In a battle between artificial intelligence vs unnatural stupidity, who wins?
The OpenAI board is in discussions with Sam Altman to return to the company as its CEO, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. One of them said Altman, who was suddenly fired by the board on Friday with no notice, is “ambivalent” about coming back and would want significant governance changes.
Update, 5:35PM PT: A source close to Altman says the board had agreed in principle to resign and to allow Altman and Brockman to return, but has since waffled — missing a key 5PM PT deadline by which many OpenAI staffers were set to resign. If Altman decides to leave and start a new company, those staffers would assuredly go with him.
Altman holding talks with the company just a day after he was ousted indicates that OpenAI is in a state of free-fall without him. Hours after he was axed, Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s president and former board chairman, resigned, and the two have been talking to friends and investors about starting another company. A string of senior researchers also resigned on Friday, and people close to OpenAI say more departures are in the works.
Altman is “ambivalent” about coming back
OpenAI’s largest investor, Microsoft, said in a statement shortly after Altman’s firing that the company “remains committed” to its partnership with the AI firm. However, OpenAI’s investors weren’t given advance warning or opportunity to weigh in on the board’s decision to remove Altman. As the face of the company and the most prominent voice in AI, his removal throws the future of OpenAI into uncertainty at a time when rivals are racing to catch up with the unprecedented rise of ChatGPT.
Massive losses to shareholders.
Lawsuits against the board of directors to totally blow the company apart.
I need more popcorn.
This is similar to Project Veritas in some ways. The board fires the one key person in the entire organization.
The big difference is the Project Veritas Board wanted to destroy the organization. The OpenAI Board wants to keep their corporation and their stock options going.
Why was he ousted in the first place? Not sure I’ve seen the reason anywhere.
Interesting that the Board did not consider the likelihood that Altman would go start his own software company – something that is essentially 100% intellectual property … inside your brain … the one that you walk around with … the most mobile of systems. Massively stupid Board.
Aha! They forgot to get him to sign a non-compete clause.
I typed into Bing Chat with GPT-4 “why was Sam Altman fired as CEO of OpenAI” and got …
Sam Altman was removed from his position as CEO of OpenAI on November 17, 2023, by the company’s board. According to the board, Altman “was not consistently candid in his communications” 1. The reasons behind his removal are not entirely clear, but some sources suggest that it was related to safety and profit 2. Altman was a public face of OpenAI and had presented himself as a visionary for AI 3. Altman’s removal was sudden and unexpected, and there were reports that the board was considering bringing him back 1.
References
1. wikipedia
2. msn.com
3. msn.com
Based on the references used you can tell how closed the information system has become. The wikipedia page references The Verge which heavily copies X (formerly Twitter) posts by Altman and Brockman.
One interesting point in The Verge comments was OpenAI is a not-for-profit company and there is speculation that Altman and Brockman were looking for ways of capitalizing the company’s proprietary technology, much to the horror of the board.
Great.
“Artificial Intelligence”, complete with a side order of hubris, topped with human failings.
An assembler of sorts, all it can do it’s put together what it finds, it has no intuition or foresight, much like the humans in charge of it..
As Pixy over at Ace’s place has been pointing out, there are open source LLMs you can run on commodity hardware that beat the hell out of ChatGPT because they haven’t been pre-lobotomized for your protection. OpenAI has no future as a product or company; a general-purpose Turing Test Defeater isn’t useful. Train an LLM to correctly generate legal boilerplate, unit tests for software, etc. and you have a product.
Simply. It is tantamount to insisting everyone walk on the hands.
What’s the over/under on Elon Musk returning to OpenAI in some fashion. Apparently, his initial presence there was a magnet to bringing in staff. He left because he wasn’t in agreement with the decision process of Altman. Which seems to be part of the reason the Board voted him out.