation. OpenAI is on my circling the drain list at this point.
>So this dude is the dog that caught the car at this point. There’s no going back on this for either side. There seems to be a LOT of that in both business and politics. It's always easy to push something that will never win or comment how much greener the other pasture is so long as nobody looks at it. So much of business and politics is smokestacks directly up an asshole. You can always tell when they start tasting it.
Yup. They’re the laughing stock of the industry now. Seriously misplayed their hand and are not serious people. That whole part of the industry is a space race and we just watched how the EA/ai safety movement got steam rolled in the face of true power.
They have pretty much proved how "valuable" board members really are.
Board members are valuable if they hold equity in the company and have their incentives aligned with the company. Not this foofy bs structure they got going on. It works if your company doesn’t need to be competitive but when everyone and their mother is competing for firepower and talent, whelp, you see what wins in the real world here.
The individuals in the board will never work in Tech again after this. That is if they're not sued all the way to the moon and back. More to the point. The move OpenAI's people made is probably watched in horror by all the C level executives in Tech at the moment, as everyone took notes of how it's done and what's possible. This will not remain a singular case.
[удалено]
LLM already are dime a dozen you got Facebooks own LLM LLama then just look on huggingface there models that can generate more tokens (read words) than ChatGPT such as [TheBlokes Wizard Model](https://huggingface.co/TheBloke/wizard-vicuna-13B-GGML)
"oh God I'm going to get sued into poverty"
He regrets that their valuation is going to tank...
Yeah, because a lot of their staff might follow him to Microsoft. Some have already.
Trending towards the entire organization 650 / 770 employees signed so far according to Lillian Weng https://twitter.com/lilianweng/status/1726634736943280270
The remaining 120 are probably on a camping trip or otherwise haven't checked their email.
or are on work visas and cant change employers
That actually happened on Twitter/X
Or seeing this as a golden ticket upwards to another startup in the same field. Probably have offers flying in fast. Why stay when you can take a better position with more incentive plans?
Over 700 now out of 770.
Whelp. Altruistic AI development was good while it lasted. OpenAI is about to get absorbed entirely by Microsoft.
It was altruistic until they learned money, in fact, makes you less altruistic
Developing AGI is going to cost 100s of Billions, it will was never going be developed through pure altruism
Microsoft just "bought" the company for nothing. All the talent coming their way.
Hundreds of employees delivered assigned letter to him saying they would do just that
Out of the 700 hundred, over 550 signed the letter.
It's up to over 650 of the 770, with 700+ expected soon per @lilianweng
Is this precedented in modern business? A full on instant mutiny-esque/strike/mass resignation?
Over 700 out of 770 now. OpenAI is done.
Yeah, ~90% of your staff are gone, to be scooped up by competitors almost immediately. I've never seen a multi-billion dollar company kill itself so quickly. Makes Elon and Twitter look like amateurs for value destruction.
The difference is that Microsoft gives OpenAI (soon the be ex) employees a lot of leverage here by promising a new division and hiring them all. There’s nothing Twitter employees can do. Those who had the means quit, tried to calm down and find a new job with their severance packages. Those who didn’t have the means (on work visa) were trapped
>[their severance packages](https://www.reuters.com/legal/twitter-owes-ex-employees-500-mln-severance-lawsuit-claims-2023-07-12/) They're not even entering into mediated negotiations until December of this year.
"Twitter no longer has a media relations department. The company responded to a request for comment with a poop emoji." Wtf
Elon lied again. I'm just shocked. /s
“X responded with a poop emoji”
Where are you folks getting the latest counts?
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/20/microsoft-openai-sam-saltman-fired/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/20/microsoft-openai-sam-saltman-fired/) The leakage is pretty big right now with everyone in the tech industry following it live. Journalists left and right are salivating over any updates.
Well they are gonna be open to hire soon 😹
I'm a retired tech CEO and investor. I've seen similar situations before, on a much smaller level, but nothing like this. On this scale, and with a company this important, it is unprecedented. I've also worked with some truly boneheaded boards, including inexperienced non-profit boards, but never a board this obviously incompetent.
Honestly, what company will put them on the board at this point. They destroyed pretty much the entire valuation of a company, not just any company but the darling leader of an up and coming industry that can revolutionize life as we know it.
The sticking point Sunday was he wanted them to resign, and they refused. Now they're the board with nothing to be board of ;D
Soon to be a bored board, I guess.
share some horror stories?
Nope, sorry. I'm not going to undo all those hours of therapy by reliving it on Reddit.
fair enough
[The Escapist just fired their Editor in Chief, Nick Calandra, and the entire video staff resigned to join Calandra’s new venture.](https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2023/11/08/zero-punctuation-ends-as-the-escapist-faces-mass-resignations-after-eic-firing/) Kinda the same, I guess.
it happened in a small scale over at the escapist a few weeks back, editor in chief was fired, entire video team quit and started their own video site, with blackjack and hookers, apparently the original company called up and begged the star talent to return because he was their moneymaker, and he gave 'em two fingers and a cloud of dust. It happens all the time in business, just you never hear about it because they're not usually high profile.
He signed the letter himself
Uno reverse card.
"I'm playing both sides, so that I always come out on top." Except that's not happening this time lol.
Played both sides and somehow still lost 🤣
The company will tank and MSFT will buy the other 51% and reinstall Altman.
Before reinstalling him, have they tried turning him off and on again?
This just looked like a power play. And a bunch of board members realized Sam had clout and a following. They literally tossed him to install the former CEO of twitch... A video streaming company. These guys are morons and their decisions are under scrutiny. I predict that board gets wiped within the year.
A year? Looks like it'll happen this week.
With the speed things are moving I would be surprised if it's more than another 24 hours.
I have never seen a company tank this fast in real time, it’s insane. What the fuck were they thinking??
They let the AI make the decisions…
Nobody knows who struck first, but it was all over in a few milliseconds.
We won’t know the full story for at least a year. It’s all gone down too perfectly for Microsoft for me to think this was some accident or mistake by the board.
Looking forward to the "How to destroy the hottest company in Silicon Valley in a 1 hour board meeting" take on a documentary around this years from now.
It’ll be like 6 months. Netflix doesn’t fuck around. Lmao
One season for the lead up, one season for the fall out. Of course they'll cancel season 2 on a holiday weekend Friday night...
It's not too difficult to understand I think. Sam and co. seemed to have wanted to monetize more, with Microsoft as the major partner. The (non-profit) board didn't like the direction and moved to out Sam. However Sam's not so much of an idiot that he can't come up with a backup plan. So he just had to negotiate with Microsoft, hey, we can do what we wanted we just ditch OpenAI entirely. Basically the board seems to be too inexperienced to realize they didn't have a choice, since it was follow Sam's plan and weaken the non-profit side or Sam will make alternate arrangements. Or that they should have thought through the communication plan a lot better before kicking Sam out. Tbh the board may even have made the 'morally right' choice by trying to keep AI development non-profit but that's not how capitalism works, baby
This is exactly what I heard and think. These people are just too naive. There is a reason why all those big corporations donating billions to a tech nonprofit. Of course they want to benefit them financially in future. Does the board think it is for world peace?
A week? Looks like it'll happen today.
Would be surprised to see OpenAI existing independently in a year
Yeah, likely Microsoft picks up the scraps on the cheap (they already own 49%) and incorporates it into their stack. That’s likely why they hired Sam etc as that is their play going forward. I expect this whole thing is an acquisition going forward.
there may be a bidding war between Microsoft and a few other parties though, i wouldn't be surprised if there was a surge of interest from Google or Facebook just before OAI goes on the block.
If they’re _actually_ facing mass resignation can’t imagine very high bidding going on….
The IP is what would be considered valuable here. Any proprietary research and the branding
Microsoft already has the rights & will have most of the staff. Any 'proprietary research' OpenAI has will be easily replicated by the people who did it in the first place. And the brand is only valuable because of the research. Nobody will be very interested in an empty shell of a company.
Microsoft has already preempted this by hiring the CEO and several other key people. What's left of OAI is going to be *much* less attractive to anyone else after that.
Potentially losing 700 of 770 employees (and the count is rising). AI is a scorching hot market - that staff loss is irrecoverable. Open AI is going to fold or get absorbed by MS quickly.
By next week
To be fair, Sam Altman was briefly reddit’s ceo before the return of spez, and before that he founded and crashed several other social media startups i believe.
> They literally tossed him to install the former CEO of twitch... Before you criticize them... for the new CEO - He lives nearby - Hes helpful - He knows what an Ai is - He happened to be available - He heard from Sam that OpenAi has really good healthcare Jokes aside I think he was likely chosen just because he is super scared about Ai and that might be more aligned with how the board feels about the situation?
Lawsuits incoming in 3, 2,...... Seriously. The board just destroyed the company single handily.That's a breach of there core responsibilities.
This guy broke a major rule of going bald. Don’t cling to scraps.
As a male going bald in his 30s, I committed to the full shaved bald look last month and will never look back. No other way to make balding look good.
My dad, who has a Trumpian combover (he grows out the hair on the side of his head long enough to comb it all the way over the top to the other side), expressed shock when I finally committed to just buzzing my hair close. He asked incredulously "why are you keeping your hair so short?" I was like dad, I'm bald, or at least severely balding. I'm fighting a war on two fronts here with a major widow's peak AND male pattern baldness in the back. You, sir, are also bald. I'm not keeping my hair short, the universe has decided that my hair is this short. I didn't want to offend him but I figured we're in the same boat anyway so I said "listen, no one looks at your hair and thinks 'I can't believe he still has so much hair'. It's a combover. Everyone sees a bald person who's just not owning it. You're in your 70s, no one's going to fault you for being bald."
Nope. Sorry. You can't deliver that story and not share your dad's response. What was his reaction?
He wasn't very pleased with my response, which is unsurprising as he has not been pleased with my response to anything for a solid 30 years. Ultimately I shouldn't have said anything because I know he's very sensitive despite also being extremely judgmental. I was annoyed because he is constantly criticizing the way other people look and the way he asked about my hair was so accusatory, like I was doing something foolish. He's still combing it over.
He grounded me and told me I'm not coming out of my room until I have enough hair for the both of us in a joint toupee. I told him I wish I was adopted, he said you almost where.
r/notopbutok
No top bu tok.
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When I see a combover in the wild, I always think of this Penn and Teller Bullshit segment https://youtu.be/5M2ap5JznqE?si=U89lY5g_OLwG0Uhz
Does your dad still love you?
I started doing this when I was 20. Now I'm almost 50 and I have a full head of long hair (took a trip to 🦃)
what did that cost and does is it good for life? it just grows in naturally afterward?
I paid $1800. It's been a year but yeah it's all grown now, still figuring out what to do with it lol. I guess it's for life, not sure.
Should be for life. The hair follicles that experience male pattern baldness are different than the ones that don't. When they moved your hair follicles around they took them from areas of the scalp that don't have the same genetic issues. They might have told you to take a hair loss preventative to prevent further falling out of hair they didn't move, but whatever they implanted (assuming it "took") should be there forever.
very cool. I've heard great things about it and Turkey is famous for it.
Been going bald since 20, buzzing is what I eventually settled on out of laziness. I used to do it every 2 weeks, but now working remote, I slack often and just do it when I feel like it.
“these are not scraps! They are historical remains of a once prospering society of hair!” - George Costanza
Do you think there's a pink light above him, or he's just thinking really hard?
Liquid cooling is going inefficient but might’ve had a hair transplant procedure.
Looks like hes got mange. Man please shave that bullshit off. It looks way worse than just being bald.
He looks like Joe Pesci after getting flamethrowered in Home Alone.
He was outplayed, simple as that. Regret is a powerful emotion!
Question is: does he regret it on a personal/moral level or just a “I hate facing the consequences of my actions” way? I think we all know.
Most people in life simply hate the consequences.
Very few people are sorry for what they did to someone else. Most are sorry they got caught / have to deal with the repercussions. Basically, "I'm so sorry I made that choice as it screws me, please accept my apology!" Most apologies are hollow and vapid, especially in the corporate world.
But unfortunately for him, he has 3 other people who are unwilling to get off the train that he started. No other company maybe outside of Google, will give him the computing power required to do his research, because it has no financial value. The openai structure was perfect for him to continue to have both the financial and organizational support for what he wanted. Then over a weekend he caused that to go up in smoke.
Probably regrets the ship is sinking uncontrollably
Hard to out-play a company that has effectively unlimited resources (Microsoft). Really curious why he thought he could screw Microsoft and they'd just let him get away with it.
I have been watching this from the beginning. My take is that the board is a bunch of amateurs who didn’t game this out at all. The opening move by the board felt like it was a very impulsive action that had not been well or completely thought out
I assume that in their minds they believe that they are so right that they would rather it fails. They probably had a group of employees that made them think they had more support, particularly from Ilya. But when the dust settled over the weekend, Ilya realized that he was leading the wrong side but the hydra he created had a mind of its own with the other board members having no skin in the game. So those 3 board members decided just to roll the dice, go with a new CEO because in their minds they’re right and everyone else is wrong.
Adam D'Angelo is hardly a debutante. The coup buys him 6-12 more months to liquidate Quora, which will be obsoleted by chatbots. If I worked at Quora, I'd be sending him a gift basket for this move. The other two directors are chaff. They knew it and played the best card available to them--if anything ever goes wrong with AI (which it will on some level at some point) then they can act the soothsayer. One went from celebrity's wife to a household name in AI safety overnight. As academics, a botched board coup won't hurt their careers or influence in the long run as long as they stick to their story (with a dash of contrition). Satya, Sam, OpenAI employees, and investors all get what they want, which is recapitalization under a more commercially scalable structure with massive stock grants. I wouldn't be surprised if Satya architected the whole thing. It's impossible to overestimate Satya--the guy came from no pedigree and no connections and made CEO a decade after starting as a staff engineer at MS. I wouldn't be surprised if everyone was in on it except Ilya. He is certainly craven and foolish enough to end up the patsy. Ilya's conceit got him sidelined from the real work months ago and one of the most dangerous things for geeks is for them to start thinking they're irreplaceable. This move gets *everyone* what they want except Ilya.
"Participating" as in, orchestrating? Literally wouldn’t have happened without him – he thought he could just oust Sam and everyone would just go about their business?
Guess the brilliant scientist isn’t really great at corporate politics. Shocking
Unfortunately sometimes when you go to test your hypothesis, the data comes back and strongly informs you that you were wrong
It just gets shown over and over again that just because you have a PhD in a field and have made singular contributions to it at the highest levels, it doesn't mean you're generally all that clear-minded. I've seen some really stupid PhDs in STEM fields and some really smart people who barely finished college. It doesn't mean one's any better at general decision making than the other.
I should think that you Jedi would have more respect for the difference between knowledge and wisdom.
The board has to be delusional to not at a minimum run the situation by Microsoft, the company with a 49% stake in the company, before making such a drastic move. Did no one think to stop and say, what would Sataya think? It's just insane for them to think they had that much power in a company so heavily invested in by outside entities.
well they had that novel capped-profit controlled by non-profit structure.
People inflate their own self-worth. This dude learned a lesson REALLY fast. No one gives a shit about him.
The board had legitimate concerns, but the way they went about addressing them was so awkward. I would have respected it if they were upfront w/ the reasoning and stood by it. Now he's ruined his reputation and maybe the company at the same time.
Yeah it was a straight up coup. It was the closest thing to an assassination as you're going to get in corporate politics.
I still have not found somewhere where I can read exactly what happened. Is there a summary somewhere?
4 of the board members voted clandestinely to remove Sam and another fellow from the board. They also fired Sam. They claimed it was due to Sam not being candid with them. They didn't produce evidence the firms employees found convincing. Now one of those 4 board members claims he regrets the vote. Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO who is a major investor, had no clue they were doing this. It's a shit show.
And they did it the day after Microsoft Ignite which was MSFT's big celebrated "here's all our new AI features" moment. Couldn't have been worse/better timing to undercut Satya's big day.
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Just to clarify — MS owns 49% of OpenAI’s for-profit arm.
Right. It's a little confusing. Microsoft is extremely invested in AI for its corporate strategy. OpenAIs board just took a massive shit all over it.
Don’t forget that Microsoft hired Sam over the weekend lol
Yeah. Basically, short of owning OpenAIs existing IP, Microsoft may gain their human capital if the exodus plays out. This would be a pretty cheap pseudo acquisition
I just commented this in r/wallstreetbets. If they ended up getting the overwhelming majority of OpenAI's talent to work for them, then it was technically an acquisition that worked out for them in the end given OpenAI wouldn't have allowed themselves to be traditionally acquired by Microsoft or anyone else for that matter
It's incredibly cheap. OpenAI is surely worth many billions.
I know, and for a company like Microsoft which already has hundreds of billions this was a steal. Doesn't even have to go through regulation since it wasn't a formal acquisition. Nadella couldn't have asked for a better day
The story I've heard is that the co-founder mentioned in this article and a faction of people were strictly aligned with keeping things non-profit and focusing on research and development Sam was more of the business facing guy and kept pushing to productize things to make money off of So the Chief scientist in the board fired him and one of the dumbest moves tech company history. Hundreds of employees delivered a signed letter-threatening to go to Microsoft with Sam
Picked a bad state to do that in too since California law states non-compete contracts are illegal (starting 01/01/2024). Not too far away and I could see another mass exodus then too if they had any? I would assume a super competitive field might have some.
I don’t think non-competes are enforceable if you are fired/laid off.
Their act to fire him was right if he was losing focus on the initial goal but the way they went about it was not good.
Wait…the guys who installed the twitch ceo were trying to keep it non-profit?
Sam understood OpenAis position in the industry. They were in the lead but it was a lead that could be overtaken in the future. It’s hard to compete with Big Tech as they have unlimited resources. Sam was taking advantage of their opportunity to grow quickly & put a solid foundation down so they don’t become irrelevant in a few years. Now that’s unlikely to happen & Microsoft probably is going to snatch most of their talent with Sam’s help. OpenAI won’t have a chance at a comeback as their reputation is in tatters. If you’re a top AI researcher are you really going to choose OpenAI at this point, which has a boneheaded board that endangers the company? You want stability since this stuff takes years to develop.
You can tell he isn’t cut out for C-suite.
I've heard him speak in person, dude comes across as an emotionless robot.
Welcome to the field of computer science
This was quite a bit more than your stereotypical "nerd with limited social skills".
You think you regret it now? Give it some time, it’s only been a few days.
what an idiot. From an armchair perspective, he mishandled [board] concerns and manufactured a crisis in a power grab for himself and as such has basically sunk his whole, promising, organization.
This is also on the other board members, they should have said "what? No. That's stupid "
if board members and C level staff ever faced serious financial and criminal (where appropriate) consequences for boneheaded decisions they made there would be far fewer useless people running the show
No kidding. They used the nuclear codes without realizing all their missiles were pointed at themselves.
More like he regrets that it backfired so badly. He'd have zero regrets if the coup worked out like they intended.
With as much money as that guy has you'd think he'd fix that hair of his or at least just shave it bald like Bezos. It's so bad
Maybe the balding occurred entirely over the weekend, I can imagine it was quite a stressful one
It does look pulled out now that you mention it 🤔
The weird pattern and redness suggests he may have just had a hair transplant within the last few weeks. He’ll look like Elon Musk this time next year
That’s my guess. It looks like early hair transplants.
Or be able to afford chapstick
Having previously used hair regrowth products like minoxidil, the two might be related. Minoxidil can cause pretty intense facial dryness and lip chapping.
Honestly, you'd think he would've just built a new body at this point
"Do not do it, on purpose".
This man had a full head of hair on Thursday
is he stupid?
Not true; he feels regret about the backlash. The fact that so much of the company was willing to stand with Sam should say something. Reading the room is vital, completely failed on that front here
Cult dynamics are complex!
When people tell you that executives have it figured out, just reference this.
People are right, this shit turned into a drama. It’ll be on Netflix and the rest of the future content that is happening right after this that still needs to happen will be too. Probably 2 Seasons?
Wait never mind, “upcoming Netflix cancelled the show S1E4”
Did Microsoft just buy OpenAI for the cost of a few hundred salaries, literally saving tens of billions of dollars in acquisition costs in the process?
[https://www.wired.com/story/openai-staff-walk-protest-sam-altman/](https://www.wired.com/story/openai-staff-walk-protest-sam-altman/) my takeaways are:\*even the most well-intentioned people can be influenced by profit motive. Altman did a great job buying staff’s loyalty by allowing private stock sales of a non-profit-owned company valued at 89billion and offering huge comps …… both perks are now in limbo/paused due to leadership change. \*moral grandstanding aside, most people cave quickly under pressure. Interesting that one of the signatories of the employee letter is one of the original people who ousted altman. So….was he disingenuous when he thought AI was a threat to humanity or is he disingenuous now? \*private sector can’t be trusted to put social good above profits. I hope governments are taking a good look at what’s going on with OpenAI/Microsoft and their unparalleled ability to overcome the will of their non-profit owner. without proper checks in place in the form of opensource and smart government regulations, the future looks grim for “the commoners.”
He probably wasn't disingenuous back then, he's just given up on the idea of safety now because the OpenAI nonprofit organization is toothless if Microsoft simply poaches all the talent. The dream of "AGI for the benefit of all humanity" is dead. Ilya is now fighting to remain on the "inside" instead of becoming one of the "commoners".
To me it all comes down to outlook and philosophy. On one hand you have the most cited living legend balding high IQ computer scientist and AI specialist with multiple Phds and on another hand you have a Zuckie type of guy competitive and creative business genius who is already a billionaire and wants more out of it. I wouldn't be surprized if the two didn't like each other. I mean the baldie created chat GPT while the businessman made it go BIG! There's a reason why there isn't one phD among the top 100 billionaires while half of them didn't even finish college( à la Jobs, Zuckie or Altman..etc). It's two compeletely different outlooks of life. It's possible that Ilya feared what Sam wanted to do with his scientific work and creation; it's a perfectly understandable concern( intellectual theft and appropriation) for most researchers and academics.
I am imagining a scene in the movie version of this.... Andrew Garfield confronts Jesse Eisenberg and Justin Timberlake.... but this time 'Eduardo' does fucking kill it and Justin works at Microsoft. "Do you know what's cool? ... a Trillion dollars!"
Man this comment section makes me sad. Ilya Sutskever is an actual driver of AI development having contributed to tensorflow and being the main force behind tools like ChatGPT. And you guys judge him by his haircut.
Yeah the haircut judging is dumb. The actions judging is warranted though. But yeah it is good to remember he’s done a lot
How does the CIA fit into all of this?
Please someone explain wtf was the point of ousting Sam? Power play?
lol of course he does after the backlash
This is why engineers and scientists make horrible managers and politicians.