Now they want their CEO back

https://www.wsj.com/tech/openai-trying-to-get-sam-altman-back-4b728049?st=6qszp0nreaheupb&reflink=article_copyURL_share

Bizarre situation but the CEO put himself in that position the way he set up governance.

Supposedly Microsoft was made aware about 1 minute before he got fired.

Might be they disagree with the approach.

DubFalls said:

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Supposedly Microsoft was made aware about 1 minute before he got fired.

Might be they disagree with the approach.

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He's thinking about starting his own company. It's all fun & games until Microsoft invests $13 billion into a company that's devoid of talent bc he poached it.

Good point, and related I find this hilarious

behind the scenes pic.twitter.com/ZA5v6GN48h

— Gaurav (@gaxrav) November 19, 2023

This is sort of has a college football recruiting/coaching feel

CEO was going to be back in, board decides to hire a different CEO, now Sam is going to Microsoft

PLTR may be picking some up too. It is rocking 52W high.

YouBet said:

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Philip J Fry said:

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Good job OpenAI. You just killed your entire company. Won't have to worry about your AI taking over the world now.

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Now benevolent Microsoft will be our overlords. I wonder if they are going to name Altmans new division SkyNet?

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They are a merciful overlord

Excellent aquihire by Microsoft for $0. The OpenAI board save them tens of billions of dollars.

what am I missing here, does Microsoft get their $13B investment into OpenAI back?

Seems like they made the best of a bad situation, but far from ideal

The 13b that has been spent (a lot of it was in compute) is basically a sunk cost. Between….

1 - owning a large stake in the juggernaut that was Thursday OpenAI

2 - having Sam vs a neutered OpanAI

They're better off with #3

possibly. I don't expect OpenAi to just roll over and die, but I guess we'll see.

Oddly, I would think that unless Microsoft wants to completely walk away from their current investment in OpenAi, they now have a large conflict.

I'm sure there are many smarter people than myself working on this though.

Yah, Microsoft seems to be in an awkward position here, guess that Sam did not have a strong non-compete agreement.

don't think non-competes are enforceable in California.

It's a company (or whatever you want to call their structure) with an EV of $86 billion with no hard assets and now 90% of employees want to go to Microsoft. I'm sure the code can't explicitly be copied, but I wonder how long it would take for them to recreate it. If I'm Microsoft, writing off the $13 billion investment is more than a fair trade for gaining all the employees, though I'm sure there will be a lawsuit coming from OpenAI and other investors. Plenty of legal questions I can't answer.

Cartographer said:

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Step one: convince a rogue board member to oust the CEO.

Step two: make a stink about how shocked you are.

Step three: hire the CEO and the workers follow him.

Step four: hire them all and watch OpenAI fail.

Step five: force a hostile takeover of the now bankrupt company and take their well trained models.

Step six: laugh maniacally

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I do step 6 between 3 & 4

Not a lawyer, but I saw speculation that Microsoft is actually worse off with them operating under the Microsoft banner than under a separate entity. Partially due to the bureaucracy/structures that exist within Microsoft limiting the new entities ability to adapt/innovate, and partially because they are exposed to any damages that result from hallucinations in the system. Meaning if the system improperly makes claims about individuals or misadvises individual that can now be exposed to legal action where as when it was operated as an independent entity they were shielded.

Step four is in full force tonight.

Biggest outage I can recall since the early days and there's no way it's due to kids doing homework tonight.

They're going back to OpenAI as of today

I was going to point out that I hope Altman enjoys his newfound corporate bureaucratic life where he is constantly doing HR crap, performing leadership requirements and duties, and generally not doing a damn thing to advance what he loves.

He's going to hate it if he actually wants to still be involved with his own baby.

So what is really going on here? The company was founded on the following mission and the only thing I can come up with is that the dollar sign potential is now in conflict with the mission. Was the board trying to protect the mission with the onslaught of money now involved?

Quote:

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OpenAI was founded in 2015 and is governed by a nonprofit organization with a board devoted to making artificial general intelligence safe and available for all. Under that structure, the board has no obligation to protect investor returns, but to ensure that the company's technology is beneficial for humanity, according to OpenAI's website.

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Strange saga.

I somehow missed that our own Will Hurd was on the OpenAi board until recently.

And Sam Altman is back in charge. I cannot wait for Michael Lewis's book on this.

Not that my post was really insightful at all but i seem to have been correct.

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-accelerationists-come-out-ahead-with-sam-altmans-return-to-openai-a249605c?st=cukqtnoxu59akzq&reflink=article_copyURL_share

It's the safety camp (the old BoD) vs "accelerationists" who want to create a super intelligence. The latter won the so we should probably be all the more leery and frankly frightened of this outcome.

It was always going to happen anyway

Alternatively, putting constraints on a system can result in unintended consequences that are worse than the unconstrained system. Just look at the government for an example.

Put constraints on a system it becomes an "appropriateness" seeker rather than a truth seeker.