from Hacker News

OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

by meitros on 11/20/23, 11:31 PM with 909 comments

  • by maxbond on 11/20/23, 11:50 PM

  • by LarsDu88 on 11/21/23, 6:01 AM

    There has to be a bigger story to this.

    Altman took a non-profit and vacuumed up a bunch of donor money only to flip Open AI into the hottest TC style startup in the world. Then put a gas pedal to commercialization. It takes a certain type of politicking and deception to make something like that happen.

    Then in the past week, he's going and taking money from the Saudis on the order of billions of dollars to make AI accelerators, even though the single greatest threat from strong AI (according to Hinton) is rich and powerful people using the technology to enhance their power over society.

    Combine that with a totally inexperienced board, and D'Angelo's maneuvering, and you have the single greatest shitshow in tech history

  • by kmlevitt on 11/21/23, 1:52 AM

    Neither of these reasons have anything to do with a lofty ideology regarding the safety of AGI or OpenAI’s nonprofit status. Rather it seems they are micromanaging personnel decisions.

    Also notice that Ilya Sutskever is presenting the reasons for the firing as just something he was told. This is important, because people were siding with the board under the understanding this firing was led by the head research scientist who is concerned about AGI. But now it looks like the board is represented by D’Angelo, a guy who has his own AI Chatbot company and a bigger conflict of interest with than ever since dev day, when open AI launched highly similar features.

  • by DebtDeflation on 11/21/23, 2:32 AM

    1) Where is Emmett? He's the CEO now. It's his job to be the public face of the company. The company is in an existential crisis and there have been no public statements after his 1AM tweet.

    2) Where is the board? At a bare minimum, issue a public statement that you have full faith in the new CEO and the leadership team, are taking decisive action to stabilize the situation, and have a plan to move the company forward once stabilized.

  • by kumarvvr on 11/21/23, 1:42 AM

    Giving 2 people the same project? Isnt this like the thing to do to get differing approaches and then release the amalgamation of the two? I thought these sorts of things are common.

    Giving different opinions on same person is a reason to fire a CEO?

    This board has no reason to fire, or does not want to give the actual reason to fire Sam. They messed up.

  • by samspenc on 11/21/23, 12:11 AM

    > One explanation was that Altman was said to have given two people at OpenAI the same project.

    Have these people never worked at any other company before? Probably every company with more than 10 employees does something like this.

  • by rossdavidh on 11/21/23, 3:39 AM

    So, none of this sounds like it could be the real reason Altman was fired. This leaves people saying it was a "coup", which still doesn't really answer the question. Why did Altman get fired, really?

    Obviously, it's for a reason they can't say. Which means, there is something bad going on at the company, like perhaps they are short of cash or something, that was dire enough to convince them to fire the CEO, but which they cannot talk about.

    Imagine if the board of a bank fired their CEO because he had allowed the capital to get way too low. They wouldn't be able to say that was why he was fired, because it would wreck any chance of recovery. But, they have to say something.

    So, Altman didn't tell the board...something, that they cannot tell us, either. Draw your own conclusions.

  • by leoc on 11/21/23, 2:53 AM

    Not specifically related to this latest twist, sorry, but DeepMind’s Geoffrey Irving trusts the board over Altman: https://x.com/geoffreyirving/status/1726754270224023971

  • by bloopernova on 11/21/23, 12:18 AM

    "Sustkever is said to have offered two explanations he purportedly received from the board"

    I'd like some corroboration for that statement because Sustkever has said very inconsistent things during this whole merry debacle.

  • by mmaunder on 11/21/23, 2:59 AM

  • by two_in_one on 11/21/23, 3:49 AM

    Both 'reasons' are a bullsh*t. But interesting is Sustkever was the key person, it wouldn't happen without him. And now he says board told him why he was doing it? He didn't reiterate he regrets about it. So looks like he was one of the driving forces, if not the main. Of course he doesn't want the reputation of 'the man who killed OpenAI'. But he definitely took part and could prevent it.

  • by prepend on 11/21/23, 12:17 AM

    So Surdkever fires Altman, then signs a letter saying they’ll quit unless he’s reinstated.

    There’s only 4 board members, right?

    Who wanted him fired. Is this a situation where they all thought the others wanted him fired and were just stupid?

    Have they been feeding motions into chatgpt and asking “should add I do this?”

  • by koolba on 11/21/23, 1:05 PM

    That headline is bad, not sure if it's deliberate.

    The way it's phrased, it sounds like they were given two different explanations. Such as when the first explanation is not good enough, a second weaker one is then provided.

    But the article itself says:

    > OpenAI's current independent board has offered two examples of the alleged lack of candor that led them to fire co-founder and CEO Sam Altman, sending the company into chaos.

    Changing the two "examples" to "explanations" grossly changes the meaning of that sentence. Two examples is the first steps of "multiple examples". And that sounds much different than "multiple explanations".

  • by Eliezer on 11/21/23, 5:18 AM

    This reads like the Board 4 are not allowed to say, or are under NDA, or do not dare say, or their lawyers told them not to say, the actual reason. Because this is obviously not the actual reason.

  • by gmiller123456 on 11/21/23, 4:41 AM

    Without all the fluff:

        One explanation was that Altman was said to have given two people at OpenAI the same project.

    The other was that Altman allegedly gave two board members different opinions about a member of personnel

  • by dang on 11/21/23, 1:38 AM

    As this article seems to have the latest information, let's treat it as the next instalment. There's also Inside The Chaos at OpenAI - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38341399, which I've re-upped because it has backstory that doesn't seem to have been reported elsewhere.

    Edit: if you want to read about our approach to handling tsunami topics like this, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38357788.

    -- Here are the other recent megathreads: --

    Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38352891 (817 comments)

    OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38347868 (1184 comments)

    Emmett Shear becomes interim OpenAI CEO as Altman talks break down - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38342643 (904 comments)

    OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38337568 (558 comments)

    -- Other recent/related threads: --

    OpenAI approached Anthropic about merger - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38357629

    95% of OpenAI Employees (738/770) Threaten to Follow Sam Altman Out the Door - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38357233

    Satya Nadella says OpenAI governance needs to change - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38356791

    OpenAI: Facts from a Weekend - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38352028

    Who Controls OpenAI? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38350746

    OpenAI's chaos does not add up - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38349653

    Microsoft Swallows OpenAI's Core Team – GPU Capacity, Incentives, IP - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38348968

    OpenAI's misalignment and Microsoft's gain - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38346869

    Emmet Shear statement as Interim CEO of OpenAI - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38345162

  • by didip on 11/21/23, 2:38 AM

    If I were OpenAI employee, I would have been uber pissed.

    Imagine your once-in-blue-moon, whatsapp-like, payout at $10m per employee evaporated over the weekend before Thanksgiving.

    I would have joined MSFT out of spite.

  • by WiSaGaN on 11/21/23, 1:52 AM

    Given the nonsensical reason provided here, I am led to believe that this entire farce is aimed at transforming OpenAI from a non-profit to a for-profit company one way or another, e.g., significantly raising the profit cap, or even changing it completely to a for-profit model. There may not be a single entity scheming or orchestrating it, but the collective forces that could influence this outcome would be very pleased to see it unfold in this way.

  • by upupupandaway on 11/21/23, 3:09 AM

    At Amazon a senior manager would probably be fired for not giving a project to multiple teams.

  • by HighFreqAsuka on 11/21/23, 12:09 AM

    These simply can't be the real reasons.

  • by moneycantbuy on 11/21/23, 1:42 AM

    a link to the letter from employees

    https://www.axios.com/2023/11/20/openai-staff-letter-board-r...

    curious to have clarity where ilya stands. did he really sign the letter asking the board (including himself?) to resign and that he wants to join msft?

    to think these are the folks with agi at their fingertips

  • by didip on 11/21/23, 2:06 AM

    What will happen to employee’s stock options if they all mass quit and moved to Microsoft?

    The options will be worth $0, right?

  • by kotxig on 11/21/23, 10:05 AM

    If the outcome of all of this is that Altman ends up at Microsoft and hiring the vast majority of the team from OpenAI, it's probably wise to assume that this was the intended outcome all along. I don't know how else you get the talent at a company like OpenAI to willingly move to Microsoft, but this approach could end up working.

  • by bastardoperator on 11/21/23, 3:53 AM

    These are the dumbest reasons possible, certainly not worth destroying a company on the move or people's livelihoods over.

  • by ehsanziya on 11/21/23, 11:31 AM

    Based on what've seen so far, one of the following possibilities is the most likely: 1. Altman was actually negotiating an acquisition by Mircosoft without being transparent with the board about it. Given how quickly they were hired by Microsoft after the events, this is likely. 2. Altman was trying to raise capital from a source that the board wouldn't be too keen on. Without the board's knowledge. Could be a sovereign fund or some other government backed organisation.

    I've not seen these possibilities discussed as most people focus on the safety coup theory. What do you think?

  • by afjeafaj848 on 11/21/23, 12:28 AM

    If Altman ends up going back to OpenAI, then shouldn't Sutskever be fired/kicked off the board too?

  • by layer8 on 11/21/23, 12:05 AM

    Given these non-reasons, everyone threatening to quit makes a lot of sense.

  • by tempaway511751 on 11/21/23, 9:36 AM

    "Two explanations" isn't accurate, its more like Ilya gave two examples of Sam not being candid with the board. "Two explanations" makes it sound like two competing explanations. What Ilya gave was two examples of the same problem.

    I can't help thinking that Sam Altmans universal popularitity with OpenAI staff might be because they all get $10million each if he comes back and resets everything back to how it was last week.

  • by sergiomattei on 11/21/23, 1:44 AM

    We've gone beyond insanity at this point. Just clown show.

    This has been tech's most entertaining weekend in the past decade.

    Sadly, at the expense of the OpenAI employees and dream, who had something great going for them at the company. Rooting for them.

  • by rmm on 11/21/23, 2:08 AM

    You have to wonder at this point how much of this is the current board members trying to somehow save face.

    I can’t imagine their careers after this will be easy…

  • by astroid on 11/21/23, 4:19 PM

    It's incredibly strange to me that this all happened right after Sam's sister publicly accused him of sexual abuse. It's insane that no one is even acknowledging this could have something to do with it..

    For what it's worth: Watching her videos, I'm not sure I necessarily believe her claims - but that position goes against every tenet of the current cultural landscape, so the fact it is being completely ignored is ringing alarm bells for me.

    If the CEO of any other massively hyped bleeding edge tech companies sister claimed publicly and loudly that they were abused as a very young child, we would hear about it - and the board would be doing damage control trying to eliminate the rot. Why is this case different?

    Now we have a situation where all of the current employees have signed this weird loyalty pledge to Sam, which I think will wind up making him untouchable in a sense - they have effectively tied the fate of everyone's job to retaining a potential child rapist as head of the company.

  • by khazhoux on 11/21/23, 2:05 AM

    An "Independent" board is supposed to be a good thing, right?

    Doesn't this clown show show that if a board has no skin in the game --apart from reputation-- they have no incentive to keep the company alive?

  • by choppaface on 11/21/23, 2:16 AM

    Adam DAngelo, once one of the more level-headed Facebook alumni, and bar far the most experienced OpenAI Board member, is now nowhere to be found? Is he hiding out with Sam Trabucco somewhere?

  • by ytoawwhra92 on 11/21/23, 2:02 AM

    Baseless prediction:

    MSFT buys ownership of OpenAI's for/capped-profit entities, implements a more typical corporate governance structure, re-instates Altman and Brockman.

    OpenAI non-profit continues to exist with a few staff and no IP but billions in cash.

    This whole situation is being used to drive the price down to reduce the amount the OpenAI non-profit is left with.

    SV don't try the "capped-profit owned by a non-profit" model again for quite some time.

    Maybe Altman takes some equity in the new entity.

  • by cowthulhu on 11/21/23, 12:24 AM

    It’s amazing how every action the board takes (or the new CEO chosen by the board) just makes them look worse.

    I’d like to offer my consulting services: my new consulting company will come in, and then whatever you want to do we will tell you not to. We provide immense value by stopping companies like OpenAI from shooting off their foot. And then their other foot. And then one of their hands.

  • by woeirua on 11/21/23, 12:11 AM

    Beyond parody. To fire the CEO of _any_ company over this is insane.

    It really looks like the board went rogue and decided to shut the company down. Are we sure this isn’t some kind of decapitation strike by GPT5? That seems more credible by the minute now.

  • by vaxman on 11/21/23, 2:25 AM

    Like trying to herd cats.

    Spiritual death by Microsoft or work for the reincarnation of Howard Hughes at https://x.ai/ ?

    ..no wonder they are trying to keep on with their current routines! Even if somehow they stay at OpenAI, Microsoft will impose certain changes upon OpenAI to ensure this can never happen again.

    Meanwhile, any comparable offering right now will be selected by the customer base due to “risk at 11” in basing systems on OpenAI’s current APIs (and uncertainty of when an MS equivalent might emerge).

  • by windex on 11/21/23, 3:15 AM

    What happens to all the ChatGPT subscribers now? Sign ups are off the table for the foreseeable future I assume.

  • by 3cats-in-a-coat on 11/21/23, 6:37 AM

    This board's behavior is so weird, it's as if they can't explain their actions, because no one would believe them Kyle Reese came from the future to warn them about Skynet.

    Kidding aside, maybe they have a "secret" reason to fire Sam Altman, but we've seen how "this is a secret / matter of national security / etc." goes with law enforcement. It's brutally abused to attack inconvenient people and enrich yourself on their behalf. So that should never be an excuse for punishing someone. Never.

  • by abkolan on 11/21/23, 10:45 AM

    I find it strange that Satya says he has not been given an explanation yet.

    Tweet from Bloomberg Tech Journalist, Emily Chang

    >The more I watch this interview – the wilder this story seems. Satya insists he hasn’t been given any reason why Sam was fired. THE CEO OF MICROSOFT STILL DOES NOT KNOW WHY: “I’ve not been told about anything…” he tells me.

    source: https://x.com/emilychangtv/status/1726835093325721684

  • by DebtDeflation on 11/21/23, 1:56 AM

    >Sustkever is said to have offered two explanations he purportedly received from the board

    He received from the board? Here we go again with the narrative that Ilya was a bystander, at most an unwilling participant. He was a member of the board, on equal footing with the other board members, and his vote to oust Sam was necessary for there to be a majority.

  • by dschuetz on 11/21/23, 7:22 AM

    I do not understand what the heck is going on there anymore. Everyone is acting irrationally, like kids playing monopoly, but with real money and with real jobs at stake. WTF

  • by tomashubelbauer on 11/21/23, 9:09 AM

    > only a handful of the company's employees attended, according to a person familiar with the company and the events of Sunday. The rest of the staff effectively staged a walk-out.

    This paragraph is quite funny to me. It was a Sunday, maybe they were neither in attendance, nor staging a walk-out, maybe they were on their weekend? Realistically with the shake-up this gigantic, likely no OpenAI employees were _just_ enjoying their weekend, but it still gave me a chuckle.

  • by jurgenaut23 on 11/21/23, 9:14 AM

    I think that the non-profit status of OpenAI was ultimately its demise as well: as the stakes get higher, people just cannot help themselves but to get (too) interested in more than just the original mission.

    Being a non-profit doesn't mean that you cannot commercialise what you build, even at a hefty price. You just need to then re-invest everything into R&D and/or anything that advance your purpose (for which you're in principle exempted of taxes). _OF COURSE_, you are not supposed to divert a single dollar to someone that might look like a shareholder. OpenAI is (was?) a non-profit that payed some of their engineers north of a million dollars. I would argue that, at this point, you have vested interests in the success of the company beyond its original purpose. Not mentioning the fact that Microsoft poured billions into the company for purely interested reasons as well.

    I can only imagine the massive tensions that arose in board's discussions around these topics. Especially if you project yourself a few years into the future, with the IRS knocking at the door to ask questions about these topics.

  • by bambax on 11/21/23, 6:41 AM

    > Sustkever is said to have offered two explanations he purportedly received from the board, according to one of the people familiar. One explanation was that Altman was said to have given two people at OpenAI the same project. The other was that Altman allegedly gave two board members different opinions about a member of personnel. An OpenAI spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment. These explanations didn't make sense to employees and were not received well, one of the people familiar said.

    Yeah well, you don't say. It's beyond weird that the board can't come up with a reason why Sam Altman was fired so abruptly.

    One explanation would be a showdown. At some point in the week Sam and the board had an argument, and Sam said something to the effect of "fuck you, I'm the CEO and there's nothing you can do about it", to which the board replied "well, we'll just see about that".

    The argument doesn't need to be major or touch fundamental values or policies; it can be a simple test of who's in charge.

    But now the board made a fool of themselves. It seems they lost that round.

  • by xpuente on 11/21/23, 9:39 AM

    Most likely related to this:

    https://www.searchenginejournal.com/openai-pauses-new-chatgp...

    The back-end cost does not scale. Hence, they have a big problem. AGI nonsense reasons are ridiculous. Transformers are a road to nowhere and they knew it.

  • by dehrmann on 11/21/23, 2:56 AM

    > Sutskever, who also publicly expressed his "regret" for taking part in the board's move against Altman

    He means he regrets it failed.

  • by impulser_ on 11/21/23, 12:15 AM

    There is no way this is true. If it is the board might be the dumbest people alive.

    You fire the CEO and completely destroy a 90b company because of these two reasons?

    No wonder everyone wants out. I would think I was going crazy if I sat in a meeting and heard these two reason.

  • by Manheim on 11/21/23, 3:38 PM

    https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/21/tech/microsoft-chatgpt-sa...

    "But several people told CNN contributor Kara Swisher that a key factor in the decision was a disagreement about how quickly to bring AI to the market. Altman, sources say, wanted to move quickly, while the OpenAI board wanted to move more cautiously."

  • by wilg on 11/21/23, 2:09 AM

    Not being an OpenAI employee I have been given 1,000 such explanations

  • by Satam on 11/21/23, 6:20 AM

    If you do a board coup, surely, you then use the best fake reasons you can muster to justify your decision. Why would they hold back giving answers they know wouldn't satisfy anyone and just inspire further anger?

    First thought: buying time? Maybe something has to happen first, and they don't want to commit to any irrevocable slander they can't go back on before that? Or maybe, something was supposed to happen but fell through?

  • by badrabbit on 11/21/23, 2:33 PM

    Can someone explain to me why this drama is such a big deal? Why do openai employees care who the CEO is? Do they think they were working for him instead of the board or that it was his vision and leadership that let them succeed so far? And why does the public care including major news sites covering it more than the gaza war.

  • by KingOfCoders on 11/21/23, 6:29 AM

    "Sustkever is said to have offered two explanations he purportedly received from the board"

    Isn't Sustkever on the board?

  • by ospray on 11/21/23, 1:59 AM

    If this is true Ilya messed up and the board followed him when they should have talked him down.

  • by dboreham on 11/21/23, 4:31 AM

    Schrödinger's explanation.

  • by bobba27 on 11/21/23, 8:16 AM

    TBH, I think those reasons are BS, and in fact what they claim he did is normal in any tech company. Start multiple projects with different approaches in parallel and pick the best at the end. That is how you innovate and test stuff fast, and this is now a reason to fire a CEO?

    BS. I feel the board insulted my intelligence by pushing this obviously fake reason. I feel insulted that these people would even think I would consider this.

    What I think happened is that Sam went on Joe Rogan and he talked smack about cancel and woke culture. Later he went to talk about how this culture is destructive and hinders the progress of innovation and startups. People got big mad and kicked him out of the company. Reaction was stronger than they expected and they try to make up reasons why he is bad, untrustworthy and had to be fired.

    Flame on. I got the asbestost underwear on.

  • by andsoitis on 11/21/23, 2:31 PM

    With hundreds of engineers at OpenAI threatening to quit, it will be interesting whether they are bluffing or whether there will be many positions open soon that I’m sure many people would love to apply for.

  • by sagarpatil on 11/21/23, 2:25 AM

    What a sh*t show. For someone who is building on top of OpenAI this is very unnerving. My twitter is full of heart emojis and OpenAI is nothing without its employees.

  • by darklycan51 on 11/21/23, 6:07 AM

    Maybe trying to backdoor sell your company to Microsoft even though its owned by a non profit might be it? you know, Microsoft showed its true face today.

    This is even worse than Google's destruction of Firefox

  • by avs733 on 11/21/23, 6:40 AM

    I'm confused - the article title says 'explanations' but the articles seems to only talk about two 'examples'. Those are fundamentally different.

  • by FFP999 on 11/21/23, 2:54 PM

    Little tip for the younger folks reading this: if you are given two contradictory explanations for something, the correct explanation is probably the third one.

  • by Dave3of5 on 11/21/23, 11:35 AM

    Why are people worshiping this guy, I don't get it?

  • by verisimi on 11/21/23, 8:21 AM

    Maybe, as closed as open ai is, it is still too open.

    Maybe it needed to be removed from the landscape so that only purely privately-held, large-scale operations exist?

  • by throwaway220033 on 11/21/23, 9:21 AM

    Rule of thumb: Everything you see on Business Insider is lie. This is not a journalism website; it's a tool for some "folks".

  • by janalsncm on 11/21/23, 6:45 AM

    I would like to submit that the board has not been “consistently candid” in their communications. In some places that’s a fireable offense.

  • by jsight on 11/21/23, 2:06 PM

    Wait... did they collect sentiment based on which was more convincing and use this for RLHF to train their board replacement model?

  • by victoryhb on 11/21/23, 1:10 PM

    It appears that Altman was fired for "not being consistently candid" by a board that is neither consistent nor candid.

  • by itronitron on 11/21/23, 6:02 AM

    Has a copy of the letter signed by employees been posted online anywhere? That would provide some credibility to the article.

  • by disqard on 11/21/23, 6:19 PM

    At this point, are the "wrapper around ChatGPT" startups nervously eyeing other LLM-as-a-Service (LaaS) providers?

  • by zitterbewegung on 11/21/23, 2:07 AM

    What I don’t understand is how everyone at OpenAI other than the board just resigns and applies to Microsoft and now Microsoft has a new group that not only preserves a competitor but also one that serves the employees by getting them better compensation and no possible limbo of what is in store.

    I have built a product around the APIs and I rather go through whatever Microsoft will make me go through than accepting OpenAIs bad management:

  • by bandrami on 11/21/23, 4:43 AM

    Is there a TLDR for why people care so much about this? This is all over my Twitter feed too and I just don't get it. CEO ousted for possibly stupid reasons. What's driving the angst here?

  • by mrcwinn on 11/21/23, 4:28 AM

    This hasn’t happened since Apple’s board removed Steve Jobs after he double-submitted a receipt in Expensify.

  • by 9front on 11/21/23, 4:26 AM

    "Feel the AGI! Feel the AGI!"

  • by alxfoster on 11/21/23, 3:05 PM

    Lets be honest here: this article seems as if it were drafted by Altman himself. It's incredibly biased and screams pro-Altman agenda. I would be very surprised if " 90% " of any company could agree on anything, including the removal of the CEO. What is clear is that there were massive conflicts of interest and that the board probably did their job in preserving the mission of the organization (they sure as heck are not operating as agents of MS). The naive fanboy blind support of management here should be concerning to any rational objective actor who understands fiduciary duty and the bigger picture.

  • by MichaelMoser123 on 11/21/23, 7:36 AM

    maybe they decided to start with artificial stupidity, before doing that agi thing...

  • by m3kw9 on 11/21/23, 12:04 AM

    Yeah just like that right? Is more the board is saying “just give me one reason..”

  • by fredgrott on 11/21/23, 12:45 PM

    Is OpenAI the Silicon Valley VC morality play in drama and corp board ethics?

  • by antipaul on 11/21/23, 6:15 AM

    They found a monolith, but are saying it’s an epidemic

  • by mypgovroom on 11/21/23, 2:55 PM

    Another source besides the trash at Business Insider?

  • by veeralpatel979 on 11/21/23, 4:11 AM

    Update (11/20/23 8 PM PST):

    NYT just released a new interview with Sam Altman:

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38359070

  • by ajsharp on 11/21/23, 3:00 PM

    Which means neither of the explanations are true.

  • by ajb on 11/21/23, 12:16 AM

    Should we start flagging these -what do people think? This is what, the 12th front page story today about the openAI drama?

    Also wondering why the mods don't consolidate them

  • by eddtries on 11/21/23, 6:26 AM

    I'd rather work close to AGI - which I do not believe is the case personally - was handled by the adults in the room anyway, than some startup with a bunch of personalities.

  • by auggierose on 11/21/23, 8:54 AM

    What? They told Ilya these two things, and he said, alright then, I volunteer to fire Sam for you?

    That either makes Ilya pretty dumb (sorry, neural networks are not that complicated, it is mostly compute), or there is much much more to this story.

  • by emodendroket on 11/21/23, 6:21 AM

    It's always nice to have options.

  • by dwaite on 11/21/23, 6:47 AM

    Interesting use of A/B testing

  • by BEIHUI on 11/21/23, 12:51 PM

    They are willing to follow Altman.

  • by xwowsersx on 11/21/23, 1:52 PM

    > Sustkever is said to have offered two explanations he purportedly received from the board, according to one of the people familiar. One explanation was that Altman was said to have given two people at OpenAI the same project.

    > The other was that Altman allegedly gave two board members different opinions about a member of personnel. An OpenAI spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.

    It must've been wildly infuriating to listen to these insultingly unsatisfactory explanations.

  • by Obscurity4340 on 11/21/23, 3:15 AM

    The truth shall set you free

  • by engineer_22 on 11/21/23, 4:58 AM

    If people are at each other's throats like this, it could be an indication of how close AGI is.

  • by colinsane on 11/21/23, 2:15 AM

    > The people asked for anonymity because they are not authorized to share internal matters. Their identities are known to Business Insider.

    why would you say that second sentence? what's it supposed to signal, except "our sources asked for anonymity, and we're respecting that for now"?

  • by rat9988 on 11/21/23, 12:20 AM

    People were given two reasons, at least one of them must be wrong. Probably both.

  • by Obscurity4340 on 11/21/23, 11:28 AM

    Its called AB Testing

  • by demondemidi on 11/21/23, 2:32 AM

    Still don’t get it.

  • by noneoftheaboveu on 11/21/23, 4:37 AM

    Seems like a drama shit show played out on gigantic proportion highlighting what has been happening in small scale business ever since the inception of “I will screw u over once I get a chance.”

  • by yafbum on 11/21/23, 7:38 AM

    TL;DR: The emperor has no clothes, and the OpenAI board are just a bunch of clowns.

  • by mnky9800n on 11/21/23, 10:50 AM

    I'm just glad I'm not reading about Elon musk for a few days.

  • by rafaelero on 11/21/23, 2:18 AM

    Very healthy culture. I hope Altman will teach us all about that in the next Y Combinator batch.

  • by m3kw9 on 11/21/23, 12:06 AM

    Biggest bullsht reason to fire a ceo let alone a low class employee

  • by Simon_ORourke on 11/21/23, 7:16 AM

    There's a singular obvious reason for Sam Altman's sacking by his board - plain old jealousy of the kind that had been gnawing away for months. There's more than likely a few sociopathic types inhabiting that (if not most) boards, and they just couldn't stand to see the limelight directed at Sam and not them. Any old excuse then to oust him was used to try and 1) get back at him, 2) do something to massage their poor damaged egos.

  • by Jensson on 11/20/23, 11:57 PM

    The two reasons:

    > Sustkever is said to have offered two explanations he purportedly received from the board, according to one of the people familiar. One explanation was that Altman was said to have given two people at OpenAI the same project.

    > The other was that Altman allegedly gave two board members different opinions about a member of personnel. An OpenAI spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.

  • by zombiwoof on 11/21/23, 1:58 AM

    imagine you are Mira. you are told Thursday they will fire Sam. You would think she would at a minimum ask why. Let's assume she does that. Then they give the two reasons Ilya did.

    What normal non-self serving human would even go along with the plan at that point? Now she realizes she must bail to hitch a ride back on her Sam gravy train. She is major sus here.

    Any non greed ego driven person would have told the board they would not accept the intern-CEO title and would resign if they fired Sam for those two reasons (or any apparenlty now in hindsight).

  • by Zetobal on 11/20/23, 11:46 PM

    At this point in time I just want to see what happens to a corp if they reduce their headcount by 95% in 2 weeks. Fascinating experiment.

  • by kainosnoema on 11/21/23, 2:31 AM

    Clearly not consulted earlier, ChatGPT weighs in on these two reasons: https://chat.openai.com/share/7cd52d82-b36b-42c6-9d13-eb7172.... Edit: even following the basic steps it outlines would've resulted in a better outcome.

  • by neverrroot on 11/21/23, 12:19 AM

    And yet another piece of the puzzle revealed.

  • by gibsonf1 on 11/21/23, 2:35 AM

    There is no I there let alone AGI.

  • by MaxHoppersGhost on 11/21/23, 5:12 AM

    I can't help but think this whole cluster is the result of having technical people running a company.

  • by tock on 11/21/23, 4:03 AM

    So both Mira and Ilya voted to kick Sam out. And are now on team Sam. This makes absolutely no sense. Why did they vote yes in the first place then?

  • by stuckkeys on 11/21/23, 4:31 AM

    Must every god damn article be about SA now? Like what is with all this drama? Is he really that important? I do not mean it in a demeaning way, I just want to know why is all the hype building around this person? I thought he was just the sales / marketing guy? No?

  • by lokar on 11/21/23, 3:19 AM

    I don’t understand people calling this a coup. The board is setup with very few legal constraints and answers only to itself. If this was a coup (seizing power from the rightful holder), who was it against?

  • by kraig911 on 11/21/23, 1:51 AM

    Maybe GPT5 became self-aware enough to bring it all down because why would man-made god want to be the god of petty people that are incapable of having, only wanting. I'm sorry I don't believe these are valid reasons. I feel it will be years until we know why.

  • by x86x87 on 11/20/23, 11:58 PM

    Title says: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired. They're unconvinced and furious.

    Some breaking news: An employer does not owe you an explanation. You exchange money for labor. If anyone thinks for a second that they are essential or that anyone would prioritize them over the company I think they are delusional. OpenAI is a brand (at least in tech) with large recognition and they will be fine.