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Comment by cowpig | Hacker News Reader

It really just seems like the board isn't OK with OpenAI becoming a Microsoft money-machine. Isn't that the obvious interpretation?

Once they made that gigantic deal with Microsoft and became a closed, for-profit company "Open"AI created a direct conflict of interest with itself with a board whose mandate I guess was to prevent the inevitable pull toward resource accumulation.

The board is trying to exercise its mandate, and OpenAI the for-profit company is at odds with that mandate. Is that because of Sam Altman's leadership? Does that qualify as "wrongdoing"?

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Not at all. It may have looked like that in the beginning, but it looks nothing like that now. If that were the reason:

Why would they take this huge decision extremely suddenly?

Why would they announce it without first consulting with the president of the board?

Why would they claim that Sam Altman had been lying to the board in the official announcement?

Why would they announce some very weak reasons for that claim of lying to employees, and nothing to anyone outside the company?

Why would they immediately start negotiations to bring Sam back?

Why would they hire a new CEO that then says he is very much for commercialization, and that commercialization was not the reason for firing Sam?

Why would they start a new round of negotiation to bring Sam back?

Why would one of the four members of the board who took this turn decide to undo it and become an advocate for bringing Sam back?

The whole thing makes no sense at all if the motivation was disagreements over commercialization of their tech - something that has already happened months ago.

I am reading the abrupt announcement as an absence of trust they have in Sam. They must have felt that Sam would jeopardize the control of the board if he felt threatened or severely undermined the mission of the non profit, for example by selling/transferring IP out of OAI to prepare his departure.

Because their motivation was the fear Sam inspired them, they acted the way they did. Then, it's hard to justify actions based on suspicious.

Everything I've read about this situation indicates that the board acted appropriately within their authority as the the leaders of OpenAI, the non-profit. Sam Altman and co. have veered off into wild delusions of grandeur over the last year with their talk of how they're "building God" (out of scraped reddit comments and blog posts) and comparing ChatGPT to the invention of fire. The board has shown that there are still adults in the room in AI development who aren't high off their own fumes, and also aren't interested in becoming lapdogs for M$FT. Thank God.

If that's your take away I genuinely fear for the future of AI. This has been the biggest shit show. Yes, they acted within their hard power, but clearly never read the room. Announcing a 6 month transition plan while finding the new CEO and saying Sam wants to spend time with friends and family would have been the adult thing to do. Not shoot from your hip, and accuse him of lying and potentially burning your entire work to the ground, commercial or not. You kind of need to have a plan for something like this, which they clearly did not. I don't care so much if Sam goes back, I literally have no vested interest. It worries me the people left in the room just generally seem incompetent at running a large organization for something that's potentially pretty important.

It's hard for me to imagine a worse take. Even if you only assume the best of intentions of the board (which I think is a huge assumption), their actions have been so mind-bogglingly stupid that basically all they may end up doing is transferring all of OpenAI to Microsoft, basically for free, where there will be 0 oversight and MSFT's only duty is to its shareholders.

If you really wanted to create "AGI for the benefit of all humanity", I can't imagine a better way to cut off your nose and then remove your brain to spite your face.

Could you have really predicted this aftermath? I mean, it could have just been that Sam is gone, a new CEO joins, and things move on.

For example, as a paying user of OpenAI, I don't really care, as long as they continue to produce some of the best performing models, I'll keep paying.

It's pretty surprising what Microsoft did as well, like their deal with OpenAI is not invalidated by a CEO change. It's a pretty bold move of them to take that opportunity to poach the defunct CEO and the entire staff of OpenAI, and try and steal their intellectual property along the way.

I find it very likely they just didn't expect that to happen at all.

> Could you have really predicted this aftermath?

Yes, literally anyone with sufficient professional corporate experience would have. This was instantly front-page news everywhere.

> I mean, it could have just been that Sam is gone, a new CEO joins, and things move on.

This isn't about replacing a CEO. This is about 4 members secretly getting rid of 2 other board members, including the chair and CEO, in a secret board meeting, with zero transparency and zero public justification backed by evidence. None of that is business as normal, things move on. This is as disruptive and shocking as things get.

> I find it very likely they just didn't expect that to happen at all.

Which is precisely what's so troubling -- it shows their extreme incompetence. This isn't a toy $1M company for amateurs to play with, it's an ~$80B company. This is the big leagues. The board is expected to be able to understand the consequences of its actions.

Boards vote executives out for reasons which are good, bad and downright petty all the time, and it's never done as a public meeting with presentation of evidence.

Nor is it usual for outgoing execs' successors to immediately try to rehire them, the majority of a company's staff to demand a CEO's reinstatement... never mind one of the board members who voted to get rid of him u-turning and adding his own name to that statement. Microsoft being surprised and a bit pissed off would have been expected. Microsoft finding room for Sam isn't wildly surprising. Microsoft announcing that it will try to poach every single member of OpenAI staff unless the board does what they want is not the sort of consequence you'd predict.

It was obvious this was going to get a bit more attention than the average CEO firing and they certainly screwed up the communication by providing just as much information with their initial statement to fuel speculation and then no further comment, but boards firing CEOs is normal and the entire company dying on the hill of trying to bring him back isn't.

All around a bad take. But FYI OpenAI's explicit mission has always been to build godlike AI which eclipses humanity in its ability to autonomously perform the majority of economically valuable work.

ChatGPT ain't that. GPT-4 isn't that either, or GPT-5, or 6, or 7, or any of them. LLMs are a fun gimmick, but regurgitated text from comment sections and blogs isn't even one tenth of one percent of what's needed for "Godlike AI". Consider the self driving taxis in San Fransisco that are defeated by a humble traffic cone. Sam Altman's hype machine is hurting AI research, not helping it, by leading people down flights of fancy and easy dollar signs (like his plan of building a "GPT App Store") instead of the real methodological research that's needed to create AGI.

Sure, the board has the prerogative to stick to that interpretation of its mandate if that's their motivation. But it looks like they won't have much of a company left if they do. Maybe they are fine with that, I guess we will see.

Would be interesting to see if those 700+ signatories will really give up their juicy PPUs and start over at Microsoft, if the board calls their bluff.

They'll be compensated in lieu probably given they already have competing offers that promise that

I will be very sad, when they day comes and AGI is controlled by the money making company, especially if it is because of the actions of OpenAI and not some other entity.

It is the end of the humanity as we know it, and the owner has ultimate power over the world, as the gains are exponential once you acquire it.

Ultimate reason why someone was clever enough to make OpenAI governance as it is, and why this drama is happening. And why Microsoft is involved so deeply.

If it was so important, why allow the board to shrink so much? Conjecture from an outsider: I think Altman wanted less governance. I wish money didn’t corrupt as it frequently does.

Edit: I wonder what would have happened had Will Hurd not run for president and stayed on the board.

Just pure speculation since I haven’t followed board closely.

But what if the thinking about the non-profit company goal was shrinking over time (because of money)? The guys who are left, are the few idealists.

They fear taking new members, because finding idealists is hard. If you are not idealist, money and power will corrupt.

Occam Razors would say so.

That's my take as well. They just underestimated the fanboy level of religious following that tech CEOs now possess and the scale of impact that would lead too.

From their point of view, it was just business as usual, or maybe they thought that the more vocal public voice would be that of those that are more concerned with AI and ethics and that also don't want to see AI fall pray to capital driven incentives, and are supportive of OpenAI specifically because of it's Non for profit arrangement.

For example, when Sam became CEO, it led to people leaving and starting Anthropic (now considered OpenAIs biggest competitor), and the reason for that split was because of Sam's increased move away from the core values of OpenAI.

It's very possible they assumed that more people felt that way, and would be happy about their firing of Sam.

Conjecture from the outside: The employees are likely mad their PPUs are not worth what they were last week moreso than the Altman cult. Bringing Altman back may get their money recouped. If the board had waited a month, this likely wouldn’t have blown up so bad after the Thrive Capital purchase.

It’s amusing that this decision just accelerated that outcome

Let's call them Adam, Helen and Tasha, not the board. 3 people who have some questionable connections with competitors and have nothing to loose if OpenAI dies.

By now they don't have full legitimacy.

Wny didn't you mention Ilya? Has he stood down?

He publically apologized for participating in the board decision. Sadly his vote doesn't matter now that Sam and Greg has oficially been removed.

His original vote matter a lot. His name should be mentioned along with the others

> nothing to loose if OpenAI dies

To be fair, this was deliberately done. You don't want the person selling you the bombs to be the one deciding how many you use.

I think that was done as a safety lever, not a hard force. Outside member could raise the alarm if they feel something is wrong, not make the decision and not inform anyone.

> Outside member could raise the alarm if they feel something is wrong, not make the decision and not inform anyone

You’re describing an advisory board or oversight council. Like the one Facebook likes to ignore [1].

This was a board, and a non-profit board at that. They were designed to be the deciders. And they have no duty to inform anyone in their charter.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/06/technology/facebook-overs...

> have nothing to loose if OpenAI dies

Not according to Sam Altman: "Development of superhuman machine intelligence is probably the greatest threat to the continued existence of humanity."

https://blog.samaltman.com/machine-intelligence-part-1

I said nothing to loose, not nothing to gain.

The word is "lose." You're still not making sense, as the point is they have their lives to lose, possibly.

Jesus, get your brain checked. Just to reiterate I said nothing to lose if OpenAI is killed. In your argument they are losing if it is not killed, a polar opposite.

That is hilarious coming from you who can't possibly wrap your head around the meaning. There is a scenario where if OpenAI is killed, it leads to the existential risk that Sam Altman and the board believe can happen.

So "if OpenAI is killed," the board does not have "nothing to lose."

It is deeply ironic how much this forum complains about EA / lesswrong and yet I see hundreds of practically illiterate uninformed takes here a week. Practically all the tech CEO / VP types joke about it. This place likes to think of itself as high brow but it's closer to Reddit than academic circles.

Off topic, but I watched The Creator last night and it was super dumb and really did not even attempt imagine what a war against AI might look like. There was really no explanation for why the AI were walking around dressed as people or why they would want to limit themselves to such a degree.

I think Terminator did it much better.

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