Sam Altman is back as CEO of OpenAI after inking a deal to return to the company following immense pressure from employees and investors on the board that ousted him less than a week ago.
I’m still wondering why he was even fired in the first place. I’d thought that perhaps I just hadn’t paid proper enough attention and missed the reason, but nope, no reason was ever given.
There were some rumours that he was pushing the commercial side too fast, potentially ignoring ethical issues. Given Altmans lobbying against AI regulation in the EU I find that plausible.
Since now apparently the investors won it proves that the special structure of for-profit owned by non-profit intended to keep them honest does not work - and we urgently need to have regulation in place, as self-regulation does not work.
The “Private investor” in this case is Microsoft, which “graciously” offered to bring all the staff into their own new AI project. This is 100% an investor (a.k.a microsoft) win.
It’s hard to tell from the outside - but at the beginning it mainly looked like pressure from the investors. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’d been a lot of activity from them behind the scenes, and the “90% leaving” part wasn’t really “standing up for Altman”, but more “follow the money”, with investors possibly pressuring employees in various ways.
The reason that makes the most sense in one of the articles I’ve read is that they fired him after he tried to push out one of the board members.
Replacing that board member with an ally would have cemented control over the board for a time. They might not have felt his was being honest in his motives for the ousting, so it was basically fire now, or lose the option to fire him in the future.
I’m still wondering why he was even fired in the first place. I’d thought that perhaps I just hadn’t paid proper enough attention and missed the reason, but nope, no reason was ever given.
There were some rumours that he was pushing the commercial side too fast, potentially ignoring ethical issues. Given Altmans lobbying against AI regulation in the EU I find that plausible.
Since now apparently the investors won it proves that the special structure of for-profit owned by non-profit intended to keep them honest does not work - and we urgently need to have regulation in place, as self-regulation does not work.
deleted by creator
The “Private investor” in this case is Microsoft, which “graciously” offered to bring all the staff into their own new AI project. This is 100% an investor (a.k.a microsoft) win.
deleted by creator
It’s hard to tell from the outside - but at the beginning it mainly looked like pressure from the investors. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’d been a lot of activity from them behind the scenes, and the “90% leaving” part wasn’t really “standing up for Altman”, but more “follow the money”, with investors possibly pressuring employees in various ways.
The reason that makes the most sense in one of the articles I’ve read is that they fired him after he tried to push out one of the board members.
Replacing that board member with an ally would have cemented control over the board for a time. They might not have felt his was being honest in his motives for the ousting, so it was basically fire now, or lose the option to fire him in the future.
Edit: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/21/technology/openai-altman-board-fight.html
Trust the board, bro.