Warning from OpenAI leaders helped trigger Sam Altman's ouster

I really dislike the current attitudes around ethics and AI. Tools should be 100% open about what they can and can't do. Building unethical software like deepfakes for porn is also unethical.

Quoting of vague "ethics" risks around AI, or neutering LLMs in the vein of making them "safer" seems dubious to me. Obviously, there are a huge number of problems which depend on safe AI - where safe often means something completely different from what is currently being talked about. e.g. does the AI reliably do what I expect it to do in the face of adversarial inputs? does it handle risky settings like deciding to refund customers? How can I ensure that the AI is making legal decisions and not secretly using redlining, or other illegal criteria to make its decision?

Letter signing looks like a masterful use of the bandwagon effect. Quickly reframing the issue, going to attack, and creating a sense of outrage and hurry. People start quickly pressuring each other because there is a need to be unity for the scheme to work and no time to think.

> Within hours, messages dismissed the board as illegitimate and decried Altman’s firing as a coup by OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, according to the people.

>people identified as current OpenAI employees also described facing intense peer pressure to sign the mass-resignation letter.

>“Half the company had signed between the hours of 2 and 3am,”

> Or more like they’re reading tea leaves and don’t want to be the odd man out because this is a convenient enemies list if your name isn’t on it, especially since Sam apparently has a history of manipulative and retributive behavior + a huge pay day for either you, your bosses, or people who have significant standing to impact your performance reviews / career trajectory.

To me, the tea leaves at the time said “a once in a lifetime acquihire that will rescue everyone is about to happen OR Sam will come back and the damage will be undone”. There’s life-changing amounts of money on the table and signing a letter with the majority of employees is a no-brainer for the upside scenario.

And to-be-fair, a lot of people were up at 2am waiting for news on this drama. A lot of people with no skin in the game with nothing to lose were watching it intently. Why wouldn’t the employees of the actual company do the same?

>Joanne Jang, who works in products at OpenAI, tweeted that no influence had been at play. “The google doc broke so people texted each other at 2-2:30 am begging people with write access to type their name.”

Also, this line seems self-contradictory. There was no influence, but people were "begging" others to sign?

Nah, it was like a good episode of Succession!

It wouldn't be surprising if they did sign the letter, and it wouldn't take peer pressure to make it happen. People can have concerns about a manager's style or a leadership culture and still not want to have years of lucrative equity comp erased overnight by the board's reaction to those concerns.

I don't really have a dog in this fight but in case of a cult of personality, "toxic" and "loyal followers" are not contradictory.

Everyone is reading so much into this, when it sounds like a personal conflict between Helen and Sam that blew up and turned into a board coup by Helen, packed with vague justifications no one bought because they weren't given any reason to believe them.

Why would the employees buy the coup leaders pitch when they barely explained why it happened in the first place?

The story of the next day's morning meeting was everyone was unsasitfied for the reasons they were given, they were as confused as everyone else, and then the next story is the employees all signing a letter and Ilya doing a 180.

Why would the employees immediately trust the new leadership by a board member not involved in day to day operations? I doubt it's all just about making more $$ under Sam. It's about trust and stability.

Everyone was talking about how it was about AI saftey vs reckless capitalism but tangibly we still have little evidence of that. What we do have is Sam critiquing Helen's paper, then suddenly half the board is moving against Sam and an interim CEO whose slow-AI-dev views on AI, which are 100% in line with Helen's paper, is replacing him. While the conviction of the other board members like Ilya seemed pretty thin.

I'm pretty much sure that Tesla employees will revolt if its board tries to oust Elon. That doesn't necessarily mean that Elon is not a toxic leader.

Tiku edited for Valleywag 2013-14 then left. I wouldn't blindly discredit her reporting barring specific complaints.

Altman’s departure represented a real possibility they may miss out of enormous amounts of wealth. People are willing to put up with or even support a lot of things when money is on the line.

> Altman’s departure jeopardized an investment deal that would allow them to sell their stock back to OpenAI, cashing out equity without waiting for the company to go public.

"Smooth talking psychopaths" can make you rich if you get in early enough and not left holding the bag.

Being a smooth talking steve jobs is valuable in an of itself. If you can sell your company to the public with an aura, that's worth more than CTO/CIO/CMO etc combined.

Better to be a thomas edison than a tesla.

Why not add Putin, Trump, Mussolini, or any other number of leaders and historical figures?

This is something a sizable portion of populations do. You may not do it yourself, but understand are people are going to behave like this and prepare accordingly.

In what sense does Altman belong in the same sentence as Musk? I’m completely puzzled.

One of these things is not like the other. Altman led OpenAI to an industry leading position and produced record results in product adoption. Even if that is over-praising him, Microsoft's fast and enormous investment in OpenAI was evidently closely linked to Altman. Just springing a surprise on Microsoft was dunderheaded enough to make it obvious that, whatever the board was doing, it was the opposite of what should have been done.

In contrast, it is equally obvious Elon dragged $44B into the road and set it on fire.

Agreed, I have the opposite visceral reaction; immediate and intense skepticism.

Musk is farthest from a smooth talking founder/ceo

The power of reason alone is generally insufficient to spur people into action. It's the impassioned, often irrational fervor that galvanizes movements and leads to significant change. Consider the impact of Erasmus, a paragon of rational thought, against that of Luther, a figure of intense passion and conviction. Initially, Erasmus garnered attention and respect, yet his logical approach failed to incite actionable change among the people. In stark contrast, Luther, with his fervent and somewhat radical beliefs, succeeded in mobilizing the masses.

I’m not surprised by the lack of quality in WaPo and Business Insider articles. Today, these names are nothing more than rebranded Gawker. I _am_ surprised by the hn crowd eating up this kind of recycled, second-hand pov palace intrigue these publications profit from. Guess the death throes of legacy media are still some time away.

There were six board members. Sam and Helen were two of them. The conversations were with the other four board members. So it would be something like this:

Sam to A: We should get rid of Helen. B, C, and D agree with me.

Rinse and repeat. Typical Mean Girls stuff.