Sam Altman fired as CEO of OpenAI
https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/17/23965982/openai-ceo-sam-altman-fired

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Sam Altman has been fired as CEO of OpenAI, the company announced on Friday.
"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," the company said in its blog post. "The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI."
Chief technology officer Mira Murati will be the interim CEO, effective immediately. The company will be conducting a search for the permanent CEO successor. When contacted by The Verge, OpenAI's communications department declined to comment beyond the blog post.
This is an extremely sudden turn of events as Altman has largely been the face of OpenAI, which arguably kickstarted the current AI arms race with last year's hugely popular ChatGPT. Just last week, Altman keynoted at the company's DevDay conference, where it announced a suite of major new updates to compete with other big tech companies like Microsoft and Google. Altman also spoke at Thursday's Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference.

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Good

I don't know how I should feel about this. While I have been doing a deep-dive into ChatGTP from a programmatic point of view, I know nothing about this now former CEO. I wonder, is he a leftist?

(I did attempt to have DALL-E generate a picture of a P-40 Flying Tiger, and it came back with a garbage message stating that such an image would violate OpenAI's terms of service on military imagery. To which I just rolled my eyes)

Cinco Ranch Aggie said:

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I don't know how I should feel about this. While I have been doing a deep-dive into ChatGTP from a programmatic point of view, I know nothing about this now former CEO. I wonder, is he a leftist?

(I did attempt to have DALL-E generate a picture of a P-40 Flying Tiger, and it came back with a garbage message stating that such an image would violate OpenAI's terms of service on military imagery. To which I just rolled my eyes)

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He did not really come off as this way at all on his recent Rogan interview (which is interesting), but he could just be really good at hiding it. If anything, he came across as pretty reasonable...and I say this as someone who despises the world he is envisioning and creating and hates AI with a passion and thinks it will be our downfall.

Why?

This reminds me of

He didn't make it open source

Him leaving won't change that and he's going to get offered 8 figures plus to hop in on another company.

Was a fired as a recommendation to the board by AI?

Ask Alexa!

We are about to see a war for AI supremacy between OpenAI and whatever Elon cooking up.

Seems like theres a general panic over what Elon's about to do.

Early life

Pioneers get slaughtered and the settlers prosper.

Damn colonizers!

if i start going off, the openai board should go after me for the full value of my shares

— Sam Altman (@sama) November 18, 2023

He's gonna have no shares once he gets done spouting the details!

Had an affair with Alexa

It's getting wild out there.

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ChatGPT is so watered down with bias and controls preventing it from doing anything that it's becoming a real pain to use sometimes.

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What are you using it for that the "bias and controls" are holding you back from doing?

hph6203 said:

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if i start going off, the openai board should go after me for the full value of my shares

— Sam Altman (@sama) November 18, 2023

He's gonna have no shares once he gets done spouting the details!

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I don't get it. What's he trying to communicate? Did he mean they will go after his shares?

A lot of founders get axed… most get replaced. The stats I've seen surprised me.

bmks270 said:

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hph6203 said:

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if i start going off, the openai board should go after me for the full value of my shares

— Sam Altman (@sama) November 18, 2023

He's gonna have no shares once he gets done spouting the details!

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I don't get it. What's he trying to communicate? Did he mean they will go after his shares?

A lot of founders get axed… most get replaced. The stats I've seen surprised me.

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He doesn't own any shares, so he means he can say whatever he wants and they can't do anything.

Ah, thanks for clarifying.

I read two articles about his disposition and don't really understand how OpenAI was set up since it's was supposedly a non-profit but also supposedly valued at 90 billion dollars? It's a non-profit with a for-profit subsidiary? How does that work, seems like a conflict of interest? And no one on the board had equity…?

I'll be worried when "AI" can draw hands and text.

You summed it up pretty well.

Evidently, it's some sort of effective altruism thing as well. You know, the movement the entire leadership of FTX were disciples of.

This has Bill Gates written all over it. Get someone in he can control.

Sam Altman was quirky but he was a true believer.

Pepper Brooks said:

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This has Bill Gates written all over it. Get someone in he can control.

Sam Altman was quirky but he was a true believer.

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Actually, the guy that pulled the trigger is an Elon guy.

I can't wait until we get AW....artificial water

I wonder if Elon has it in him. I know there is a history between him and these folks. Ousted from some prior venture if I remember right.

There has been a ton of speculation over what happened and this is the first I've seen trying to frame it as a tribalistic Elon vs Bill battle, which I guess is just how everything goes here.

Even if it is, you have the whole Elon/Gates tribes backward.

Elon left OpenAI in large part because he didn't like Sam's philosophy regarding the safety of AI. Elon thinks it can destroy the world, and Sam, as well as Bill Gates, were in the "push forward anyway" camp.

Pepper Brooks said:

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I wonder if Elon has it in him. I know there is a history between him and these folks. Ousted from some prior venture if I remember right.

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Haha, not some prior venture, but this venture. Not sure if he was ousted or if he kinda just stepped away (I think it was this). Don't think it was anything like that, but more along the lines of this being started as a non-profit, open-source project and then you have Sam out there dollar chasing and ignoring safety (not in the way of censorship, but AGI and alignment).

Four Seasons Landscaping said:

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Elon left OpenAI in large part because he didn't like Sam's philosophy regarding the safety of AI. Elon thinks it can destroy the world, and Sam, as well as Bill Gates, were in the "push forward anyway" camp.

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This strikes me as totally ludicrous. Such an incredible claim should be subject to great skepticism. I think the most plausible motive of the safety and alignment camp is some combination of i.) trying to slow down competitors who are far ahead, ii.) trying to weasel contemporary political correctness and bias into the models, and iii.) good old-fashioned Luddites.

Read the biography, it spends a lot of time on that. He's no Luddite, I think Elon is genuinely concerned that AI could result in the end of humanity.

He's got some "different" views on the future of humanity itself, a lot of it driving his mission to Mars, which drives pretty much everything else he does.