Sam Altman has been fired as CEO of OpenAI, the company announced on Friday.
“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 company said in its blog post.
No idea, but given how sudden and out-of-the-blue this is, and the fact that he was co-founder of OpenAI (meaning that to some degree the board is pushing him out of his own company) you can make an educated guess that’s it’s huge.
My guess, personally, is financial malfeasance, if only because personal misbehavior usually involves some hemming and hawing before a company concludes that the ejectee “is no longer a good fit and does not represent the values held by our organization.” This was very sudden, no one saw it coming, and that’s not too usual.
I guess we’ll see, lol.
EDITED TO ADD I’ve changed my mind after a closer look at the wording of the board announcement. Given the language (Altman lied to them) and the chairman stepping down (but remaining in the C-suite) I’m starting to think that maybe Altman was trying to take something in an unapproved direction and present it as a fait accompli but got found out before he was ready to reveal it:
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. (paragraph 3)
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. (paragraph 6)
It’s worth keeping in mind the explicit mention of their key responsibility at the end, which was the original non-profit charter of “ensuring that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.”
Yeah. Given the language (Altman lied to them) and the chairman stepping down (but remaining in the C-suite) I’m starting to think that maybe Altman was trying to take something in an unapproved direction and present it as a fait accompli but got found out before he was ready to reveal it.
I added the direct link to the board’s announcement to the post text so people can see it for themselves – interesting how the board separated Altman’s removal from Brockman’s demotion by five paragraphs, adding Brockman’s changed position just before the end almost as an afterthought. Which of course it isn’t, lol.
This has corporate PR speak all over it, but it is clear that it was circumventing the desires of the Board, and the chairman of the Board steps down as well.
Really? I searched by new before I posted, saw nothing about Sam Altman.
EDITED TO ADD you can color me blind, because yeah, there’s one titled “OpenAI announces leadership transition” right before mine. Shit. Not sure how to handle this, but if the mods want to delete mine they can.
this can’t be good. even under the actual founding dude, GPT seemed to get knocked on the head every few months in quality. letting The Board exercise their precious estimable authority means pig-headed austerity and cost cutting 100% of the time. it was a hell of a technology.
It’s not an equity board. It’s the original non-profit board.
There’s zero reason they would be choosing to focus on profits over progress.
In fact, one of the theories I think is more credible is their loss of faith was in Altman being too closed and profit oriented as opposed to open and research oriented.
This is really big news, going to be interesting if anything leaks or if we stay in the dark. For Altman to be fired and for them to release a statement like this it has to be something drastic.
Not exactly surprised here. Every time I’ve seen him on the news, it’s always him fearmongering about the dangers of generative AI, when ChatGPT is burning through money and seemed to become more and more restrictive with every iteration. You can’t run an organization if it is built on top of lies.
Actually open models (not open source, sadly) like specialized LLaMa 2 derivatives that could be ran and fine-tuned locally seems to be the future, because there seems to be a diminishing return in training/inference power to usefulness, and specialized smaller model tuned for specific applications are much more flexible than a giant general one that can only be used on somebody else’s machine.
because there seems to be a diminishing return in training/inference power to usefulness
Be careful not to be caught up in the application of Goodhart’s Law going on in the field right now.
There’s plenty of things GPT-4 trounces everything else on, they just tend to be things outside the now standardized body of tests, which suggests the tests have become the target and are no longer effective measurements.
This is perhaps most apparent in things like Orca, where we directly use the tests as the target, have GPT-4 generate synthetic data that improves Llama performance on the target, and then see large gains in smaller models on the tests.
But those new models don’t necessarily have the same capabilities on more abstract capabilities, such as the recent approach of using analogy to solve problems.
We are arguably becoming too myopic in how we are measuring the success of new models.
I’ve seen a number of misinformed comments here complaining about a profit oriented board.
It’s worth keeping in mind that this board was the original non-profit board, that none of the members have equity, and literally part of the announcement is the board saying that they want to be more aligned as a company with the original charter of helping bring about AI for everyone.
There may be an argument around Altman’s oust being related to his being too closed source and profit oriented, but the idea that the reasoning was the other way around is pretty ludicrous.
Again - this isn’t an investor board of people who put money into the company and have equity they are trying to protect.
I don’t know why you’re being downvoted, this is a good question that not everyone knows the answer to. (It’s been answered above me, but just so we’re clear, any large organization can have a board of directors, whether they invest money or not. A board of directors isn’t necessarily “the people who have money”, it’s the people who set the direction.)
Thanks for explaining! I knew about this arrangement but didn’t know the two boards work this way.
So, non-profit board members are being simply hired as employees and they don’t have to have any connection with the company as long as they meet the bylaw criteria.
Altman himself praised this non profit overseer structure before. I wonder what does he think of it now 🫣
A point of clarification, board members aren’t usually considered employees by virtue of their presence on the board. They are apart from the organization. They often have a dual role as some kind of executive in the company, though.
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I am actually very surprised. Did not see this coming.
That’s what my blind girlfriend said.
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No idea, but given how sudden and out-of-the-blue this is, and the fact that he was co-founder of OpenAI (meaning that to some degree the board is pushing him out of his own company) you can make an educated guess that’s it’s huge.
My guess, personally, is financial malfeasance,if only because personal misbehavior usually involves some hemming and hawing before a company concludes that the ejectee “is no longer a good fit and does not represent the values held by our organization.” This was very sudden, no one saw it coming, and that’s not too usual.I guess we’ll see, lol.
EDITED TO ADD I’ve changed my mind after a closer look at the wording of the board announcement. Given the language (Altman lied to them) and the chairman stepping down (but remaining in the C-suite) I’m starting to think that maybe Altman was trying to take something in an unapproved direction and present it as a fait accompli but got found out before he was ready to reveal it:
It’s worth keeping in mind the explicit mention of their key responsibility at the end, which was the original non-profit charter of “ensuring that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.”
I interpret their wording that he lied to the board repeadetly and made some unethical backdoor deals of evil.
Makes me wonder if he wanted to put ethical guardrails on the product that would’ve been less profitable for the board.
It’s the non-profit board, not an investor board. None of the members have equity in the company.
Yeah I’m going with the board doesn’t like the commercially tied investment deals from other companies.
Unverified, but I saw some rumor about sexual abuse in his past. Look it up.
Those allegations have been floating since ~2021, I have a hard time believing they’d take emergency action on them 2-3y later.
Whatever it was it’s spicy enough that they’re trying to bury the press release in the late Friday afternoon news graveyard
Edit: even better, whatever they’re trying to distance themselves from is so important they didn’t even wait for the closing bell on the market.
Interesting. No way this isn’t connected
He just resigned like 30m ago.
Yeah. Given the language (Altman lied to them) and the chairman stepping down (but remaining in the C-suite) I’m starting to think that maybe Altman was trying to take something in an unapproved direction and present it as a fait accompli but got found out before he was ready to reveal it.
I added the direct link to the board’s announcement to the post text so people can see it for themselves – interesting how the board separated Altman’s removal from Brockman’s demotion by five paragraphs, adding Brockman’s changed position just before the end almost as an afterthought. Which of course it isn’t, lol.
I’m more surprised that the folks at OpenAI saw fit to fire him than I am that he committed fireable offenses.
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But what he lied about is probably bigger news.
This has corporate PR speak all over it, but it is clear that it was circumventing the desires of the Board, and the chairman of the Board steps down as well.
The absolute hell happened?
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On one hand, this was posted 15 minutes before you posted this… on the other hand, this is a much clearer headline
Really? I searched by new before I posted, saw nothing about Sam Altman.
EDITED TO ADD you can color me blind, because yeah, there’s one titled “OpenAI announces leadership transition” right before mine. Shit. Not sure how to handle this, but if the mods want to delete mine they can.
In times of great dishonor, the Samurai would commit seppuku with their sword.
Best I can do is charcuterie with dried salami.
I have half a plastic knife I use on the cat food . . . will that do?
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Oh no, anyways
This is unprecedented. They let that schmuck at Unity “retire” on a holiday but they fired Sam. Oof.
It sounds like there was a power struggle over the direction of OpenAI.
this can’t be good. even under the actual founding dude, GPT seemed to get knocked on the head every few months in quality. letting The Board exercise their precious estimable authority means pig-headed austerity and cost cutting 100% of the time. it was a hell of a technology.
It’s not an equity board. It’s the original non-profit board.
There’s zero reason they would be choosing to focus on profits over progress.
In fact, one of the theories I think is more credible is their loss of faith was in Altman being too closed and profit oriented as opposed to open and research oriented.
This is really big news, going to be interesting if anything leaks or if we stay in the dark. For Altman to be fired and for them to release a statement like this it has to be something drastic.
“AI is going to take away jobs.”
“Wait… not like that.”
Oops… didnt see that coming
The company is now actually being run by ChatGPT, Mira is just the face it’s hiding behind.
Not exactly surprised here. Every time I’ve seen him on the news, it’s always him fearmongering about the dangers of generative AI, when ChatGPT is burning through money and seemed to become more and more restrictive with every iteration. You can’t run an organization if it is built on top of lies.
Actually open models (not open source, sadly) like specialized LLaMa 2 derivatives that could be ran and fine-tuned locally seems to be the future, because there seems to be a diminishing return in training/inference power to usefulness, and specialized smaller model tuned for specific applications are much more flexible than a giant general one that can only be used on somebody else’s machine.
Be careful not to be caught up in the application of Goodhart’s Law going on in the field right now.
There’s plenty of things GPT-4 trounces everything else on, they just tend to be things outside the now standardized body of tests, which suggests the tests have become the target and are no longer effective measurements.
This is perhaps most apparent in things like Orca, where we directly use the tests as the target, have GPT-4 generate synthetic data that improves Llama performance on the target, and then see large gains in smaller models on the tests.
But those new models don’t necessarily have the same capabilities on more abstract capabilities, such as the recent approach of using analogy to solve problems.
We are arguably becoming too myopic in how we are measuring the success of new models.
I’ve seen a number of misinformed comments here complaining about a profit oriented board.
It’s worth keeping in mind that this board was the original non-profit board, that none of the members have equity, and literally part of the announcement is the board saying that they want to be more aligned as a company with the original charter of helping bring about AI for everyone.
There may be an argument around Altman’s oust being related to his being too closed source and profit oriented, but the idea that the reasoning was the other way around is pretty ludicrous.
Again - this isn’t an investor board of people who put money into the company and have equity they are trying to protect.
So what is their board here if they aren’t investors?
I don’t know why you’re being downvoted, this is a good question that not everyone knows the answer to. (It’s been answered above me, but just so we’re clear, any large organization can have a board of directors, whether they invest money or not. A board of directors isn’t necessarily “the people who have money”, it’s the people who set the direction.)
It’s a non-profit.
OpenAI is a non-profit with a board which owns the LLC which is what was invested into and makes money.
This was not the LLC board, but the non-profit board in charge of the whole thing.
Thanks for explaining! I knew about this arrangement but didn’t know the two boards work this way.
So, non-profit board members are being simply hired as employees and they don’t have to have any connection with the company as long as they meet the bylaw criteria.
Altman himself praised this non profit overseer structure before. I wonder what does he think of it now 🫣
A point of clarification, board members aren’t usually considered employees by virtue of their presence on the board. They are apart from the organization. They often have a dual role as some kind of executive in the company, though.
I thought it also had to do with him allegedly abusing his sister for decades?
Not according to any of the information currently coming out.
And it would be weird for the President to resign as well if the CEO was ousted for sexual abuse.