zlacker

>>skille+(OP)
There can exist an inherent delusion within elements of a company, that if left unchallenged, can persist. An agreement for instance, can seem airtight because it's never challenged, but falls apart in court. The OpenAI fallacy was that non-profit principals were guiding the success of the firm, and when the board decided to test that theory, it broke the whole delusion. Had it not fully challenged Altman, the board could've kept the delusion intact long enough to potentially pressure Altman to limit his side-projects or be less profit minded, since Altman would have an interest to keep the delusion intact as well. Now the cat is out of the bag, and people no longer believe that a non-profit who can act at will is a trusted vehicle for the future.

>>boh+Fi
Yes, indeed and that's the real loss here: any chance of governing this properly got blown up by incompetence.

>>jacque+Hj
> any chance of governing this properly got blown up by incompetence

No one knows why the board did this. No one is talking about that part. Yet every one is on twitter talking shit about the situation.

I have worked with a lot of PhD's and some of them can be, "disconnected" from anything that isn't their research.

This looks a lot like that, disconnected from what average people would do, almost childlike (not ish, like).

Maybe this isn't the group of people who should be responsible for "alignment".

>>zer00e+Eu
The Fact still nobody knows why they did it is part of the problem now though. They have already clarified it was not for any financial reason, security reason, or privacy/safety reason, so that rules out all the important ones that spring to anyone’s minds. And they refuse to elaborate why in writing despite being asked to repeatedly.

Any reason good enough to fire him is good enough to share with the interim CEO and the rest of the company, if not the entire world. If they can’t even do that much, you can’t blame employees for losing faith in their leadership. They couldn’t even tell SAM ALTMAN why, and he was the one getting fired!

>>kmlevi+ZI
> The Fact still nobody knows why they did it is part of the problem now though.

The fact that Altman and Brockman were hired so quickly by Microsoft gives a clue: it takes time to hire someone. For one thing, they need time to decide. These guys were hired by Microsoft between close-of-business on Friday and start-of-business on Monday.

My supposition is that this hiring was in the pipeline a few weeks ago. The board of OpenAI found out on Thursday, and went ballistic, understandably (lack of candidness). My guess is there's more shenanigans to uncover - I suspect that Altman gave Microsoft an offer they couldn't refuse, and that OpenAI was already screwed by Thursday. So realizing that OpenAI was done for, they figured "we might as well blow it all up".

>>denton+PP
I don't think the hiring was in the pipeline, because until the board action it wasn't necessary. But I think this is still in the area of the right answer, nonetheless.

That is, I think Greg and Sam were likely fired because, in the board's view, they were already running OpenAI Global LLC more as if it were a for-profit subsidiary of Microsoft driven by Microsoft's commercial interest, than as the organization able to earn and return profit but focussed on the mission of the nonprofit it was publicly declared to be and that the board very much intended it to be. And, apparently, in Microsoft's view, they were very good at that, so putting them in a role overtly exactly like that is a no-brainer.

And while it usually takes a while to vet and hire someone for a position like that, it doesn't if you've been working for them closely in something that is functionally (from your perspective, if not on paper for the entity they nominally reported to) a near-identical role to the one you are hiring them for, and the only reason they are no longer in that role is because they were doing exactly what you want them to do for you.