from Hacker News

Sam Altman and Greg Brockman Joint Statement

by aliabd on 11/18/23, 4:42 AM with 74 comments

• by acjohnson55 on 11/18/23, 4:51 AM

  I think we just experienced an all-time moment in corporate politics. It's kind of like Steve Jobs being fired, but if it happened immediately after the Apple II. It feels like OpenAI has already cemented its place in history, whether or not it becomes a titan for the long run.

• by woeirua on 11/18/23, 5:01 AM

  If this was a palace coup based on a disagreement on direction, then OpenAI is done. Microsoft won’t be able to trust the board going forward, and so the money will dry up. Most of the talent will follow Sam/Greg. OpenAI will wither on the vine.

  That said, I feel like more is to come out still. The board made serious accusations.

• by minimaxir on 11/18/23, 4:45 AM

  It appears the reporting was accurate: Ilya staged a coup.

  Notably, Sam/Greg do not guess or insinuate why he did a coup.

• by Imnimo on 11/18/23, 5:14 AM

  What I still don't get about all this is if this is just a case of Ilya deciding to play board room Game of Thrones because he has a different vision for OpenAI than Sam and Greg, why throw Sam under the bus with this line in the announcement:

  "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."

  This really reads like Sam did something wrong and had it coming. But Greg and Sam's statement make it sound like Ilya just wanted to go another direction and got the votes. Why make Sam out to be the bad guy if there was no wrongdoing?

• by impulser_ on 11/18/23, 5:12 AM

  Why is everyone talking about Sam like he's the scientist and engineer behind OpenAI?

  I seen people compare him to Oppenheimer lol.

  Did he actually build anything at OpenAI or did he just manage it?

• by dougmwne on 11/18/23, 5:03 AM

  Ilya just self-immolated the hottest company of the decade with an 80 billion dollar valuation, all to make a point that he thinks AGI is too close and that safety needs to come first before all else. That’s quite the statement!

• by elfbargpt on 11/18/23, 5:12 AM

  Something to consider: the post announcing his firing is now the 7th most upvoted post on hacker news and climbing. Does Sam Altman really deserve that much attention for his role in OpenAI, and is the fact that it's getting this much attention part of the reason he was kicked?

  Zuckerberg started Fb in his dorm and Steve Jobs left his mark on every inch of their flagship products. Altman was positioned to be the next "Jobs / Zuckerberg" but I can't say I know he really deserved it as much as people seem to think. Obviously open to completely changing my mind.

• by gzer0 on 11/18/23, 4:48 AM

  I find this absolutely baffling to have occurred.

  Even more so now than ever, I don't think this corporate structure will survive.

• by solardev on 11/18/23, 4:52 AM

  They found the shift key!!

• by yunichel on 11/18/23, 4:51 AM

  Ilya is an idealist. I respect it

• by lannisterstark on 11/18/23, 4:50 AM

  ... If this was supposed to clear things up, it didn't. I'm even more confused now.

• by convexstrictly on 11/18/23, 4:59 AM

  The whole sequence of events sounds amateurish and extremely unprofessional!

• by 1vuio0pswjnm7 on 11/18/23, 7:08 AM

  These people in the Twitter thread are distracted by use of Google Meet. Have they never compared it to Micrsoft Teams. Or Zoom. All these are painful to use, if for nothing else besides the companies behind them, but there's quite a difference between Meet and the others.

• by ssnistfajen on 11/18/23, 5:23 AM

  Sounds exactly like a coup despite Ilya claiming it wasn't one.

  But other than that, the details are still pretty lacking. The drama is only getting started and whatever comes next from both sides will be even more interesting.

• by aidaman on 11/18/23, 4:56 AM

  1) What

• by cryptoz on 11/18/23, 4:54 AM

  "more to say about what's next" in Sam's tweet earlier, and now,

  "greater things are coming"

  huh, do they already have a plan or is this just generic optimism?

• by wyy1995 on 11/18/23, 4:51 AM

  Maybe after Sam Altman and Greg Brockman leave, people will realize how important they are to OpenAI.

• by numair on 11/18/23, 5:05 AM

  This reminds me of the time at Facebook when one of OpenAI’s current board members was upset that the Director of Facebook Platform was getting more praise and attention than he was, in his role as Co-Founder and CTO (or whatever). That caused a lot of problems, from which the Facebook Platform never recovered.

  People who start out petty usually remain that way. There’s a lot of people in this world whose happiness depends on others doing just a little bit worse-off than them.

  If I was a developer building on OpenAI’s platform today, I would begin putting my contingency plans into place.

• by rvz on 11/18/23, 4:56 AM

  Caesar stabbed right in the back and the coup had been made clear by their closest founders.

  Jealously and greed strikes once again, someone was more greedier than the rest.

  Also why are all the links and sources from Twitter / X? We were told repeatedly it was dead? It seems that this drama suggests that it isn't.