What a shit show
this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2023
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It's amazing how quickly these developments are occurring. My daily news podcasts are only behind a day and yet they seem so out of date as a result at the pace of these changes.
At the end of the day do we really know what prompted this ouster yet?
This entire thing is super confusing… and, I might have missed a lot of things, but it kinda seems to be the board was right? They seemed inexperienced, but they still seemed to be capable of working in the best interest of the company’s vision (and doing so).
Anyway, please fill me in if I’ve missed something crucial.
How in any of this does the board seem to have been right?
It was an ethics board and he showed everyone it was a sham.
This is lemmy so people are going to side with the non-profit side of things here
The best I can understand of the situation is that Sam and lots of the rest of the employees were generally trying to move toward a for-profit model. The board didn’t like this and fired him which is within their power. So if you don’t like a for-profit Open AI then you’ll generally side with the board on this one. (Part of the boards “job” is ensuring that AGI is developed for the benefit of all of humanity. This isn’t an exaggeration it’s literally outlined in their list of duties)
If you only look at how wishy washy the board has been then they look like big dumb dumbs. But given how many employees walked out they had no choice but to try and get him back. At this point many people are expecting the board to resign in full and a new board to be instated but we’ll just have to wait and see
Sam Altman was already CEO of the for-profit arm of OpenAI. The non-profit arm, OpenAI, Inc. had a controlling 51% of shares. So I’m not sure what you mean when you say:
Sam and lots of the rest of the employees were generally trying to move toward a for-profit model.
They were already a for-profit company. What we saw this week is that the non-profit board may have had a 51% controlling share in the stock, but that’s the only control they had, and it was totally on paper. Without the employees of their for-profit arm, and apparently without Altman, the non-profit arm has exactly jack shit, as the entire world now plainly sees.
What a bunch of fucking clowns.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive, said on X that he was “encouraged by the changes to OpenAI board,” calling it a “first essential step on a path to more stable, well-informed, and effective governance.”
A person close to the board’s deliberations on Tuesday said that Mr. D’Angelo, Tasha McCauley and Helen Toner pressed for certain concessions from Mr. Altman, including an independent investigation into his leadership of OpenAI.
The ouster kicked off efforts by Mr. Altman, 38, his allies in the tech industry and OpenAI’s employees to force the company’s board to bring him back.
But in a head-spinning development just hours later, Microsoft said that Mr. Altman, Mr. Brockman and others would be joining the company to start a new advanced artificial intelligence lab.
Most of OpenAI’s more than 700 employees signed a letter telling the board they would walk out and follow Mr. Altman to Microsoft if he wasn’t reinstated, putting the future of the start-up in jeopardy.
Four board members — Ilya Sutskever, an OpenAI founder; Mr. D’Angelo; Ms. Toner, a director of strategy at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology; and Ms. McCauley, an entrepreneur and computer scientist — had initially decided to push Mr. Altman out.
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Uhhhhhhhhh what