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.
I’m not sure if I’d call this an investor win. More or less 90% of the company threatened to leave. It made sense on their part to do whatever it took to get him back. Anyways, looks like he stopped for a couple seconds to think about how smart it really was to join Microsoft.
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.
Well, kind of. It’s a bad look for MS to be so heavily invested in such a dumpster fire of a corporation, so it’s okay for them it got resolved, but they would have won out more if Altman had joined them. It was the other investors, including a number of employees, who would have really lost out if the company had just collapsed in on itself like it immediately started doing. This got resolved sort of against MS’s best interests.
So, sure, investor win. But MS more or less lost this one.
I generally agree that it’s unlikely the non-profit structure is going to do its job here, I’ve seen something like it more or less work on a smaller scale with things that are less intensely of interest to the entire capitalist class, although I have no idea what kind of regulations we’d end up with considering how many oligopolists are involved.
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.
We fired the guy for a reason, it was a good reason honest, no we’re not going to tell you what it was. Anyway we’ve hired him back now so it’s fine, stop asking questions.
They have been asked to provide that by the media, the first temporary CEO they named, and their investors, some of which even threatened to sue of they didn’t disclose it. So either it is something so discriminating to the board they’re willing to rather sink with it, or they actually don’t have anything solid at all and fired him without cause bue to something personal/unprofessional.
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.
I’m not sure if I’d call this an investor win. More or less 90% of the company threatened to leave. It made sense on their part to do whatever it took to get him back. Anyways, looks like he stopped for a couple seconds to think about how smart it really was to join Microsoft.
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.
Well, kind of. It’s a bad look for MS to be so heavily invested in such a dumpster fire of a corporation, so it’s okay for them it got resolved, but they would have won out more if Altman had joined them. It was the other investors, including a number of employees, who would have really lost out if the company had just collapsed in on itself like it immediately started doing. This got resolved sort of against MS’s best interests.
So, sure, investor win. But MS more or less lost this one.
I generally agree that it’s unlikely the non-profit structure is going to do its job here, I’ve seen something like it more or less work on a smaller scale with things that are less intensely of interest to the entire capitalist class, although I have no idea what kind of regulations we’d end up with considering how many oligopolists are involved.
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.
I read something about him not being honest with the board, or keeping things from them? Didn’t see any elaboration, though.
That’s all they have said as well.
We fired the guy for a reason, it was a good reason honest, no we’re not going to tell you what it was. Anyway we’ve hired him back now so it’s fine, stop asking questions.
They have been asked to provide that by the media, the first temporary CEO they named, and their investors, some of which even threatened to sue of they didn’t disclose it. So either it is something so discriminating to the board they’re willing to rather sink with it, or they actually don’t have anything solid at all and fired him without cause bue to something personal/unprofessional.
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.