What in the world is happening at OpenAI?
What an utterly bizarre turn of events, and to have it all played out in public.
A $90 billion valuation at stake too!
It’s like they distressed the company to make an acquisition one of mercy instead of aggression, knowing they already had their buyer lined up.
So this was never about safety or any such bullshit. It’s because GTPs store was in direct competition with Poe!?
Or maybe _this_ week he would need to spend his time doing something productive.
Well, we don't know.
What we do know, is that the "coordinating the boardroom coup against Altman" is a rumor and speculation about a thing we don't know anything about.
What strikes me is that he wrote the regretful participation tweet after witnessing the blowback. He should have written it right with the initial news. And clearly explain employees. This is not a smart way to conduct board oversight.
500 employees are not happy. I’m siding with the employees (esp early hires), they deserve to be part of once in a lifetime company like OpenAI after working there for years.
Poe has direct competition with the GPTs and the "revenue sharing" plan that Sam released on Dev day.
The Poe Platform has their "Creators" build your own bot and monetize it, including OpenAI and other models.
JFC.
> We will take this step imminently, unless all current board members resign, and the board appoints two new lead independent directors, such as Bret Taylor and Will Hurd, and reinstates Sam Altman and Greg Brockman.
I keep hearing this, principally from Silicon Valley. It’s based on nothing. Of course this will receive both Congressional and regulatory scrutiny. (Microsoft is also likely to be sued by OpenAI’s corporate entity, on behalf of its outside investors, as are Altman and anyone who jumps ship.)
Microsoft has a $2.75T market value and over $140B of cash.
But it doesn’t have to. And the politics suggest it very likely won’t.
If I may paraphrase Churchill: This has become a bit of a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.
I still think 'Altman's Basilisk' is a thing: I think somewhere in this mess there's actions taken to wrest control of an AI from somebody, probably Altman.
Altman's Basilisk also represents the idea that if a charismatic and flawed person (and everything I've seen, including the adulation, suggests Altman is that type of person from that type of background) trains an AI in their image, they can induce their own characteristics in the AI. Therefore, if you're a paranoid with a persecution complex and a zero-sum perspective on things, you can through training induce an AI to also have those characteristics, which may well persist as the AI 'takes off' and reaches superhuman intelligence.
This is not unlike humans (perhaps including Altman) experiencing and perpetuating trauma as children, and then growing to adulthood and gaining greatly expanded intelligence that is heavily, even overwhelmingly, conditioned by those formative axioms that were unquestioned in childhood.
I guess it makes sense. There has never been a company like OpenAI, in terms or governance and product, so I guess it makes sense that their drama leads us in to unchartered territory.
I'm pretty sure Satya consulted with an army of lawyers over the weekend regarding the potential issue.
Part of suing is to ensure compliance with agreements. There is a lot of IP that Microsoft may not have a license to that these employees have. There are also legitimate questions about conflicts of interests, particularly with a former executive, et cetera.
> pretty sure Satya consulted with an army of lawyers over the weekend regarding the potential issue
Sure. I'm not suggesting anyone did anything illegal. Just that it will be litigated over from every direction.