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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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.

EDITED TO ADD direct link to OpenAI board announcement:
https://openai.com/blog/openai-announces-leadership-transition

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[-] Nobody@lemmy.world 296 points 1 year ago

"AI is going to take away jobs."

"Wait... not like that."

[-] antrosapien@lemmy.ml 44 points 1 year ago

Oops... didnt see that coming

[-] yoz@aussie.zone 21 points 1 year ago

He got billions in his account. I dont think he cares. For them job is something to do to not get bored, I guess?

[-] kromem@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago

Pretty much literally not about the money for him.

He didn't have any equity and didn't get a salary.

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[-] kromem@lemmy.world 194 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I've seen a number of misinformed comments here complaining about a profit oriented board.

It's worth keeping in mind that this board was the original non-profit board, that none of the members have equity, and literally part of the announcement is the board saying that they want to be more aligned as a company with the original charter of helping bring about AI for everyone.

There may be an argument around Altman's oust being related to his being too closed source and profit oriented, but the idea that the reasoning was the other way around is pretty ludicrous.

Again - this isn't an investor board of people who put money into the company and have equity they are trying to protect.

[-] drmoose@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago

So what is their board here if they aren't investors?

[-] kromem@lemmy.world 43 points 1 year ago

It's a non-profit.

OpenAI is a non-profit with a board which owns the LLC which is what was invested into and makes money.

This was not the LLC board, but the non-profit board in charge of the whole thing.

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[-] xantoxis@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago

I don't know why you're being downvoted, this is a good question that not everyone knows the answer to. (It's been answered above me, but just so we're clear, any large organization can have a board of directors, whether they invest money or not. A board of directors isn't necessarily "the people who have money", it's the people who set the direction.)

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[-] TootSweet@lemmy.world 107 points 1 year ago

I'm more surprised that the folks at OpenAI saw fit to fire him than I am that he committed fireable offenses.

[-] MotoAsh@lemmy.world 58 points 1 year ago

Because he lied to them instead of for them.

[-] peopleproblems@lemmy.world 26 points 1 year ago

But what he lied about is probably bigger news.

This has corporate PR speak all over it, but it is clear that it was circumventing the desires of the Board, and the chairman of the Board steps down as well.

The absolute hell happened?

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[-] zorlan@lemmy.world 87 points 1 year ago

The company is now actually being run by ChatGPT, Mira is just the face it's hiding behind.

[-] rynzcycle@kbin.social 55 points 1 year ago

I asked Bard to give me a generic reason for firing a CEO.

Certainly, here are some vague reasons for firing the CEO of an AI company:
Leadership concerns: The CEO's leadership style or personal conduct was not in line with the company's values or culture. This could include issues such as lack of transparency, poor communication, or ethical breaches.

Yup.

[-] Paradachshund@lemmy.today 11 points 1 year ago

Bard is on copium with that last one.

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[-] baduhai@sopuli.xyz 37 points 1 year ago

I am actually very surprised. Did not see this coming.

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[-] tdawg@lemmy.world 35 points 1 year ago

OpenAI also announced that co-founder Greg Brockman will be stepping down as chairman of the board, though he will remain at the company.

Interesting. No way this isn't connected

[-] ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world 25 points 1 year ago

Yeah. Given the language (Altman lied to them) and the chairman stepping down (but remaining in the C-suite) I'm starting to think that maybe Altman was trying to take something in an unapproved direction and present it as a fait accompli but got found out before he was ready to reveal it.

I added the direct link to the board's announcement to the post text so people can see it for themselves -- interesting how the board separated Altman's removal from Brockman's demotion by five paragraphs, adding Brockman's changed position just before the end almost as an afterthought. Which of course it isn't, lol.

[-] kromem@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

He just resigned like 30m ago.

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[-] MargotRobbie@lemmy.world 33 points 1 year ago

Not exactly surprised here. Every time I've seen him on the news, it's always him fearmongering about the dangers of generative AI, when ChatGPT is burning through money and seemed to become more and more restrictive with every iteration. You can't run an organization if it is built on top of lies.

Actually open models (not open source, sadly) like specialized LLaMa 2 derivatives that could be ran and fine-tuned locally seems to be the future, because there seems to be a diminishing return in training/inference power to usefulness, and specialized smaller model tuned for specific applications are much more flexible than a giant general one that can only be used on somebody else's machine.

[-] kromem@lemmy.world 25 points 1 year ago

because there seems to be a diminishing return in training/inference power to usefulness

Be careful not to be caught up in the application of Goodhart's Law going on in the field right now.

There's plenty of things GPT-4 trounces everything else on, they just tend to be things outside the now standardized body of tests, which suggests the tests have become the target and are no longer effective measurements.

This is perhaps most apparent in things like Orca, where we directly use the tests as the target, have GPT-4 generate synthetic data that improves Llama performance on the target, and then see large gains in smaller models on the tests.

But those new models don't necessarily have the same capabilities on more abstract capabilities, such as the recent approach of using analogy to solve problems.

We are arguably becoming too myopic in how we are measuring the success of new models.

[-] RobotToaster@mander.xyz 33 points 1 year ago

He hallucinated to the board.

[-] KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 30 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Oh no, anyways

This is unprecedented. They let that schmuck at Unity "retire" on a holiday but they fired Sam. Oof.

It sounds like there was a power struggle over the direction of OpenAI.

[-] sugarfree@lemmy.world 28 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This is really big news, going to be interesting if anything leaks or if we stay in the dark. For Altman to be fired and for them to release a statement like this it has to be something drastic.

[-] IvanOverdrive@lemm.ee 26 points 1 year ago

My guess — and this is pure conjecture — MS canned him because Bing didn't eat Google's lunch.

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[-] starbreaker@kbin.social 19 points 1 year ago

CEO? Fuck him. He'll be just fine.

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[-] jeffw@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago

On one hand, this was posted 15 minutes before you posted this... on the other hand, this is a much clearer headline

[-] ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world 33 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Really? I searched by new before I posted, saw nothing about Sam Altman.

EDITED TO ADD you can color me blind, because yeah, there's one titled "OpenAI announces leadership transition" right before mine. Shit. Not sure how to handle this, but if the mods want to delete mine they can.

[-] papalonian@lemmy.world 48 points 1 year ago

Not sure how to handle this,

In times of great dishonor, the Samurai would commit seppuku with their sword.

[-] ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world 32 points 1 year ago

I have half a plastic knife I use on the cat food . . . will that do?

[-] EvilCartyen@feddit.dk 19 points 1 year ago

Only if you post the video

[-] ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago

I think I'm gonna need to upgrade my current drug regimen . . . be right back . . .

[-] MxM111@kbin.social 14 points 1 year ago

Alternatively, you can do sudoku.

[-] Jerkface@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago

But he still has to do it with the plastic knife.

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[-] Decoy321@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago
[-] ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world 53 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

No idea, but given how sudden and out-of-the-blue this is, and the fact that he was co-founder of OpenAI (meaning that to some degree the board is pushing him out of his own company) you can make an educated guess that's it's huge.

~~My guess, personally, is financial malfeasance,~~ if only because personal misbehavior usually involves some hemming and hawing before a company concludes that the ejectee "is no longer a good fit and does not represent the values held by our organization." This was very sudden, no one saw it coming, and that's not too usual.

I guess we'll see, lol.

EDITED TO ADD I've changed my mind after a closer look at the wording of the board announcement. Given the language (Altman lied to them) and the chairman stepping down (but remaining in the C-suite) I’m starting to think that maybe Altman was trying to take something in an unapproved direction and present it as a fait accompli but got found out before he was ready to reveal it:

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. (paragraph 3)

As a part of this transition, Greg Brockman will be stepping down as chairman of the board and will remain in his role at the company, reporting to the CEO. (paragraph 6)

[-] kromem@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

It's worth keeping in mind the explicit mention of their key responsibility at the end, which was the original non-profit charter of "ensuring that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity."

[-] seaQueue@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Whatever it was it's spicy enough that they're trying to bury the press release in the late Friday afternoon news graveyard

Edit: even better, whatever they're trying to distance themselves from is so important they didn't even wait for the closing bell on the market.

[-] vxx@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I interpret their wording that he lied to the board repeadetly and made some unethical backdoor deals of evil.

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this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2023
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