Agreed. It had to have been something disastrous. No way Sam walked away from OpenAI when the AI revolution is just starting.

I feel like he’s been acting a bit strange for a while. During interviews he often mentions the dangers of AI and how he’s not thr best spokeperson for AI. It seemed very counter productive&#x2F;self sabotaging to me.

&gt;last minute moveAlso, they did it around 3:30 Eastern, 30 minutes before the closing bell (Microsoft is xxmajorityxx 49% owner). It was so urgent they couldn&#x27;t wait until after the market closed.

Sorry if this should be self-explanatory, but what is corporate &quot;cannibalism&quot;? What does this refer to, generally speaking (not necessarily specific to the OpenAI situation)?

&gt; Whatever he did is big and dangerous, or they’re trying to pin it on him.We are on HN after all, so I&#x27;m sure we won&#x27;t need to wait until his book comes out... :)BTW, I had a feeling he made an awkward appearance next to Satya.And that laughter whenever the acquisition topic was hinted at was cringeworthy - would regulators even permit MSFT a full takeover? I think it would be highly controversial.

It’s hard to imagine a more last minute move on the boards part here. Been in tech exec leadership for a long time and this feels like they’re accusing him of cannibalism (in corporate PR speak). No way this didn’t get decided on in the middle of last night. Whatever he did is big and dangerous, or they’re trying to pin it on him.

He has basically trained himself to say this though. It&#x27; basically all he says consistently.He is probably in shock.

He seems a bit more nervous and absent-minded than usual. But it&#x27;s very possible that I&#x27;m just imagining things.

I watched this yesterday and got the feeling something big was happening. At one point he says &quot;This is actually a very inconvenient time for me [to be here].&quot; At the end of the session when they&#x27;re wrapping up, he begins to stand up to leave the instant that the moderator starts wrapping up.Anyway, I suppose we&#x27;re reading tea leaves and engaging in palace intrigue. Back to building.

Here is the video of him talking at yesterday&#x27;s summit.: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=ZFFvqRemDv8">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=ZFFvqRemDv8</a>It doesn&#x27;t looks like he has a hint about this:&gt; I am super excited. I can&#x27;t imagine anything more exciting to work on.

What? Are you implying this happened here? Or just being weird?

For example, Mark Hurd was fired from HP because he expensed some non-business-related meals with his mistress or whatever.

I mean yes, but that would require an investigation normally.Something to happen immediately would require overwhelming evidence on hand in the meeting. So it could be something that has been uncovered as part of the due diligence with the MS investmentIts more likely to be fabrication of numbers, or misappropriation of funds, rather than something &quot;dramatic&quot; Think musk at paypal being monumentally incompetent, rather than planned misdeeds.

Flagged without a vouch button. Interesting.

These things can also happen for unrelated reasons. Things like say, getting drunk and molesting an intern or tossing out racial slurs at say, some important person at a giant japanese company, you know, just being an asshole. Especially if it happened more than once.I don&#x27;t know the guy but nothing can really be assumed about this.

Right I just was watching a video of him a few minutes ago at Cambridge: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=NjpNG0CJRMM">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=NjpNG0CJRMM</a>It was just posted but was filmed on November 1st.

Well, they must have believed that leaving Sam as CEO was a bigger risk for the company (or the members of the board) than having him leaving in the spot. The board may have had their hand twisted.

Per twitter he was sending internal emails via his company account this morning.

Wasn&#x27;t it his tweet (and not via company) that announced the pause on new pro membership yesterday??

Saying this is sudden would be an understatement.Sam Altman spoke at an APEC panel on behalf of OpenAI literally yesterday: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;LondonBreed&#x2F;status&#x2F;1725318771454456208" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;LondonBreed&#x2F;status&#x2F;1725318771454456208</a>

&quot;We&#x27;re putting the Open back in OpenAI&quot;?

&gt; What&#x27;s the subtext?Not certain, but IMHO the last paragraph almost recognises that OpenAI has become something self contradictory:&gt; OpenAI was founded as a non-profit in 2015 with the core mission of ensuring that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. In 2019, OpenAI restructured to ensure that the company could raise capital in pursuit of this mission, while preserving the nonprofit&#x27;s mission, governance, and oversight. The majority of the board is independent, and the independent directors do not hold equity in OpenAI. While the company has experienced dramatic growth, it remains the fundamental governance responsibility of the board to advance OpenAI’s mission and preserve the principles of its Charter.

If I read it correctly, he lied to the board about something material.  That Brockman is also leaving the board is interesting.  We&#x27;ll see if the details leak out over time.

Uh oh. Did I miss some scandal? What&#x27;s the subtext?

Not sure that there can be any other interpretation based on my reading of it.

Yes, very likely Altman has done something _very_ wrong, and the board wants to maintain plausible deniability.

It could possibly have to do with his sister&#x27;s allegations. It&#x27;s one of the top autocomplete results when you google &quot;sam altman&quot;, so people are definitely talking about it.

Sounds more like some strategic difference of opinion.My guess is that either they’re financially super hosed. Or one group wants to build skynet and one doesn’t.A scandal would probably be something along the lines of either “we love him and wish him the best” (hidden) or “he doesn’t represent the values of our org and we love XYz” (embraced)

His sister had levied allegations of abuse<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.themarysue.com&#x2F;annie-altmans-abuse-allegations-against-openais-sam-altman-highlight-the-need-to-prioritize-humanity-over-tech&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.themarysue.com&#x2F;annie-altmans-abuse-allegations-a...</a>

His sister on Twitter made some pretty crazy abuse allegations against him a while back, but it didn&#x27;t seem to get much coverage outside of the usual Twitter crowd.But who knows, maybe there&#x27;s a connection.

&quot;he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board&quot; = &quot;He lied to us about something important&quot;Murati&#x27;s selection as interim CEO is a surprise and might be an attempt to distance the company from whatever the board is claiming Altman lied about.

Those kinds of news are usually sugar coated to the point of caramelisation. This one isn&#x27;t. It must be something very ugly.

So this is probably indicative of a scandal of some sort right?

I dunno the details here, but I work in diligence, where &quot;not candid&quot; is what leads to &quot;the whole deal is off and we&#x27;re sueing the shit out of you&quot;.Not candid in any kind of investment situation with reps and warranties is a really big deal....

candid - Not obscuring or omitting anything unpleasant, embarrassing, or negative.IMHO, saying he hasn&#x27;t been candid is extremely harsh in terms of corporate PR speak.

No, this is completely different.Jobs got fired because Apple was on brink of bankruptcy all the time and was selling nothing to no one.Jobs wasn&#x27;t the CEO of Apple, Sculley was. This is a much more impactful move.On top of that OpenAI is literally exploding in popularity and sales, that&#x27;s not the moment to cut ties with your CEO.Also Sam Altman has an insanely better and heavier CV today than Jobs had in 1985, former director of YC and often called the &quot;boss of silicon valley&quot;.You don&#x27;t fire a man like Sam Altman easily, they are hard to come by in the first place. He&#x27;s a powerful person you don&#x27;t want to have against for no good reason when winds are blowing in the right direction moreover.It has to be some scandal, otherwise this is too sudden, and out of nowhere to a guy that led OpenAI in this direction, with success, for years.

Altman is not the reason for their success. I would not place him in the same sentence as SJ.

I&#x27;m a bit beat up by the last week (internal issues) or the last 1-2 years between the swift CentOS8 switch, various CPU vulns, Log4Shell and all the other jazz.My first thought is: C&#x27;mon. The company has just invested time to integrate with OpenAI. Just do it. Just announce that 200%+ price increase on everything with a scapegoat intermediate CEO. Or make it more so it hurts more, because of profit, so you can dial back a pity to be the good guys.

OpenAI’s one of the most successful companies of this decade, if not the most, and its CEO just got fired for really unclear reasons. Insane, Steve Jobs shit

yeah, this is about as harsh as corporate press releases get in terms of removing an executive. There has to be some majorly bad news coming out about Altman for them to not give him the standard &quot;we are mutually parting ways&quot;

Well, striking language indeed.But.. what are the responsibilities of the board that may be hindered? I studied <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;openai.com&#x2F;our-structure" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;openai.com&#x2F;our-structure</a>One tantalising statement in there is that AGI-level system is not bound by licensing agreements that a sub-AGI system would be (ostensibly to Microsoft).This phase-shift places a pressure on management to not declare reaching a AGI level threshold. But have they?Of course, it could be an ordinary everyday scandal but given how well they are doing, I&#x27;d imagine censure&#x2F;sanctions would be how that is handled.

This reads like there’s another shoe to drop - especially since the Chairman of the Board is also stepping down.

I hope making the person in charge of &quot;trust and safety&quot; doesn&#x27;t further neuter the company.

I wonder if it has something to do with recent downtime?

&gt; Sam Altman will depart as CEO and leave the board of directors. Mira Murati, the company’s chief technology officer, will serve as interim CEO, effective immediately.&gt; 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 board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.Wow

&gt; &quot;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 board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.&quot;Wow. Anyone have any insight into what happened?

So did Greg Brockman, what a weird turn of events

He would have been asked to step out and not had a vote in situations like these.

Greg Brockman was President and Chairman of the Board.He was also removed from the board in this process.

That board meeting will be in a movie someday I&#x27;m pretty sure.

Which is notable because Sam Altman is on said board, so he got outvoted.

That&#x27;s a fascinating question. I looked into this and haven&#x27;t a clue, other than Joseph Gordon-Levitt&#x27;s wife (?). If it&#x27;s the same person, then she is a &quot;tech-entrepreneur&quot; with a surprising amount of liquidity and automatic privilege and titles despite no obvious achievement (unless you consider title-gathering an achievement).

I think this is a legitimate question. There seems to be little public information about this board member, besides that they are married to a celebrity.

Her LinkedIn profile now 404&#x27;s <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.linkedin.com&#x2F;in&#x2F;tasha-mccauley-25475a54" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.linkedin.com&#x2F;in&#x2F;tasha-mccauley-25475a54</a>

She was involved with starting &quot;Fellow Robots&quot; in 2014, which is a spin-off of some sketchy for-profit AI &quot;university&quot; deal called &quot;Singularity University&quot;.AFAICT she&#x27;s notable because she&#x27;s been an academic and executive in the field for many years, in many different companies.

Looks like Tasha grew up in Santa Monica and currently works for RAND corporation. This is probably the most prestigious Defense think tank.The other board member, Helen Toner list for her twitter profile: &quot;Interests: China+ML, natsec+tech...&quot; and works for another Defense think tank.If there&#x27;s one way the CEO of fastest growing company in the world could get fired, it&#x27;s to essentially get his metaphoric security clearance pulled like Oppenheimer did.

I don&#x27;t know, but she&#x27;s also on the board of EVF UK [1], which is the largest effective altruism organization.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ev.org&#x2F;effective-ventures-foundation-uk&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ev.org&#x2F;effective-ventures-foundation-uk&#x2F;</a>

Most transparent Fed plant if I&#x27;ve ever seen one.

Yep.  Ilya + the CEO of Quora + some AI governance&#x2F;policy academic + the wife of an actor, together ousted Sam.

If I&#x27;m reading this correctly, that means Ilya must have voted against Sam + Greg, right?

Researchers&#x2F;scientists vs VCs seems to be the theme of what was going on behind the scenes, so that makes sense.

Unless I am missing something, this must mean that Ilya voted Sam out and Greg down.

Who were on OpenAI&#x27;s board?&quot;OpenAI is governed by the board of the OpenAI Nonprofit, comprised of OpenAI Global, LLC employees Greg Brockman (Chairman &amp; President), Ilya Sutskever (Chief Scientist), and Sam Altman (CEO), and non-employees Adam D’Angelo, Tasha McCauley, Helen Toner.&quot; [1][1]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;openai.com&#x2F;our-structure" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;openai.com&#x2F;our-structure</a>

I just purchased the film rights. Michael Cera&#x27;s playing Altman.

If they threw him out this suddenly, I think we&#x27;re going to find out.

Wow. I wonder what &quot;really&quot; happened.

Now this is going to start up all kinds of speculation.

Pretty sure that if that was the only reason, and they had him cornered like this, he&#x27;d abandon PanoptiCoin.  Nobody, not even he, thinks it is remotely close to the relevance level of OpenAI.

Yeah, I strongly suspect there’s some kind of self-dealing&#x2F;conflict of interest going on here. It’s one of the few things that would explain an immediate, public ouster. Undisclosed contracts that violate some kind of board prohibition would also qualify (e.g. military, as some others have speculated).

There&#x27;s a nonzero probability that Worldcoin&#x27;s shenanigans are correlated.

Oh well, Sam&#x27;s always got his creepy crypto eye thing to fallback on.

I think this is the most important detail here. The board is meant to follow the principles of the non-profit, that may have been the most important consideration here.

What are the parameters of the non-profit? Not having thriving as a goal for any org, even a non-profit, seems weird to me. Note that thriving is not synonymous with growing.

If OpenAI’s governing board is part of the nonprofit, their obligations are to the goals of the nonprofit, and “thriving” is not fundamentally the goal.

Unless Altman was taking actions in furtherance of the for-profit goals, while abandoning the non-profit goals, and not being honest to the board about this.This actually seems the most probable reason for this given the circumstances and phrasing.

From the statement it sounds like the board is still committed to running the company in pursuit of the initial non-profit goals and the transition to a for profit status was because of legal limitations. Really surprising to see this.

Extra strange that there is no spin here.

&gt; when they&#x27;re thrivingAre they?They are certainly making a large presence of themselves, but last I heard they were also burning capital to keep everything running. I have no idea if that is true or not, or what their current situation is... but if they truly are in the boat of &quot;losing money on every transaction, but making up for it with scale&quot;, that is not &quot;thriving&quot;, it is speeding towards a brick wall.

&gt;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 board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.Strangest thing in company&#x27;s PR when they&#x27;re thriving!

Episode 142 starts at about 1 hour 5 minutes if they&#x27;re talking about the one I just went back to watch.

Say what you will about Microsoft but they are Boy Scouts on investments. No chance anything illegal there.That said, Sam could have committed to an acquisition without the board&#x27;s approval or something insane like that.

Kickbacks from Microsoft would be my guess.

Could this be the reason they suspended new account signups?

WOW! Clearly some funny business going on at OpenAI, as people have speculated. I always assumed Sam Altman was too smart to be in a situation like this. I have heard grumblings about suspicious corporate structuring, behind the scenes profit taking, etc. All speculation though.The All In podcast had some words about this a few months ago, though they spoke in generalities.

I dont know much but I got a hunch from his eyes

Well, this has me concerned. There were times when it felt like OpenAI at large was trying to swim one way, while Sam was trying to swim another. In those cases I always thought Sam&#x27;s direction was the better one. From the outside this seems like a pretty big loss.

At least nothing public until just now with this development

Yes I think it will be obvious to people in hindsight that Sam is a deeply disturbed and dangerous individual, and so are many of his associates. You can tell just by listening to his public statements that the guy is off his rocker.

&gt; 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 board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.Ouch -- were there any signs this was coming?

I felt the same way during dev day, but brushed it off as inexperience

Well that was unexpected. To be fair, I got weird vibes from Sam when leading the keynote speech during the OpenAI devday, he seemed extremely nervous to me.

It strange - they could easily have done this with a different timeline and framed it as taking the company to the next level. Growing how fast they are definitely will require completely different leadership than when they were small.Definitely smells of a scandal - why else would they need to get him out so quick?

What prior ML&#x2F;AI experience does Sam have?

Good CEO leadership is critical... otherwise you end up with Google and an inability to deliver on any ML project.

oh 100%, but you need someone to steer the ship in the right direction.

&gt; Just take care of the rest of the companyNot many people can do that though

Sam Altman isn&#x27;t the brains in OpenAI, it is the research scientists and engineers. Just take care of the rest of the company and let these geniuses do what they do, thats the role for the ceo.

Ilya Sutskever is the AI prodigy, not Sam. And he is one of the board members that presumably voted to fire Altman.

&gt; the most successful company of all timeSource? According to what metric?

CTO pick is strange. But hey, it’s now a female led company so the board can pat itself on the back.

def some sort of scandal.The prodigy Altman is booted after creating potentially the most successful company of all time and replaced by CTO who had no prior ML&#x2F;AI experience becomes CEO. Wow.

This is quite unexpected. How instrumental is&#x2F;has been Sam Altman in shaping OpenAI and how much is OpenAIs ability to execute and ship a result of his leadership? A lot of it, little of it? Will be interesting to watch.

lol better than &quot;leaving to spend time twiddling the ol&#x27; thumbs&quot;

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Garden_leave" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Garden_leave</a>

My favorite is &quot;Leaving to spend more time with their family.&quot;

You weren&#x27;t kidding!&gt; I&#x27;m OK with having failed at this part of the journey. If Groupon was Battletoads, it would be like I made it all the way to the Terra Tubes without dying on my first ever play through.

Pour one out for Andrew. They did many things that didn&#x27;t scale that customers loved them for, and then couldn&#x27;t scale. They burned lots of cash on outside sales, i.e., flying a rep from another city to visit a potential client small restaurant. And being a publicly-traded company is often more trouble than it&#x27;s worth.PS: I used to live in a van on the street near the PA HQ. Someone there had a tiny trailer in the parking lot but I couldn&#x27;t tell if were living it or just storing it.

You sharing this made it the 6th most read article on the guardian today as of right now

This is why the groupon CEO&#x27;s firing letter remains undefeatedAfter four and a half intense and wonderful years as CEO of Groupon, I&#x27;ve decided that I&#x27;d like to spend more time with my family. Just kidding – I was fired today. If you&#x27;re wondering why ... you haven&#x27;t been paying attention.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2013&#x2F;mar&#x2F;01&#x2F;groupon-andrew-mason-fired-letter" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2013&#x2F;mar&#x2F;01&#x2F;grou...</a>

Would anyone believe a CEO of the leading company of the leading new technology would walk away from their company to hang out with their family? Hell, _that_ would make me more worried than anything else.

Usually, they say bs like &quot;He wants to leave to pursue other opportunities&quot;, you never hear something as candid as &quot;He is hindering us so we want to get rid of him&quot;

Translation: I&#x27;ve mastered the art of corporate BS speak and am willing to serve!

nice try, but your username betrays your dastardly ambitions.

&gt;Search process underway to identify permanent successor.Put me in, coach.As someone deeply entrenched in the realms of AI development and ethical considerations, boasting a robust leadership background, I stand poised to lead OpenAI into its next phase of innovation and ethical advancement. My tenure navigating the intersection of AI research, business acumen, and ethical frameworks provides a unique foundation. Having spearheaded AI initiatives that upheld ethical standards while fostering groundbreaking technological advancements, I bring a proven track record of synthesizing innovation with responsible AI practices. My commitment to leveraging AI for the betterment of society aligns seamlessly with OpenAI&#x27;s ethos, ensuring a continued pursuit of groundbreaking advancements in AI while maintaining a steadfast commitment to ethical, transparent, and socially responsible practices.

In the new business world of AI? Definitely.

This is the craziest thing I have ever seen.

That&#x27;s usually how things work. They&#x27;re aren&#x27;t any complaints or concerns, until they&#x27;re are. Obviously.

The OpenAI x Dota 2 stuff was a bit shady. They really wanted the crown of beating human players at one of the most complex real-time games, but to do so they had to drastically simplify the game rules (removing most heroes, changing courier mechanics).It would be like if AlphaGo could only win if the Go board was half as big. Not real fraud, but shows a clear willingness to cut corners and stretch ethics.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Worldcoin" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Worldcoin</a>

I agree. Have not heard a single concern about ethics in business ever raised about him before.

Because you can know someone non-well and think they&#x27;re a really good person. It&#x27;s not strong evidence, but it&#x27;s not nothing.

I&#x27;ve had a positive opinion of sama as a human ever since this comment about him living with his two brothers well into their 30s: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=12592010">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=12592010</a>It&#x27;s a corollary to my theory that anybody that maintains close ties with their family and lives with them is a wholesome person.

how do you know he&#x27;s a good person if you don&#x27;t know him well?

She&#x27;s voiced her allegations for years. Has something been brought up recently? Is she credible?

The statement claims he is no longer board chair but will stay with the company. Do you have other info?

Update: Greg Brockman is also out, which makes me think it&#x27;s more than just a Sam scandal.

I didn&#x27;t say he was normal. He&#x27;s clearly not (normal people don&#x27;t start OpenAI). That doesn&#x27;t preclude him for being a thoughtful person who wants the best for the world around him.

I vote no because New Zealand seems like a poor choice for possessing arms in a bunker.

Wasn&#x27;t that Peter Thiel?  Or did Sam do the same thing too?

Is that normal person behavior?Other than the part about having enough money to build a bunker in New Zealand, I&#x27;d say &quot;yes&quot;.

&gt; Is that normal person behavior?Normal people suck and are generally dumb as a brick (including me). Normal people don&#x27;t extrapolate calamities and don&#x27;t think ten steps ahead.

If I had loads of money I would absolutely do the same.It&#x27;s insurance. For someone with an average income, it&#x27;s not worth the cost of the .01% chance you&#x27;ll need it. For someone with more money than they know what to do with, it&#x27;s worth it.

He is the guy that built a bunker in New Zealand and has a ready made plan to escape on a motorcycle with his escape bag filled with guns, money and supplies when things collapse right? (At least I think he that guy) Is that normal person behavior?

Unless Sam has managed to fool a bucket load of smart people, your prediction is very unlikely to be true (or rather, I don&#x27;t want it to be true). Fuck.

I have zero knowledge of Sam Altman in any shape or form and literally the only thing I know about him is that he runs (or well, ran) OpenAI.But as a general point, you can be both a &quot;good person&quot; and still do bad things. Or you can be a good person in some areas, and a not-so-good person (or even horrible person) in some other areas. People are complex.Of course it&#x27;s entirely possible that Altman is just a really good person, but I wouldn&#x27;t be quick to make assumptions.

I&#x27;d never heard of that, but that definitely sounds shady. Thanks for mentioning it. To save people a search: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Worldcoin" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Worldcoin</a>

I first heard of him through the WorldCoin stuff, and nothing about that made him look like an upstanding person. That whole thing was&#x2F;is shady as hell.I certainly don&#x27;t know him, but I see more reasons not to trust him than to trust him.

If that ethos doesn&#x27;t involve illegally overstaying student visas like Musk or burning millions of dollars then have you really truly embraced the SV lifestyle?

I know Sam even less, but when I first moved to Valley a decade ago he went out of the way to help. I wanted try out a crazy startup idea on a student visa with limited connections in the Valley - he loved what I was doing and went above and beyond to help me out.It forever tuned me in to the ethos of Silicon Valley. And I have tried paying back where I can.

This sounds so naive, maybe google Worldcoin?A person I&#x27;ve known all my life I could swear and trust him with anything was found out to have violated extremely young children and other stuff.Stop pretending you know people, people don&#x27;t even know themselves.

This is so true - and thank you for the very important reminder!As I interview for new roles, it&#x27;s a timely lesson, suggesting how to test what a new employer is -really- like.

Ah yes—as the saying goes: “keep your friends at the Bayes-optimal distance corresponding to your level of confidence in their out-of-distribution behavior, and your enemies closer”

&gt; you don&#x27;t truly know someone unless you&#x27;ve had conflicts of interest with themThis hits a spot. I had a really nice boss.. Until we got into a conflict, then she tried to blackmail me, pressure me and break me. I learned why some people who left our company needed months to get back on their feet. I got out quite well and managed to push back, but it was a tough period.

Exceptionally well stated.  This agrees with my experience as well.

i could not say that any better.I had a feeling the man was a bit of a con, of course I won&#x27;t say I know for sure. But some of his actions, like his notorious eye scanning crypto project, or the fact that he was 100% in support of UBI and wanted to advocate for it only to go to different governments wanting regulations (that only benefitted them)People really really need to pay attention to their actions, not their words, jeezus. We&#x27;ll have another rogue Elon Musk who was once idol worshipped as the incredibly &quot;brilliant&quot; man...turned out he does some stupid things too only now he amassed billions of dollars he can pay his way out of stupid things.People never learn. Stop idolizing businessmen.

I learned this playing video games. After a while, I figured out that if I liked someone on my team, I should only friend them if we were losing. Otherwise, I might only like them in the 50% of games we win.

&gt; I know I won&#x27;t get a lot of love for this, but Sam is a really good person. I don&#x27;t know him well, but I&#x27;ve known him since long before OpenAI.&quot;Good&quot; is too blurry of a description, and I don&#x27;t know Sam, but one thing I&#x27;ve learned (the hard way) is that you don&#x27;t truly know someone unless you&#x27;ve had conflicts of interest with them and found mutually satisfying resolutions to them. If all you&#x27;ve had is mutually beneficial interactions, then of course everyone&#x27;s going to be nice - it&#x27;s in everyone&#x27;s interests. You need to see how they act on nontrivial conflicts (either handling present ones, or mitigating&#x2F;averting future ones) to really know if someone is a genuinely good person or not.While this could hypothetically happen within an hour of meeting someone, it&#x27;s more likely to take years or even decades... or might never even happen.

Organizations are systems, not people, if he put into place the right incentive structure then the company will go in a good direction with or without him. Arguably the structure is now set in stone with his departure.

isn&#x27;t this is an upside? a lot of fraudulent people are very nice and help everyone around.

I second this. As someone who&#x27;s operated in the startup and YC ecosystems for years, I&#x27;ve seen Sam help a lot of people with no clear upside for himself. He&#x27;s a net plus to Silicon Valley and SF by a long shot.

Sure, &quot;good person&quot; may sound generic. But he is still a good person trying to do the right things. To me it sounds like the board is afraid of being sued and needs to clearly appoint a scapegoat.

I do believe you are being genuine here, but good people still sometimes do bad things. Good people still have their blind spots, and the negative consequences of those blind spots are often exacerbated and have outsized (negative) impact on others when the person behind them is wealthy.I&#x27;ve never met the man, but I can say I have not been impressed by his words and attitude in public. I never got the sense or feeling that he&#x27;s actually doing right by the world.Ultimately it doesn&#x27;t matter if he&#x27;s a good or bad person; what matters is what he&#x27;s done.

Didn’t I just read a post about him abusing his sister? It seems impossible to judge people you don’t know well personally, and even then sometimes you can be surprisingly wrong.

I don&#x27;t want my eyeballs scanned though

Paul Graham saw this guy and immediately went “pattern matches my ideal genius”. My goodness.

Well, according to his sister, he used to molest her when he was 13, and she was 4, so...<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;phuckfilosophy&#x2F;status&#x2F;1635704398939832321?s=19" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;phuckfilosophy&#x2F;status&#x2F;163570439893983232...</a>

The world is not binary - least of all human behavior which for overwhelming majority is more accurately described as shades of gray

I know I won&#x27;t get a lot of love for this, but Sam is a really good person. I don&#x27;t know him well, but I&#x27;ve known him since long before OpenAI.He&#x27;s not perfect, but behind the scenes he&#x27;s a genuine and upstanding person. I&#x27;ve met lots of wealthy smart people, and he&#x27;s the only exception. He was the only person I trusted in this situation, and I&#x27;m genuinely nervous that he&#x27;s no longer running OpenAI.

Wow, this came out of nowhere. I hope the best for Mr. Altman, I&#x27;ve been impressed with what I&#x27;ve seen of him. I&#x27;m curious to know more about this story.

I have a feeling there’s going to be some “ceremony” now!

Wow, you can be leading a company during such a successful and interesting product and still be pushed out so unceremoniously

Military contract or sharing raw data with CIA, Palantir, Mossad, etc. would explain why they intervened (and why Sam and Greg couldn’t be candid: gag order).

Exactly what I was thinking but per another HN comment, the board doesn&#x27;t have any share in the company. It&#x27;s still very fishy

Most plausible hypothesis I’ve read so far

Would be really interesting if Microsoft wanted to acquire the whole thing and Sam stood in the way.

Perhaps something to do with the agreement that Microsoft only gets access to the pre-AGI AI and MS wanted the good stuff?

Sounds like a hostile takeover to me. Waiting to hear Sam&#x27;s side of the story.

I&#x27;m pretty sure there&#x27;ll be another big budget agi company soon...

I&#x27;m pretty sure there&#x27;ll be another big budget agi company soon

What? I don’t understand this at all after all those interviews and openAI profiles.It was always a bit strange that he never had a share nor took salary from OpenAI, but then what about his vision(and dream from childhood)to achieve AGI and all?

I am almost certain they already did. This is pretty bad!

So this is the non profit board. Maybe he was trying to influence the board members to make OpenAI a for profit company and the board saw that as a traitor move.The only other business thing I could think of is he moving openAI&#x27;s money to one of his other venture or for some other personal gain.I don&#x27;t think spending too much money in openAI could get him fired like this in current environment. Neither does overpromising stuff or something.

nah, probably some toxic sex stuff. i can&#x27;t think of any business reason for sam to be ousted. bribes, losing money, lies to the board? all good and well as long as the company stays the leader in the absolute most groundbreaking tech in human history so far.

It is integrated into main ChatGPT 4 now, just tell it to “search for bla”

Already dropped Bing integration in the iOS ChatGPT app

I have a strong gut feeling they&#x27;re about to mess things up.

Quickly scanning the title I thought &#x27;Leadership Transition&#x27; is yet another AI service announced.

Could we get a less vague title than &quot;leadership transition&quot; please?The subheading of the article, minus unnecessary words, would be a big improvement:<pre><code> Sam Altman departs OpenAI; interim replacement is CTO Mira Murati</code></pre>

This was so sudden I wondered if it was hacked&#x2F;fake in some market manipulation attempt. I didn&#x27;t see that coming...

Yeah, I wondered if that might have something to do with it, though afaik those allegations were made in 2021.

Not great, but also doesn&#x27;t seem to quite align with the wording in the press release.

Yeah it&#x27;s a huge coincidence that they get brought up again recently &amp; now this happens what seems like out the blue.

There were some sexual allegations popping out against him from his own sister, that he had SUPPOSEDLY abused her when they were kids or something. Again allegations are not proof! But I do wonder if they found anything more tangible on the record...

Presumably soon &quot;the CEO&quot; will just be GPT6 in a trenchcoat anyway.

This seems like a terrible decision by OpenAI. How does this benefit them?

Yeah but the CTO is now interim CEO.  Hard to imagine her getting the role if that was the case.

I&#x27;m betting that ridiculous offer they made last week to cover developer legal  fees has already blown up in their face

&quot;they lied about how they are using customer data&quot; -- possibly. it is in the inherent logic of the ai to gobble up as much data as physically possible

This is the most plausible speculation I&#x27;ve read here, really.

&gt; covered up a massive data breach or something similar to thatHonest question: do execs or companies in general ever suffer consequences for data breaches? Seems like basically no one cares about this stuff.

I bet the data breach being covered up is not customer data, but IP.  My #2 theory is that the breach is prompt data and it went to a nation-state adversary of the US.  Plenty of people putting sensitive work info into ChatGPT when they shouldn’t.

It might be related to this: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnbc.com&#x2F;2023&#x2F;11&#x2F;09&#x2F;microsoft-restricts-employee-access-to-openais-chatgpt.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnbc.com&#x2F;2023&#x2F;11&#x2F;09&#x2F;microsoft-restricts-employee...</a>Microsoft had inside information about their security, which is why they restricted access. Meanwhile, every other enterprise and gov organisation using ChatGPT is exposed.

Yeah, this is like, we are getting sued for billions of dollars and directors are going to jail bad.So my bet is either they lied about how they are using customer data, covered up a massive data breach or something similar to that. The only thing that&#x27;s a bit hard to figure there is how specific this is to Altman. A big scandal would be leaking out I would think and more people would be getting fired.

This, to me, seems like the most likely root cause: Sam was going too far into the &quot;for profit&quot; world, and lied to the board and misled them about his plans.

The board in question is the non-profit board.If Sam was pursuing profits or growth (even doing a really good job of it) in a way that violated the objectives set by the non-profit board, that could set up this kind of situation.

Yeah, this is like, we are getting sued for billions of dollars and directors are going to jail bad.So my bet is either they lied about how they are using customer data, covered up a massive data breach or something similar to that.

Yeah but what could possibly be the scam? OpenAI&#x27;s product works (most of the time).

I think an internal scam of OpenAI is more likely than OpenAI being a scam, if “scam” is even the right framing.

I don&#x27;t think so. LLMs are absolutely not a scam.  There are LLMs out there that I can and do run on my laptop that are nearly as good as GPT4.  Replacing GPT4 with another LLM is not the hardest thing in the world.  I predict that, besides Microsoft, this won&#x27;t be felt in the broader tech sector.

it’s not really possible for it to be a scam. if you want to see its product you can go and try it yourself

If OpenAI is somehow a scam there&#x27;s going to be a lot of tech stocks crashing next week.

For a company that&#x27;s executing so well (at least from an outside perspective), shipping so fast, growing so fast, and so ahead of the curve in arguably the hottest segment of the tech market, at this moment, to do this right now, means this must be REALLY bad.

OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman