Sam Altman fired as CEO of OpenAI

Oops... didnt see that coming

He got billions in his account. I dont think he cares. For them job is something to do to not get bored, I guess?

So what is their board here if they aren't investors?

I thought it also had to do with him allegedly abusing his sister for decades?

Because he lied to them instead of for them.

I asked Bard to give me a generic reason for firing a CEO.

Certainly, here are some vague reasons for firing the CEO of an AI company:
Leadership concerns: The CEO's leadership style or personal conduct was not in line with the company's values or culture. This could include issues such as lack of transparency, poor communication, or ethical breaches.

Yup.

That’s what my blind girlfriend said.

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.

He just resigned like 30m ago.

Uhh.. Keep reading?

Hours after it was published, Brockman posted to X that he had quit “based on today’s news.”

Apologies, looks like that statement may have been added after the fact.

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 mean yeah but also no. I think anyone would be the former guy (i.e., the Sam on the left) over the latter if given the choice.

That doesn't make sense, because they had him host a big event a week ago.

Firing him now makes it seem like they just got new info, and Bing not rocketing to the top isn't new info.

Allegedly MS didn't know until a few minutes before the announcement.

Microsoft doesn't have that power, and it has hurt their stock value. Their CEO's response suggests that Microsoft and other partners didn't know until everyone else did.

But they said it was because he wasn’t being totally honest with the board for OpenAI tho

Corps would never lie to save face or hide truths!!

of course he will, he wasnt even getting paid

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.

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)

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.

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.

Unverified, but I saw some rumor about sexual abuse in his past. Look it up.

This post is unnerving

That sounds like something the board would love

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.

You mean the guy who spun this all up as a Non-Profit company, then spun up an LLC for that Non-Profit to manage, then made deals with Microsoft?

Somehow his long term actions tell me, like most rich twatwaffles, you can't actually trust what he is saying.

When the board that he answers to says he hasn't been consistently candid, you can bet your sweet ass any soundbites you as a regular schlub have read are "not consistently candid" and you're hearing what he wants you to hear.

But you do you on believing these chucklefucks when their actions speak loudly to the contrary.

I saw a lot of the videos he makes and he strikes me as someone that knows what he’s doing and, despite running it as a business, genuinely cares.

This makes his firing make more sense to me. Boards don't want a CEO who knows what he's doing and genuinely cares. They want a CEO who will do their bidding without question, and draw all the flak for their decisions.