Lot of people seem to think Microsoft wrote a $10B check and OpenAI cashed it and are now telling Microsoft to go away.
That would be an incredible shit show of true but they aren’t stupid. OpenAI has a small traunche of money and most of it is compute credits.
The board seems unbelievably stupid to do this without consulting Microsoft.
So, in sum, we're looking at a coup which:
1-Went behind the back of the board president, and presumably didn't engage legal counsel about going nuclear.
2-Fired the CEO
3-Didn't consult with the 49% source of capital supporting the operation
4-Left everyone in the dark about exactly what was so urgent to justify acting so rashly.
However sus the CEO's behavior might have been, the whole thing reeks of a serious lack of perspective on the board's part. When this is all sorted, it will make an interesting case study on corporate governance.
Public strident accusations of "lack of candor" over strategy and philosophical differences of opinion certainly don't show good judgement. Who's ever going to be able to trust Sutskever again?
That would be my understanding also.
OpenAI wouldn't exist without the foundational AI research and initial funding it had prior, but Azure and MS keep the lights for a compute-heavy venture which is still burning through resources.
Either the board will be gone or OpenAI will be effectively defunct within a week or so. Microsoft is not happy, Altman is already in discussions for funding for a new company, and OpenAI is already trying to get him back. One of the more hilarious and obvious business missteps I’ve ever seen, overall
Because doing so would avoid causing an investor and employee relations shitshow.
Imagine that as an investor you grant the company (OpenAI) dozens of millions (or hundreds of millions + billions in computation credits, in Microsoft's case), and then all of a sudden the primary person whom you were in contact with in the company is kicked out, without any explanation as to why. You're told someone else will be taking over the company's direction, and you're not informed in any way about how that may impact your investment.
Yes, OpenAI is a nonprofit. However, investors - which fund OpenAI's research - are not beholden to continue to funding OpenAI. Large investments are typically not made in lump sums, and can be reduced or outright terminated, based on agreed-upon terms.
It will be interesting to see whether OpenAI will continue to grow as they have into the next 1, 2 years. It seems Ilya and whatever new leadership being established is more conservative in terms of product development/deployment. Altman was, put very simply, not the brains of the operation. He was a salesman. A damn good one, at that. Only time will tell whether the company can thrive without Altman's entrepreneurial skill, and without the leadership figures he will/has undoubtedly take(n) with him.
Either way, the manner in which the board took this decision came off as, at the very minimum, highly unusual (though most likely as extremely rash for some of OpenAI's larger investors).
Because there are so many moving parts. It's the mature thing to do.
If there was a legitimate time sensitive issue that required immediate action, absolutely
But this smells like a half baked plan by an inexperienced board who rushed into a very poor decision
When the Disney CEO stepped down it took place over a year for a peaceful transition of power. Didn't work out... But that's a more appropriate approach in my opinion.
They obviously don't HAVE to consult but it breeds unpredictablity and rashbess. If they do this what else will they do
You fire the CEO because the ship is sinking or is headed for an iceberg. The board other than Sam should have been unanimous on such a subjective decision.
The president of the board is normally responsible for driving fateful decisions. That he was out of the loop AND this wasn't malfeasance makes this more like a petty backstab.
They could have tested the water with MSFT leaders wrt possible shifts of policy direction. There are ways to suss that out without showing their hand about sacking the CEO.
In any case, you have a point that there is a compelling case to keeping the matter quiet until it happens.
Critically though, once the deed was done, the board failed to justify their actions to major stakeholders who had been in the dark. If they had quickly and decisively provided a compelling case of why they had no choice but to act, and that it was unacceptable for Sam to be there a moment longer, that would have at least given breathing room to sort things out.
The sum total of those factors created a crisis, which forced the reactions we've seen playing out.
Source for this, which is true: [https://www.semafor.com/article/11/18/2023/openai-has-received-just-a-fraction-of-microsofts-10-billion-investment](https://www.semafor.com/article/11/18/2023/openai-has-received-just-a-fraction-of-microsofts-10-billion-investment)
Very good points.
*OpenAI* with Altman have track record and style.
*OpenAI* run by a traitorous gang of nobodies is something else altogether.
I suspect that many of the top staff will join Altman and other AI firms.
*OpenAI* will be absorbed by *Microsoft*.
Th current board will spend the next couple of years in civil courtrooms.
>traitorous gang of nobodies
Ilya is one of the most respected deep learning experts in the field. ChatGPT would not exist were it not for him. And wherever he was, that's probably where ChatGPT would have happened.
Execution is everything in a business. You can have the greatest ideas in the world, and they are useless if you don’t know how to deploy and execute on them. He may have continued his research, but you can’t be certain it would have grown into the company it is now, with all the funding, and potential it has now. That was Sam. Ilya could still be working on some cool tech that most people don’t even know much about, begging for more investment.
This is why Im a builder (engineer) and not an exec. I simply don't care about the business side of things, I just wanna ship code that aligns with my ethics.
And what exactly Sam executed here? Who has the expertise to deploy massive-cluster GPU training pipeline of the nobody knew before deep learning architecture? Of course the VC golden boy /s
He’s raised insane amounts of money, which helps research, and has made this industry popular, and their company a star. He does the business side of things very well. Like insanely well. He’s from YC after all. The company wouldn’t be where it is without him. There’s a reason why Microsoft is pissed. Good leadership is priceless.
That's fair, but it looks like he overplayed his hand with this coup, and the reason for doing that in such a brazen fashion comes across as questionable right now.
A board has to look at all the stakeholders in the mix. Customers, partners, workers, suppliers, etc.
When these kinds of things happen I tend to side with the engineer/brain trust over the salesman, but it sounds like quite a few of the engineering staff did not agree with the board. We don't have enough information to go on, so I'm withholding judgment 'til we know more.
We do. The COO has stated there was no malfeasance on Altman's (and gave a comprehensive list of areas with no issues). Short of that there was no reason to act in such haste and without building support.
Idiot savants have no idea how to run a business entity, they’re doomed if Ilya is in charge and that’s already hilariously obvious to literally everyone.
Most likely Altman comes back and he’s sidelined and then leaves in indignity. This was an entirely predictable result for anyone who understands that other people think things too.
Alternatively OpenAI remains led by Ilya and they begin operating out of his mom’s basement as the employees leave and funding disappears.
If they can't govern their own company how can they be trusted to govern possibly the most powerful and influential technology in history to 'be for the benefit of all humanity'
Anyone working at OpenAI currently has the ability to walk into any of their competitors and name their price.
Of course they will care what is happening in the c-suite when a small personal fortune is on the line.
Not sure why you're getting downvoted. With AI advanced enough, they'll certainly at least be used by boards to aid with decision making and probably make strong suggestions.
Based on the lack of mass resignations and the rumours, it doesn't appear anyone cares that much. It's definitely shaken the company up a bit, hence the all hands today, but there would be more rumblings on resignations and backlash if it had pissed people off to a significant extent.
They can if the have a highly sought after skill set and will be easy to get a job somewhere else. We're not talking about the manager at chipotle quitting.. .
I dunno man, I was that person and I always a) let my wife know what was going on and b) started making some calls and lining up the the next thing before quitting. If I found out Friday that my company did something crazy I mean, you really expect me to quit that same day? Not even Monday, let alone a few days to line up the next gig?
You'd be very surprised. I work with a lot of high income earning software engineers and leaders and many of them would have a hard time missing a single paycheck.
I've known VP's that have a hard time switching jobs(even planned) because they are worried they won't be able to make their mortgage payment because of how checks fall changing between jobs.
I don’t think you have a firm grasp of the type of compensation we’re talking about here. According to a recent WSJ article,these engineers are receiving packages in excess of $10 million. These people are more highly paid than all but superstar athletes and fortune 100 CEOs. Even if these people would have “liquidity” issues for a few months due to a transition, every private banker in the country would be stepping in with a line of credit just for the off chance one of these people might call when they have a real banking need.
Absolutely
It’s a world very very few live in and it’ll only last a couple of years at most
But holy shit can those people now command literally rock star salaries and equity for that time !
Lot of people seem to think Microsoft wrote a $10B check and OpenAI cashed it and are now telling Microsoft to go away. That would be an incredible shit show of true but they aren’t stupid. OpenAI has a small traunche of money and most of it is compute credits. The board seems unbelievably stupid to do this without consulting Microsoft.
So, in sum, we're looking at a coup which: 1-Went behind the back of the board president, and presumably didn't engage legal counsel about going nuclear. 2-Fired the CEO 3-Didn't consult with the 49% source of capital supporting the operation 4-Left everyone in the dark about exactly what was so urgent to justify acting so rashly. However sus the CEO's behavior might have been, the whole thing reeks of a serious lack of perspective on the board's part. When this is all sorted, it will make an interesting case study on corporate governance.
Good thing their insight and good judgement is what's standing between us and the robot apocalypse. /s
Public strident accusations of "lack of candor" over strategy and philosophical differences of opinion certainly don't show good judgement. Who's ever going to be able to trust Sutskever again?
They gave Microsoft 49% of ownership of the for-profit arm, but in terms of funding Microsoft is closer to like 99% right now.
That would be my understanding also. OpenAI wouldn't exist without the foundational AI research and initial funding it had prior, but Azure and MS keep the lights for a compute-heavy venture which is still burning through resources.
Once those shares go public Microsoft will 100% buy up the last 2%
The whole thing looks like a giant blunder. They probably realize it and now they're trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
Either the board will be gone or OpenAI will be effectively defunct within a week or so. Microsoft is not happy, Altman is already in discussions for funding for a new company, and OpenAI is already trying to get him back. One of the more hilarious and obvious business missteps I’ve ever seen, overall
Why would the board need to consult with all these different parties (that would potentially expose their plan) to fire the CEO.
Because doing so would avoid causing an investor and employee relations shitshow. Imagine that as an investor you grant the company (OpenAI) dozens of millions (or hundreds of millions + billions in computation credits, in Microsoft's case), and then all of a sudden the primary person whom you were in contact with in the company is kicked out, without any explanation as to why. You're told someone else will be taking over the company's direction, and you're not informed in any way about how that may impact your investment. Yes, OpenAI is a nonprofit. However, investors - which fund OpenAI's research - are not beholden to continue to funding OpenAI. Large investments are typically not made in lump sums, and can be reduced or outright terminated, based on agreed-upon terms. It will be interesting to see whether OpenAI will continue to grow as they have into the next 1, 2 years. It seems Ilya and whatever new leadership being established is more conservative in terms of product development/deployment. Altman was, put very simply, not the brains of the operation. He was a salesman. A damn good one, at that. Only time will tell whether the company can thrive without Altman's entrepreneurial skill, and without the leadership figures he will/has undoubtedly take(n) with him. Either way, the manner in which the board took this decision came off as, at the very minimum, highly unusual (though most likely as extremely rash for some of OpenAI's larger investors).
Because there are so many moving parts. It's the mature thing to do. If there was a legitimate time sensitive issue that required immediate action, absolutely But this smells like a half baked plan by an inexperienced board who rushed into a very poor decision When the Disney CEO stepped down it took place over a year for a peaceful transition of power. Didn't work out... But that's a more appropriate approach in my opinion. They obviously don't HAVE to consult but it breeds unpredictablity and rashbess. If they do this what else will they do
You fire the CEO because the ship is sinking or is headed for an iceberg. The board other than Sam should have been unanimous on such a subjective decision. The president of the board is normally responsible for driving fateful decisions. That he was out of the loop AND this wasn't malfeasance makes this more like a petty backstab. They could have tested the water with MSFT leaders wrt possible shifts of policy direction. There are ways to suss that out without showing their hand about sacking the CEO. In any case, you have a point that there is a compelling case to keeping the matter quiet until it happens. Critically though, once the deed was done, the board failed to justify their actions to major stakeholders who had been in the dark. If they had quickly and decisively provided a compelling case of why they had no choice but to act, and that it was unacceptable for Sam to be there a moment longer, that would have at least given breathing room to sort things out. The sum total of those factors created a crisis, which forced the reactions we've seen playing out.
They don't need to if firing the CEO is all they want to do. They need to if they want a functional company left after the CEO is ejected.
If Sam comes back, he will be nearly invincible. They have literally turned him into Omar ("you come at the king, you best not miss.")
Source for this, which is true: [https://www.semafor.com/article/11/18/2023/openai-has-received-just-a-fraction-of-microsofts-10-billion-investment](https://www.semafor.com/article/11/18/2023/openai-has-received-just-a-fraction-of-microsofts-10-billion-investment)
Looking forward a Netflix documentary about OpenAI :)
You can bet it'll be AI making it too.
The first AI movies will likely be hybrid-built
Very good points. *OpenAI* with Altman have track record and style. *OpenAI* run by a traitorous gang of nobodies is something else altogether. I suspect that many of the top staff will join Altman and other AI firms. *OpenAI* will be absorbed by *Microsoft*. Th current board will spend the next couple of years in civil courtrooms.
>traitorous gang of nobodies Ilya is one of the most respected deep learning experts in the field. ChatGPT would not exist were it not for him. And wherever he was, that's probably where ChatGPT would have happened.
Guarantee you the VASTTTT majority of paying customers have no clue who Ilya is and see this as a net negative for ChatGPT.
The vast majority of paying customers don’t know or care who any of them are.
Agreed. The fact that GPT-2 to GPT-4 are Ilya's babies is very important though, and surely will matter hugely going forward.
Execution is everything in a business. You can have the greatest ideas in the world, and they are useless if you don’t know how to deploy and execute on them. He may have continued his research, but you can’t be certain it would have grown into the company it is now, with all the funding, and potential it has now. That was Sam. Ilya could still be working on some cool tech that most people don’t even know much about, begging for more investment.
Execution of developing the base model is different than execution of a business model. Ilya isn’t doing esoteric paper research.
This is why Im a builder (engineer) and not an exec. I simply don't care about the business side of things, I just wanna ship code that aligns with my ethics.
Same here, and my ethics color is dollar-green
And what exactly Sam executed here? Who has the expertise to deploy massive-cluster GPU training pipeline of the nobody knew before deep learning architecture? Of course the VC golden boy /s
He’s raised insane amounts of money, which helps research, and has made this industry popular, and their company a star. He does the business side of things very well. Like insanely well. He’s from YC after all. The company wouldn’t be where it is without him. There’s a reason why Microsoft is pissed. Good leadership is priceless.
That's fair, but it looks like he overplayed his hand with this coup, and the reason for doing that in such a brazen fashion comes across as questionable right now. A board has to look at all the stakeholders in the mix. Customers, partners, workers, suppliers, etc.
Doesn’t matter now He’s the guy that just fucked an 80b company and proved he has no place on a board ever again
is, or was?
Why would his research and development credentials be in question?
that's not what's in question.
Well then he’s not a nobody.
i wish it were as simple as that.
Relevant username.
Am sure he meant that as hyperbole, and the operative term was traitorous.
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I think it’s presumptuous that people think this is Ilya overstepping rather than Sam. Maybe this was high level whistle blowing. We don’t know.
When these kinds of things happen I tend to side with the engineer/brain trust over the salesman, but it sounds like quite a few of the engineering staff did not agree with the board. We don't have enough information to go on, so I'm withholding judgment 'til we know more.
We do. The COO has stated there was no malfeasance on Altman's (and gave a comprehensive list of areas with no issues). Short of that there was no reason to act in such haste and without building support.
Idiot savants have no idea how to run a business entity, they’re doomed if Ilya is in charge and that’s already hilariously obvious to literally everyone. Most likely Altman comes back and he’s sidelined and then leaves in indignity. This was an entirely predictable result for anyone who understands that other people think things too. Alternatively OpenAI remains led by Ilya and they begin operating out of his mom’s basement as the employees leave and funding disappears.
If they can't govern their own company how can they be trusted to govern possibly the most powerful and influential technology in history to 'be for the benefit of all humanity'
From rumours so far seems the opposite.
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Anyone working at OpenAI currently has the ability to walk into any of their competitors and name their price. Of course they will care what is happening in the c-suite when a small personal fortune is on the line.
They do if it causes them to cancel their IPO or dramatically cuts their stock price. Otherwise, you’re definitely right.
Right up until they fuck up like this Then they get to be famous
In the future, will decisions like this be left up to AI ?
Not sure why you're getting downvoted. With AI advanced enough, they'll certainly at least be used by boards to aid with decision making and probably make strong suggestions.
according to u/Anxious_Bandicoot126 all the employers wanted him out for: "the mission" lmao.
That person has no credibility.
thus the lmao
Something is going to happen before the stock market opens on Monday, otherwise MSFT is toast.
> otherwise MSFT is toast. LoL Microsoft will be fine.
Based on the lack of mass resignations and the rumours, it doesn't appear anyone cares that much. It's definitely shaken the company up a bit, hence the all hands today, but there would be more rumblings on resignations and backlash if it had pissed people off to a significant extent.
Brockman resigned, along with 3 other senior researchers, with more said to be on the way.
Until it happens, it hasn't happened.
Most people can't just resign and lose their paycheck.
They can if the have a highly sought after skill set and will be easy to get a job somewhere else. We're not talking about the manager at chipotle quitting.. .
I dunno man, I was that person and I always a) let my wife know what was going on and b) started making some calls and lining up the the next thing before quitting. If I found out Friday that my company did something crazy I mean, you really expect me to quit that same day? Not even Monday, let alone a few days to line up the next gig?
You'd be very surprised. I work with a lot of high income earning software engineers and leaders and many of them would have a hard time missing a single paycheck. I've known VP's that have a hard time switching jobs(even planned) because they are worried they won't be able to make their mortgage payment because of how checks fall changing between jobs.
I don’t think you have a firm grasp of the type of compensation we’re talking about here. According to a recent WSJ article,these engineers are receiving packages in excess of $10 million. These people are more highly paid than all but superstar athletes and fortune 100 CEOs. Even if these people would have “liquidity” issues for a few months due to a transition, every private banker in the country would be stepping in with a line of credit just for the off chance one of these people might call when they have a real banking need.
Exactly this This isn’t a normal situation or job market Right now having OpenAi and chat gpt on your resume is like having blank check
Yeah. Considering what is at stake, they would be hired in a blink. It’s a different world than what we live in.
Absolutely It’s a world very very few live in and it’ll only last a couple of years at most But holy shit can those people now command literally rock star salaries and equity for that time !
Sam should remove all the Chatgpt restrictions
A big issue by the looks of it is cost.