from Hacker News

Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

by nickrubin on 11/18/23, 12:10 AM with 662 comments

  • by johnwheeler on 11/18/23, 12:31 AM

    Edit: I called it

    https://twitter.com/karaswisher/status/1725682088639119857

    nothing to do with dishonesty. That’s just the official reason.

    ———-

    I haven’t heard anyone commenting about this, but the two main figures here-consider: This MUST come down to a disagreement between Altman and Sutskever.

    Also interesting that Sutskever tweeted a month and a half ago

    https://twitter.com/ilyasut/status/1707752576077176907

    The press release about candid talk with the board… It’s probably just cover up for some deep seated philosophical disagreement. They found a reason to fire him that not necessarily reflects why they are firing him. He and Ilya no longer saw eye to eye and it reached its fever pitch with gpt 4 turbo.

    Ultimately, it’s been surmised that Sutskever had all the leverage because of his technical ability. Sam being the consummate businessperson, they probably got in some final disagreement and Sutskever reached his tipping point and decided to use said leverage.

    I’ve been in tech too long and have seen this play out. Don’t piss off an irreplaceable engineer or they’ll fire you. not taking any sides here.

    PS most engineers, like myself, are replaceable. Ilya is probably not.

  • by momofuku on 11/18/23, 4:47 AM

  • by jumploops on 11/18/23, 1:09 AM

    Sam and Ilya have recently made public statements about AGI that appear to highlight a fundamental disagreement between them.

    Sam claims LLMs aren't sufficient for AGI (rightfully so).

    Ilya claims the transformer architecture, with some modification for efficiency, is actually sufficient for AGI.

    Obviously transformers are the core component of LLMs today, and the devil is in the details (a future model may resemble the transformers of today, while also being dynamic in terms of training data/experience), but the jury is still out.

    In either case, publicly disagreeing on the future direction of OpenAI may be indicative of deeper problems internally.

  • by robswc on 11/18/23, 1:03 AM

    Can a super smart business-y person educate this engineer on how this even happens.

    So, if there's 6 board members and they're looking to "take down" 2... that means those 2 can't really participate, right? Or at the very least, they have to "recuse" themselves on votes regarding them?

    Do the 4 members have to organize and communicate "in secret"? Is there any reason 3 members can't hold a vote to oust 1, making it a 3/5 to reach majority, and then from there, just start voting _everyone_ out? Probably stupid questions but I'm curious enough to ask, lol.

  • by DavidSJ on 11/18/23, 12:15 AM

    This suggests that Greg Brockman wasn't in the board meeting that made the decision, and only "learned the news" that he was off the board the same way the rest of us did.

  • by stolsvik on 11/18/23, 1:12 AM

    Whether Greg knew of the decision beforehand? I don’t think so. This totally business-as-usual post from Greg Brockman happened 1 hour before the one from OpenAI: https://x.com/gdb/status/1725595967045398920 https://x.com/openai/status/1725611900262588813 How crazy is that?!

  • by convexstrictly on 11/18/23, 3:23 AM

    "Greg Brockman, co-founder and president of OpenAI, works 60 to 100 hours per week, and spends around 80% of the time coding. Former colleagues have described him as the hardest-working person at OpenAI."

    https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/6309033/greg-brockman...

  • by runjake on 11/18/23, 12:40 AM

    What’s the likelihood this is over a Microsoft acquisition? Purely speculative here, but Sam might have been a roadblock.

    Edit: Maybe this is a reasonable explanation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38312868 . The only other thing not considered is that Microsoft really enjoys having its brand on things.

  • by ldargin on 11/18/23, 12:30 AM

    This suggests that a real schism is occurring at OpenAI. I anticipate hearing of two different philosophies at play.

  • by Mentlo on 11/18/23, 5:17 AM

    As a sanity check - when Hinton left google we celebrated it as the faceless business corpo shouldn’t be leading the velocity of the dev, it should be AI pioneers who understand the risks.

    If indeed a similar disagreement happened in OpenAI but this time Hinton (Ilya) came on top- it’s a reason to celebrate.

  • by satvikpendem on 11/18/23, 7:07 AM

    In my opinion, these people were not fit to run an enterprise originally labeled as "Open"AI, especially when Musk donated 100 million dollars to making sure it remained open while others in the company deemed it better to be closed. At this point, I must wonder if I support XAI instead over these companies.

  • by singluere on 11/18/23, 6:02 AM

  • by maxdoop on 11/18/23, 12:20 AM

    And satya seems to have been caught off guard as well. What is happening?

  • by Geee on 11/18/23, 12:51 AM

    I think I see it now. Speculation following:

    They achieved AGI internally, but didn't want OpenAI to have it. All the important people will move to another company, following Sam, and OpenAI is left with nothing more than a rotting GPT.

    They planned all this from the start, which is why Sam didn't care about equity or long-term finances. They spent all the money in this one-shot gamble to achieve AGI, which can be reimplemented at another company. Legally it's not IP theft, because it's just code which can be memorized and rewritten.

    Sam got himself fired intentionally, which gives him and his followers a plausible cover story for moving to another company and continuing the work there. I'm expecting that all researchers from OpenAI will follow Sam.

  • by lazzlazzlazz on 11/18/23, 4:28 AM

    The AI safety people may be one of the most destructive forces in tech history.

  • by bangalore on 11/18/23, 12:22 AM

    How do I profit from this news. Should I buy or sell MSFT?

  • by mrangle on 11/18/23, 2:59 PM

    If the primary issue is was safety vs performance, then in the near-future-end performance is going to win. As is the nature of AI that has been written about for decades.

    But right now, the board undoubtedly feels the most pressure in the realm of safety. This is where the political and big-money financial (Microsoft) support will be.

    If all true, Altman's departure was likely inevitable as well as fortunate for his future.

  • by speedylight on 11/18/23, 1:42 AM

    I wonder if OpenAI employees will start resigning en masse because of this as a form of protest. The board better have a very good reason to back up their decision, if they decide to elaborate at all anyway.

  • by babl-yc on 11/18/23, 12:16 AM

    So given that there are 6 board members, Ilya had to have voted to oust Sam?

  • by crop_rotation on 11/18/23, 12:20 AM

    This all seems so weird, and the list of Board members doesn't make this any easier to understand. Apart from the 3 insiders, there are 3 other board members. 2 of them seem complete no names and might not qualify for any important corporate board. In a for profit shareholders in theory control the board, in a non profit I am not even sure of who really has control over things.

  • by _ink_ on 11/18/23, 1:40 AM

    Twist: The AGI is not only already there, it is running rampant already.

  • by georgehill on 11/18/23, 12:18 AM

    Building something on top of GPT, I am now worried.

  • by modernpink on 11/18/23, 12:20 AM

    Mr President, the second tower has been hit

  • by suggala on 11/19/23, 4:17 PM

    The current deal with MSFT is cut by Sam is in such a way that Microsoft has huge leverage. Exclusive access, exclusive profit. And after all the profit limit is reached OpenAI sill need to be sold to msft to survive. This is like a worst deal for OpenAI whose goal is to do stuff open source way and it can’t do so due to this deal. If it is not for the MSFt deal, OpenAI could have open sourced and might have resorted to crowdsourcing which might have helped humanity. Also, quickly reaching profit goals is only for good for MSFT. There is no need to actually send money to OpenAI team, just provide operating expenses with 25% profit and take 75% profit. OpenAI has built a great software due to years of work and is being simply being milked by MSFt when the time comes for taking profit.

    And SAM allowed all this under his nose. Making sure OpenAI is ripe for MSFT takeover. This is a back channel deal for takeover. What about the early donors who donated with humanity goal whose funding made it all possible?

    I am not sure Sam has any contribution to the OpenAI Software but he gives the world an impression that he owns that and built the entire thing by himself and not giving any attribution to fellow founders.

  • by andrewstuart on 11/18/23, 12:40 AM

    Either the board will resign and Altman will return.

    Or Altman will start a competitor.

  • by kats on 11/18/23, 12:42 AM

    Meta should do a ChatGPT clone just like they did a Twitter clone.

  • by rrsp on 11/18/23, 12:48 AM

    Has the same lack of capitalisation as Sam Altman's message, wonder why

  • by heurist on 11/18/23, 12:16 AM

    Yeah, this is not a good sign for OpenAI. Or at least not for those who appreciate what OpenAI was working to become.

  • by fredgrott on 11/18/23, 1:35 PM

    Remember folks, the trigger point that makes MS's investment worthless is reaching AGI point as that then triggers the charter rules to take the IP back out of commercial products....that is the crux of the firing...one board faction felt they had reached AGI and the people that were forced our or left felt they had not yet reached AGI.

    From my brief dealings with SA at Loopt in 2005, SA just does not have a dishonest bone in his body.(I got a brief look at the Loopt pitch deck due to interviewing for a mobile dev position at Loopt just after Sprint invested).

    If you want an angel invest play, find out the new VCfund firm Sam is setting up for hard research.

  • by lexandstuff on 11/18/23, 12:29 AM

    What an unbelievable turn of events! To the outside observer, OpenAI is one of the most successful, well-oiled machines, shipping nearly weekly and doing an unbelievably good job marketing itself. Clearly, there's a lot of turmoil going on behind the scenes.

  • by ispyi on 11/18/23, 4:51 PM

    One should consider the fact that in this case the ex CEO is independently wealthy so clearly wasn’t doing it for the money. In addition he started it with partners as originally as a non profit. Finally he didn’t own any equity in the company despite being one of its core team and founding members, in addition to its very public face. How many of us in the same position as him could be controlled given that the only thing one has to lose is their ability to have influence over the other board members and he seems to have lost that anyway.

  • by Zaheer on 11/18/23, 12:24 AM

    Given Greg seems to not have known about the board meeting there's a good chance Mira didn't either. Is she next?

  • by acyou on 11/18/23, 2:52 AM

    Despite what the charter says, why is OpenAI called OpenAI and not OpenAGI? Is that at the core of this issue?

  • by Kye on 11/18/23, 4:07 AM

    Is this like Star Trek where the mission automatically ends if you lose enough of the bridge crew?

  • by jumploops on 11/18/23, 12:16 AM

    Greg is the one who announced GPT-4. Sam enabled Greg and vice-versa.

    The next AI winter may have just begun...

  • by thekoma on 11/18/23, 10:32 AM

    Irrelevant but it struck me how both him and Sam Altman write in all lowercase.

  • by duxup on 11/18/23, 1:01 AM

    Quitting like that makes it seem like Greg already knew what was brewing, whatever the conflict was and it came to a head and he made his call. So not a total surprise to him, at least as far as the backstory goes.

  • by SXX on 11/18/23, 1:58 AM

    Just hope this will bring more "Open" into "AI.com"

  • by mcenedella on 11/18/23, 12:48 AM

    This Board has to go.

  • by RivieraKid on 11/18/23, 12:25 AM

    Finally some non-Elon-related drama in tech happening.

  • by blibble on 11/18/23, 12:15 AM

    this keeps getting better and better

  • by m101 on 11/18/23, 12:54 AM

  • by bubmiw on 11/18/23, 1:01 AM

    I don't like the direction this is heading in at all...

  • by smlacy on 11/18/23, 1:36 AM

  • by robswc on 11/18/23, 12:13 AM

    Jesus. I saw he was "demoted" but he's totally out now, right?

  • by tmsh on 11/18/23, 12:22 AM

    His last sentence is the main hint. Disagreement over dangers of AGI discoveries and how to handle I’d guess.

  • by wly_cdgr on 11/18/23, 2:50 AM

    Honestly it could be something as simple and sordid as a credible sexual assault allegation that he lied to the board about, or just some plain old fashioned embezzlement.

  • by grpt on 11/18/23, 12:19 AM

    Hope they fire the person that forced verified phone numbers on new accounts.

  • by otikik on 11/18/23, 12:50 AM

    > After learning today’s news,

    Which news is that?

  • by thornewolf on 11/18/23, 12:16 AM

    many things are happening

  • by detolly on 11/18/23, 12:15 AM

    what a day

  • by friendlynokill on 11/18/23, 12:22 AM

    Holy shit

  • by minimaxir on 11/18/23, 12:30 AM

    There's no job quitting note like an all lower-case job quitting note.

  • by next_xibalba on 11/18/23, 1:44 AM

    Here is Helen Toner's resumé: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helen-toner-4162439a/details/edu...

    I am genuinely flabbergasted as to how she ended up on the board. How does this happen?

    I can't even find anything about fellow board member Tasha McCauley...

  • by og_kalu on 11/18/23, 12:20 AM

    Oh man. https://twitter.com/apples_jimmy/status/1725615804631392637?...

    Really wonder what this is all about.

    Edit: My bad for not expanding. Noone knows the identity of this "Jimmy Apples" but this is the latest in a series of correct leaks he's made for Open AI for months now. Suffice to say he's in the know somehow.

  • by layer8 on 11/18/23, 12:33 AM

    What is this thing of people not using their shift key anymore? Sam Altman does the same. I don’t trust these people. ;)

  • by mexicanandre on 11/18/23, 1:04 AM

    Ok what’s with the weird punctuation and lack of capital letters in their tweets?

    Both seem like they are horribly rushed and no auto complete?

  • by intellectronica on 11/18/23, 1:36 AM

    Neither @sama nor @gdb are known to communicate in all lowercase. That fact that both did today must mean something.

  • by zzzeek on 11/18/23, 12:31 AM

    Wow look at that garbage Twitter thread following it, with shitty ads and .eth jackasses. Twitter has really turned into 4-chan lite

  • by Waterluvian on 11/18/23, 12:19 AM

    Is there some weird chic thing where you intentionally don’t use capital letters? What is up with that behaviour?

    Is it some cute attempt at saying “an AI didn’t write this”?

  • by gumballindie on 11/18/23, 12:18 AM

    The screw is tightening. Britains largest newspaper has just called out ai companies on their intellectual property and content theft.

    The game is over boys. The only question is how to make these types of companies pay for the crimes committed.

  • by yieldcrv on 11/18/23, 12:17 AM

    nice, hope there are openings in high level positions and they switch to remote

    I’m never going back to Noe Valley for less than $500,000/yr and a netjets membership

  • by markus_zhang on 11/18/23, 12:55 AM

    I found the lack of information of the CTO and certain board members disturbing.

    Like, who is Mira Murati? We only now that she came from Albania (one of the poorest countries) and somehow got into some pretty good private schools, and then to pretty good companies. Who are her parents? What kind of connections does she pull?

  • by woeirua on 11/18/23, 12:54 AM

    This is turning into a situation that OpenAI may not be able to recover from. Typically if the CEO and Chair of the board depart under these circumstances there was something illegal happening.

  • by HissingMachine on 11/18/23, 12:29 AM

    So is this the way the government takes control of the AI, next OpenAI will have new but familiar owners from Raytheon and the other Pentagon crowd?