zlacker

>>davidb+(OP)
Put the pieces together:

Nov 6 - OpenAI devday, with new features of build-your-own ChatGPT and more

Nov 9 - Microsoft cuts employees off from ChatGPT due to "security concerns" [0]

Nov 9 - OpenAI experiences severe downtime the company attributes to a "DDoS" (not the correct term for 'excess usage') [3]

Nov 15 - OpenAI announce no new ChatGPT plus upgrades [1] but still allow regular signups (and still do)

Nov 17 - OpenAI fire Altman

Put the threads together - one theory: the new release had a serious security issue, leaked a bunch of data, and it wasn't disclosed, but Microsoft knew about it.

This wouldn't be the first time - in March there was an incident where users were seeing the private chats of other users [2]

Further extending theory - prioritizing getting to market overrode security/privacy testing, and this most recent release caused something much, much larger.

Further: CTO Mira / others internally concerned about launch etc. but overruled by CEO. Kicks issue up to board, hence their trust in her taking over as interim CEO.

edit: added note on DDoS (thanks kristjansson below) - and despite the downtime it was only upgrades to ChatGPT Plus with the new features that were disabled. Note on why CTO would take over.

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/09/microsoft-restricts-employee...

[1] https://twitter.com/sama/status/1724626002595471740

[2] https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/21/23649806/chatgpt-chat-his...

[3] https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/09/openai-blames-ddos-attack-...

>>nikcub+Gj
I don't think this checks out, as most of the ideas around here involving him hiding OpenAI internals from the board don't, for this reason: How could he, given who is on the board?

There is no way that sama is the only person in this set of people to have unique information on critical privacy incidents or financials or costs of server operations, because these issues don't originate with him.

If some version of this turned out to be true, I would be seriously confused about ground truth transparency in the company and how the fuck they set the whole thing up, that this was an option. But again, this is why I'd say: Implausible.

>>jstumm+Kn
Don't they only have to hide the truth from one person? Altman and Brockman were ousted. The only other person on the board from OpenAI is the Chief Scientist, and I doubt he's that involved in the business-end of things.

Edit: Also, yes, it's hard to sweep things under the rug. We don't know the timeline of events, and we're seeing an instance where Altman failed to hide something.