Why OpenAI CEO was ousted(cnbc.com)
cnbc.com
Why OpenAI CEO was ousted
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/29/former-openai-board-member-explains-why-ceo-sam-altman-was-fired.html
33 comments
Yeah, it's a dupe of the one that gets manually kicked off the front page after less than a day.
Shameful, really. The importance of public critique & awareness of OpenAI's leadership should go beyond the interests of YC.
Shameful, really. The importance of public critique & awareness of OpenAI's leadership should go beyond the interests of YC.
There seems to be some mysterious method by which negative OpenAI comments and stories get downranked. The story ChrisArchitect links is missing at https://news.ycombinator.com/news?p=2 -- it appears to be outranked by other stories which are both older and have fewer upvotes.
dang has confirmed this happened in the past, but hasn't provided details. See this discussion I had with him 6 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38342850
I'm currently composing an email to dang requesting some transparency.
dang has confirmed this happened in the past, but hasn't provided details. See this discussion I had with him 6 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38342850
I'm currently composing an email to dang requesting some transparency.
Update: dang replied to my email. It seems HN actually does a fair amount of manual tweaking of story ranks. dang sent me these links:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
dang says: "The only thing we care about is not having tedious internet indignation dominating HN threads—and boy has there been a lot of that on OpenAI lately."
Also: "there are a few people who aren't mods in the sense of working for YC but whom you could call mods in the sense that they have some limited moderation abilities, one of which is to mark subthreads as offtopic or generic"
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
dang says: "The only thing we care about is not having tedious internet indignation dominating HN threads—and boy has there been a lot of that on OpenAI lately."
Also: "there are a few people who aren't mods in the sense of working for YC but whom you could call mods in the sense that they have some limited moderation abilities, one of which is to mark subthreads as offtopic or generic"
It's 'off the front page' because it's old news. 700+ people upvoted on it and commented on it. Lots of eyeballs. Lots of discussion. Over there. Just try and keep the discussion together.
>The importance of public critique & awareness of OpenAI's leadership should go beyond the interests of YC.
"Should" is doing a lot of heavy lifting; YC is ultimately about getting rich, and unfortunately there are a lot of pro-Altman types 'round these parts who share that "wealth at all costs" mentality.
I'll take my downvotes.
"Should" is doing a lot of heavy lifting; YC is ultimately about getting rich, and unfortunately there are a lot of pro-Altman types 'round these parts who share that "wealth at all costs" mentality.
I'll take my downvotes.
I missed this yesterday.
So basically Altman is a dishonest pos. Will fit right in with much of Silicon Valley then.
…power and greed seems to get into all of their heads. Next thing they are part of an NSA Prism program so they can feel like spies too.
So basically Altman is a dishonest pos. Will fit right in with much of Silicon Valley then.
…power and greed seems to get into all of their heads. Next thing they are part of an NSA Prism program so they can feel like spies too.
You gotta hand it to him, most big tech bigwigs do a good job pretending to be soft-spoken thought leaders. It takes a special kind of narcissist to insist on destroying their own image early.
Or colliding head on for the first time with a huge bunch of non-yes people…
Which doesn’t bring out the nicer side of narcissists
Which doesn’t bring out the nicer side of narcissists
What happened to the other post about this, with many more comments?
That was fascinating
So interesting the, only mentioned, fact:
> Altman did not tell the board he owned the OpenAI startup fund.
It was a non profit. That on its own, IMO, a firing offense
What a dreadfully dishonest human being
So interesting the, only mentioned, fact:
> Altman did not tell the board he owned the OpenAI startup fund.
It was a non profit. That on its own, IMO, a firing offense
What a dreadfully dishonest human being
I wonder, if the board had explicitly said this (rather than their odd phrasing, "its board... concluded that Altman was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities") whether the firing would have stuck.
Typical sili(con) valley thing
Can you elaborate more on how this fund or the startups are connected to OpenAI money or technology, and how he profits from the association, aside from the name? Seems like there must be an evil genius plan behind all of this, but maybe I’m not fully grasping the whole thing.
Shucks, I was hoping he got canned again.
Why is that?
"When OpenAI released ChatGPT in November 2022, the board was not informed in advance and found out about it on Twitter."
Why the hell should a company have to announce products to the board before launching them?
Why the hell should a company have to announce products to the board before launching them?
Who among us has not wanted to see a not-consistently-candid CEO / director / etc. removed from the organization?
I see signs of Toner trying to spin things to save face.
“for years, Sam had made it really difficult for the board to actually do that job by withholding information, misrepresenting things that were happening at the company, in some cases outright lying to the board … [Altman gave] inaccurate information about the small number of formal safety processes that the company did have in place … For any individual case, Sam could always come up with some kind of innocuous-sounding explanation of why it wasn’t a big deal, or misinterpreted, or whatever … But the end effect was that after years of this kind of thing, all four of us who fired him came to the conclusion that we just couldn’t believe things that Sam was telling us, and that’s just a completely unworkable place to be in as a board”
Thoughts:
- The claim that this had been going on for years is presented as support for the decision to oust Sam. This is a spin, because an easy criticism is that, if this had been going on for so long, why didn’t Toner do anything about it years sooner? As she says herself, all along she had been responsible as a board member for “providing independent oversight over the company,” so there was a years-long lapse in effectiveness in her oversight duties if her claims are true.
- The emphasis on “all four of us who fired him” is an attempt to provide social proof that she did the reasonable thing. It doesn’t help answer the question of “why” — the purpose of the article — so it’s rhetoric serving some other purpose.
I see signs of Toner trying to spin things to save face.
“for years, Sam had made it really difficult for the board to actually do that job by withholding information, misrepresenting things that were happening at the company, in some cases outright lying to the board … [Altman gave] inaccurate information about the small number of formal safety processes that the company did have in place … For any individual case, Sam could always come up with some kind of innocuous-sounding explanation of why it wasn’t a big deal, or misinterpreted, or whatever … But the end effect was that after years of this kind of thing, all four of us who fired him came to the conclusion that we just couldn’t believe things that Sam was telling us, and that’s just a completely unworkable place to be in as a board”
Thoughts:
- The claim that this had been going on for years is presented as support for the decision to oust Sam. This is a spin, because an easy criticism is that, if this had been going on for so long, why didn’t Toner do anything about it years sooner? As she says herself, all along she had been responsible as a board member for “providing independent oversight over the company,” so there was a years-long lapse in effectiveness in her oversight duties if her claims are true.
- The emphasis on “all four of us who fired him” is an attempt to provide social proof that she did the reasonable thing. It doesn’t help answer the question of “why” — the purpose of the article — so it’s rhetoric serving some other purpose.
Activist boards are not good, and this was a successful strategy to oust a board that would have micromanaged and ultimately hindered the company’s success. I think Altman did the best thing for the company and hopefully the new board will also put the company’s best interests forward.
Having discussions that don’t paint the board as default good and the company as default bad has become impossible on hn.
Having discussions that don’t paint the board as default good and the company as default bad has become impossible on hn.
Recall that Toner et al sat on the board of a nonprofit, not a company. See the nonprofit's charter:
>We will attempt to directly build safe and beneficial AGI, but will also consider our mission fulfilled if our work aids others to achieve this outcome.
>...
>Our primary fiduciary duty is to humanity. We anticipate needing to marshal substantial resources to fulfill our mission, but will always diligently act to minimize conflicts of interest among our employees and stakeholders that could compromise broad benefit.
>...
>We are concerned about late-stage AGI development becoming a competitive race without time for adequate safety precautions. Therefore, if a value-aligned, safety-conscious project comes close to building AGI before we do, we commit to stop competing with and start assisting this project.
https://openai.com/charter/
>We will attempt to directly build safe and beneficial AGI, but will also consider our mission fulfilled if our work aids others to achieve this outcome.
>...
>Our primary fiduciary duty is to humanity. We anticipate needing to marshal substantial resources to fulfill our mission, but will always diligently act to minimize conflicts of interest among our employees and stakeholders that could compromise broad benefit.
>...
>We are concerned about late-stage AGI development becoming a competitive race without time for adequate safety precautions. Therefore, if a value-aligned, safety-conscious project comes close to building AGI before we do, we commit to stop competing with and start assisting this project.
https://openai.com/charter/
I’m aware. And the company has shown its market-driven motive to be superior in pursuing these goals to the “micromanage-to-death” motive of a reactionary yet uninvolved board.
Like imagine if chatgpt was held back where would openai even be today?
Like imagine if chatgpt was held back where would openai even be today?
>And the company has shown its market-driven motive to be superior in pursuing these goals
I'm not sure we can extrapolate trends from recent releases to "late-stage AGI development". AGI control is supposed to be challenging when the system becomes smarter than its creators. If the system is sub-human in intelligence then the main challenge doesn't seem to apply.
I'm not sure we can extrapolate trends from recent releases to "late-stage AGI development". AGI control is supposed to be challenging when the system becomes smarter than its creators. If the system is sub-human in intelligence then the main challenge doesn't seem to apply.
Can’t you always ask why something wasn’t done sooner, no matter how soon it was done? I understand that longstanding issues can cover up real causes, but just because an issue is longstanding doesn’t mean it isn’t the real cause.
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40506582