zlacker

>>davidb+(OP)
> Sam Altman will depart as CEO and leave the board of directors. Mira Murati, the company’s chief technology officer, will serve as interim CEO, effective immediately.

> 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. The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.

Wow

>>jborde+g1
So this is probably indicative of a scandal of some sort right?

>>DylanB+03
His sister had levied allegations of abuse

https://www.themarysue.com/annie-altmans-abuse-allegations-a...

>>atlasu+h6
I doubt that's it. In general sexual shenanigans in your personal life will get you a quiet departure from the company under the "X has retired to spend more time with family / pursue other adventures / start a foundation". Andy Rubin got a $90M severance payout from Google after running a sex-slave dungeon on his personal time.

The wording of this statement is the kind of thing a board says when the company has done something deeply illegal that they will all face personal jail time for, and so they need to immediately deny all knowledge of the offense and fire the people who did have knowledge of it.

>>nostra+O9
"Shenanigans" would not be a remotely accurate way to characterize sexual assault on a minor. Not meant as a comment on the truth of these allegations, just on the accuracy of this way of characterizing them.

As far as whether this might be the cause, one possible scenario: the board hired a law firm to investigate, Sam made statements that were contradicted by credible evidence, and that was the fireable event. Brockman could have helped cover this up. Again, not saying that this is what happened but it's plausible.

BTW Rubin's $90M payout a) caused a shitstorm at Google b) was determined in part by David Drummond, later fired in part due to sexual misconduct. I would not use this as a representative example, especially since Google now has a policy against such payouts: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/andy-rubin-google-settlement-se...

>>benzib+4h
Google didn't just pay Rubin $90M because they want to reward abusers. Rubin's contract had a huge component of his comp tied to Android's success. If Google tried to withhold that bonus, Rubin would have sued. People don't just walk away from a hundred million dollars without a fight. Imagine the disaster that would have transpired if Rubin won his case: Google would been seen as trying to cheat an employee out of bonuses with a false misconduct allegation. Imagine the hell it would have been to be the woman in that situation.

People who said Google should have withheld Rubin's compensation are operating under the assumption that Google would have prevailed in the inevitable lawsuit.