zlacker

>>nickru+(OP)
Edit: I called it

https://twitter.com/karaswisher/status/1725682088639119857

nothing to do with dishonesty. That’s just the official reason.

———-

I haven’t heard anyone commenting about this, but the two main figures here-consider: This MUST come down to a disagreement between Altman and Sutskever.

Also interesting that Sutskever tweeted a month and a half ago

https://twitter.com/ilyasut/status/1707752576077176907

The press release about candid talk with the board… It’s probably just cover up for some deep seated philosophical disagreement. They found a reason to fire him that not necessarily reflects why they are firing him. He and Ilya no longer saw eye to eye and it reached its fever pitch with gpt 4 turbo.

Ultimately, it’s been surmised that Sutskever had all the leverage because of his technical ability. Sam being the consummate businessperson, they probably got in some final disagreement and Sutskever reached his tipping point and decided to use said leverage.

I’ve been in tech too long and have seen this play out. Don’t piss off an irreplaceable engineer or they’ll fire you. not taking any sides here.

PS most engineers, like myself, are replaceable. Ilya is probably not.

>>johnwh+c5
I think that if there were a lack of truth to him being less-than-candid with the board, they would have left that part out. You don’t basically say that an employee (particularly a c-suiter with lots of money for lawyers) lied unless you think that you could reasonably defend that statement in court. Otherwise, it’s defamation.

>>lenerd+pb
I’m not saying there is lack of truth. I’m saying that’s not the real reason. It could be there’s a scandal to be found, but my guess is the hostility from OpenAI is just preemptive.

There’s really no nice way to tell someone to fuck off from the biggest thing. Ever.

>>johnwh+Db
John, I don't think you understand how corporate law departments work. It's not like a romantic or friend breakup where someone says a mean remark about the other to underline that it's over; there's a big legal risk to the corporate entity from carelessly damaging someone's reputation like that, so it's smarter to just keep the personality/vision disagreements private and limit public statements to platitudes.

>>anigbr+ui
What’s the legal risk? Their investors sue them for..? Altman sues for..?

How is the language “we are going our separate ways” compared with “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” going to have a material difference in the outcome of the action of him getting fired?

How do the complainants show a judge and jury that they were materially harmed by the choice of language above?

>>willia+qC
The legal risk comes if Altman decides he wants a similar job and can't find it over the next few months or years, and has reason to believe that OpenAI's statements tainted his reputation.

OpenAI's board's press release could very easily be construed as "Sam Altman is not trustworthy as a CEO", which could lead to his reputation being sullied among other possible employers. He could argue that the board defamed his reputation and kept him from what was otherwise a very promising career in an unfathomably lucrative field.

>>lenerd+pJ
It’s not defamation if it’s true

>>edgyqu+nL
The onus is on OpenAI to prove that in a court of law, in front of a jury.

>>adastr+eV
No, the onus would be on Sam Altman to prove that the statement was materially false, AND intended to slander him, AND actually succeeded in affecting his reputation.

When you're a public person, the bar for winning a defamation case is very high.

>>tsimio+CY
I don't know. The board statement, peeling away the pleasantries, says he lied to the board repeatedly. That's a very serious accusation. I don't know how US law works here, but in the UK you can sue and win over defamation for far milder infractions.

>>rich_s+Jg1
Even in the UK, if you sue, it is on you to prove that you didn't lie, not on the person you're sueing to prove that you did.

Also, as long as you are a public person, defamation has a very high bar in the USA. It is not enough to for the statement to be false, you have to actually prove that the person you're accusing of defamation knew it was false and intended it to hurt you.

Note that this is different from an accusation of perjury. They did not accuse Sam Altman of performing illegal acts. If they had, things would have been very different. As it stands, they simply said that he hasn't been truthful to them, which it would be very hard to prove is false.

>>tsimio+6p1
> Even in the UK, if you sue, it is on you to prove that you didn't lie, not on the person you're sueing to prove that you did.

No, in the UK it's unambiguously the other way round. The complainant simply has to persuade the court that the statement seriously harmed or is likely to seriously harm their reputation. Truth is a defence but for that defence to prevail the burden of proof is on the defendant to prove that it was true (or to mount an "honest opinion" defence on the basis that both the statement would reasonably be understood as one of opinion rather than fact and that they did honestly hold that opinion)