> 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
IMHO, saying he hasn't been candid is extremely harsh in terms of corporate PR speak.
Edit: dang is right, sorry y’all
My guess is that either they’re financially super hosed. Or one group wants to build skynet and one doesn’t.
A scandal would probably be something along the lines of either “we love him and wish him the best” (hidden) or “he doesn’t represent the values of our org and we love XYz” (embraced)
It's not just a "hey, we don't really agree on x or y so let's part ways". It's more "hey, this guy did something that could get us in jail if we don't cut tie immediately".
https://www.themarysue.com/annie-altmans-abuse-allegations-a...
If you're referring to some other form of moderation that you think is bad or wrong, please supply links so that readers can make their minds up for themselves.
Jobs got fired because Apple was on brink of bankruptcy all the time and was selling nothing to no one.
Jobs wasn't the CEO of Apple, Sculley was. This is a much more impactful move.
On top of that OpenAI is literally exploding in popularity and sales, that's not the moment to cut ties with your CEO.
Also Sam Altman has an insanely better and heavier CV today than Jobs had in 1985, former director of YC and often called the "boss of silicon valley".
You don't fire a man like Sam Altman easily, they are hard to come by in the first place. He's a powerful person you don't want to have against for no good reason when winds are blowing in the right direction moreover.
It has to be some scandal, otherwise this is too sudden, and out of nowhere to a guy that led OpenAI in this direction, with success, for years.
But who knows, maybe there's a connection.
Not candid in any kind of investment situation with reps and warranties is a really big deal....
> "[...] If someone — correction, if generally a white, cis man — presents himself with enough confidence, then venture capitalists, media [...]"
I stopped reading right there. This kind of race-baiting adds zero context to the story (which may or may not be true).
[0]: https://x.com/phuckfilosophy/status/1710371830043939122
Lying on P&L, stock sale agreements, or turning down an acquisition offer under difficult circumstances seems likely.
My first thought is: C'mon. The company has just invested time to integrate with OpenAI. Just do it. Just announce that 200%+ price increase on everything with a scapegoat intermediate CEO. Or make it more so it hurts more, because of profit, so you can dial back a pity to be the good guys.
> As a part of this transition, Greg Brockman will be stepping down as chairman of the board and will remain in his role at the company, reporting to the CEO.
Murati's selection as interim CEO is a surprise and might be an attempt to distance the company from whatever the board is claiming Altman lied about.
I know OpenAI in recent years forgot it's a non profit with particular aims, but:
> The majority of the board is independent, and the independent directors do not hold equity in OpenAI.
But.. what are the responsibilities of the board that may be hindered? I studied https://openai.com/our-structure
One tantalising statement in there is that AGI-level system is not bound by licensing agreements that a sub-AGI system would be (ostensibly to Microsoft).
This phase-shift places a pressure on management to not declare reaching a AGI level threshold. But have they?
Of course, it could be an ordinary everyday scandal but given how well they are doing, I'd imagine censure/sanctions would be how that is handled.
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.
https://twitter.com/phuckfilosophy/status/163570439893983232...
"And lied to us about it."
And it could be for any reason, even purely ethical like, “we don’t want to license this technology to better sell products to tweens”.
This from 2021? >>37785072
Bad if true, but highly unlikely that it is.
The company was dying.
OpenAI is not.
Also, it's probably you underestimating the impact of OpenAI, if anything, or the entrepreneurial career of Altman.
Also, you probably don't know that but..the Apple 1 and 2, were designed by Wozniak, not Jobs, Jobs hated them. He had no such impact nor cv you think it had in 1985 and sugarcoating it with second phase Jobs.
my 2 cents that he lied about profitability, they should be expending massive money in operations, they need to cut cost to deliver an attractive business model for their service and from a shinny startup star boss that'd had to be a straight f.u.
Sure, we knew Apple was on the verge bc they were a public company with vetted financials. However, no one knows OpenAI's financial situation. We just know 1) growth was meteoric, 2) prices were dropped significantly when alternatives were available, and 3) they were almost always fundraising. Selling $1.00 of value for $0.50 also can lead to a meteoric rise as well.
I'm not saying you're wrong. But just don't know how you got such conviction.
There are no such allegations regarding Andy Rubin.
> Mr. Rubin had been having an extramarital relationship, [and] said he coerced her into performing oral sex in a hotel room in 2013
there is no reliable information about sales. It is likely very big secret.
I have zero knowledge of the internals of OpenAI - just thinking out loud about what could have spurred such a statement.
Honestly have no idea, but I'm sure a shift of control could cause this.
I think it could be transferring of OpenAI’s assets to other entities.
It is scandalous for sure
I don't know about the Skynet because it has happened 26 years before [1] but I imagine NSA, the Military, and other government agencies approached the company.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminator_2:_Judgment_Day
He confirmed it verbally as well in his May 2023 hearing in Congress https://twitter.com/thesamparr/status/1658554712151433219?la...
Your use of "crazy abuse allegations" is strange to me as well. I hardly see any of her allegations as being "crazy".
Here's a collection of things she's said about the abuse.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QDczBduZorG4dxZiW/sam-altman...
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...
> Many critics have called Worldcoin's business—of scanning eyeballs in exchange for crypto—dystopian and some have compared it to bribery.
https://time.com/6300522/worldcoin-sam-altman/
> market makers control 95% of the total circulating supply at launch, leading to an initial market imbalance.
https://beincrypto.com/worldcoin-wld-privacy-risk/
> Worldcoin’s use of biometric data, which is unusual in crypto, raises the stakes for regulators. Multiple agencies expressed safety concerns amid reports of the sale of Worldcoin digital identities, known as World IDs, on virtual black markets, the ability to create and profit off of fake IDs, as well as the theft of credentials for operators who sign up new users.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-08-23/worldc...
I wouldn't be too sure about that, actually. DALLE took a pretty hard hit because of Stable Diffusion, and the GPT API is so cheap that they're probably running it at a loss. Also, most users are going to be using the free ChatGPT web-client, so that's also a major loss.
Dude, where have you been for the past decade?
> Andy Rubin got a $90M severance payout from Google after running a sex-slave dungeon on his personal time.
And hence the colossal blowback caused by that means it ain't ever happening again. Just 2 months ago a tech CEO was forced to resign immediately for egregious conduct, losing 100+ million in the process: https://nypost.com/2023/09/20/cs-disco-ceo-kiwi-camara-loses...
You can make the claim about Apple due to the financials being public - you can't make the same claim about OpenAI unless you have insight the rest of the public doesn't have. "facts are facts"?? what facts do you have here?
>Also, you probably don't know that but..the Apple 1 and 2, were designed by Wozniak, not Jobs, Jobs hated them
I'd be shocked if a significant portion of the hacker news audience wasn't aware of who Woz is and the basic high level history of Apple.
Jobs didn't hate the Apple I and Apple II. He wouldn't have partnered with Wozniak in the first place if he'd hated the Apple I.
Jobs was the guy who got Apple enough capital from VCs to actually ship the Apple II in mass quantities. That's not something Steve Jobs would do for a computer he hated.
And the Apple IIc was his idea!
> Even OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, does not hold equity directly. His only interest is indirectly through a Y Combinator investment fund that made a small investment in OpenAI before he was full-time.
That word “directly” seems to be relevant here.
Constantly calling out "cis men" is in fact transphobic, which is how you can tell they don't care about it. If you think cis men and trans men behave differently or are always treated differently, this means you don't think they're both men.
Also sama is not white. Although he does appear to have gotten a series of jobs with not a lot of experience by convincing Paul Graham to figuratively adopt him.
For another example, imagine if OpenAI had never been a non-profit, and look at the board yesterday. You'd have had Ilya reporting to Sam (as employees), while Sam reports to Ilya (with Ilya as one member of the board, and probably a major stakeholder).
Now, when it gets hostile, those loops might get pretty weird. When things get hostile, you maybe modify reporting structures so the loops go away, so that people can maintain sane boundaries and still get work done (or gracefully exit, who knows).
Twitter also has one, although that's hardly a functioning example.
So I can't fathom her accusation having anything to do with anything.
They've made it clear that the issue has something to do with statements he has made to the board that ended up not being true. The question is of what those statements may be. Not about his potential childhood errors or his onlyfans "model" sister's claims.
So homosexuality isn't relevant here. But nor is what his sister claims.
People who said Google should have withheld Rubin's compensation are operating under the assumption that Google would have prevailed in the inevitable lawsuit.
But since you brought it up, the fact that Google changed their policies in response to the Rubin (and Drummond) situations and did not caveat their policy with "except in the case where there's a performance bonus, which we'll still totally pay out" implies that it was a choice to begin with.
Also, even if there was a performance bonus that Google felt they might be forced to pay in litigation they could still have fought it to demonstrate a commitment to not rewarding executives preying on subordinates and to preemptively address potential employee backlash, which was entirely predictable. Google has effectively infinitely deep pockets and did not need to preemptively surrender.
And in addition, Drummond and Brin were both involved in the decision and both had affairs with subordinate employees. So, while I wouldn't say that Google had an active goal of "reward abusers", it's quite plausible that the specific, small group of men making this decision on Google's behalf may not have been particularly inclined to punish behavior arguably similar to their own.
Just because the oil is in the ground doesn’t mean the crew pumping it didn’t work hard.
Again, you're tackling this from the frame of mind of being certain that Google would win. It's not about the money: $90 million is almost certainly cheaper than what this case would have cost. It's about the reputational damage: Rubin potentially winning a settlement against Google would have been immensely embarrassing.
It's all about doing what's in the best interest of the alleged victim. She would have probably had to testify at trial. And imagine the hell it would have been to have a settlement paid out to your alleged abuser, thereby implying that you're a false accuser. Juries can be unpredictable, its easy to see why Google decided to find acceptable terma to part with Rubin.
Is there any overview which lets us see specifically flagged submissions? I suspect this system has too many false positives to be useful.