Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI - Ars Technica

[BootinUp]

Morning. I am just reading this now with you. Not sure what to make of it all yet, but you may know that I am a huge skeptic of LLM AI.

Microsoft CEO Nadella "furious"; OpenAI President and three senior researchers resign.
BENJ EDWARDS - 11/18/2023, 6:24 AM

On Friday, OpenAI fired CEO Sam Altman in a surprise move that led to the resignation of President Greg Brockman and three senior scientists. The move also blindsided key investor and minority owner Microsoft, reportedly making CEO Satya Nadella furious. As Friday night wore on, reports emerged that the ousting was likely orchestrated by Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever over concerns about the safety and speed of OpenAI's tech deployment.

OpenAI President Greg Brockman quits as shocked employees hold all-hands meeting
"This was the board doing its duty to the mission of the nonprofit, which is to make sure that OpenAI builds AGI that benefits all of humanity," Sutskever told employees at an emergency all-hands meeting on Friday afternoon, as reported by The Information.

Key questions remain about accusations made against Altman in the OpenAI blog post that announced his departure, where the board said that Altman "was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities." That has yet to be clarified by the company, but insiders say the move was mostly a power play that resulted from a cultural schism between Altman and Sutskever over Altman's management style and drive for high-profile publicity. On September 29, Sutskever tweeted, "Ego is the enemy of growth."

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/11/report-sutskever-led-board-coup-at-openai-that-ousted-altman-over-ai-safety-concerns/


Me: There was news I missed earlier that must have something to do with the companies charge that Altman was not being candid: From the Register which covers all tech industry news daily:

OpenAI pauses ChatGPT Plus sign-ups as it 'hits capacity'


If only there was an investor with a scalable cloud to hand...

Richard Speed Wed 15 Nov 2023 // 17:00 UTC
Users ready to part with cold, hard cash for OpenAI's ChatGPT Plus service will no doubt be disappointed to learn that sign-ups are being paused following what's claimed to be a surge in demand.

The super-lab's CEO, Sam Altman, posted the notification on X, which followed rising interest after OpenAI's first development conference, OpenAI DevDay, in San Francisco on November 6.

The Register has asked OpenAI to confirm the CEO's policy and will update should the outfit respond.

OpenAI used its DevDay event to launch the GPT-4 Turbo model as well as to plug OpenAI's indemnification plan, Copyright Shield. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella appeared there to gush about the wonders of AI and talk about how it pertains to services such as Azure.

Continued at link https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/15/openai_pauses_chatgpt_plus_signups/

[usonian]

1. Some Redditors, perhaps including insiders posting anonymously, commented on Sam.

https://old.reddit.com/user/Anxious_Bandicoot126/

One obvious insider posted:

He got high on his own supply once ChatGPT hit, thinking rules didn't apply to him.

No doubt we needed to capitalize on momentum and scale fast. But Sam wanted growth at literally any cost - quality, ethics, safety be damned. He wasn't just moving fast, he wanted to break things and didn't care who warned him otherwise.
Dude was shoving half-baked projects out the door without even basic testing.

This wasn’t just a pace issue. Sam lost his compass in the hype storm. He tried turning us into his personal rocketship to fame and fortune. That wasn't the mission.

The board saw he cared about Sam first, OpenAI second. Needed to be reined in before he flew us into a cliff. Believe me, this was about stopping a narcissist, not stifling innovation.

[stopdiggin]

2. thanks.

If this is accurate - then the rare case of a board reining in the 'hard charging CEO' type - BEFORE he drives the bus off the cliff. Doesn't happen near often enough.

[BootinUp]

3. I've suspected that Altman was operating as described for some time.

He covered it by making up scary stories and acting like he was on the sane side of things.

I think its not a coincidence, that this happened soon after Biden's executive order.

The problem now for the company is they do not have a sustainable business model and now they have a huge setback losing key researchers. And artificial general intelligence (or AGI) which is their re-stated goal is unachievable to boot, in my opinion and in the opinions of others that are more knowledgeable than me.

So I don't think they will last long unless Microsoft bails them out with more money which would be a temporary extension. They will be a ghost company at best.