[baidifnaoxi]

- Cant be a personal scandal, press release would be worded much more differently

- Board is mostly independent and those independent dont have equity

- They talk about not being candid - this is legalese for “lying”

The only major thing that could warrant something like this is Sam going behind the boards back to make a decision (or make progress on a decision) that is misaligned with the Charter. Thats the only fireable offense that warrants this language.

My bet: Sam initiated some commercial agreement (like a sale) to an entity that would have violated the “open” nature of the company. Likely he pursued a sale to Microsoft without the board knowing.

[podnami]

Doesn’t make any sense. He is ideologically driven - why would he risk a once in a lifetime opportunity for a mere sale?

Desperate times calls for desperate measures. This is a swift way for OpenAI to shield the business from something which is a PR disaster, probably something which would make Sam persona non grata in any business context.

[kashyapc]

From where I'm sitting (not in Silicon Valley; but Western EU), Altman never inspired long-term confidence in heading "Open"AI (the name is an insult to all those truly working on open models, but I digress). Many of us who are following the "AI story" have seen his recent communication / "testimony"[1] with the US Congress.

It was abundantly obvious how he was using weasel language like "I'm very 'nervous' and a 'little bit scared' about what we've created [at OpenAI]" and other such BS. We know he was after "moat" and "regulatory capture", which we know where it all leads to — a net [long-term] loss for the society.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35960125

[dogcomplex]

He claims to be ideologically driven. OpenAI's actions as a company up til now point otherwise

[ammma]

I love that you think Sam A is ideologically driven - dive a little deeper than the surface. man's a snake

[brap]

Same guy who ran a crypto scam that somehow involved scanning the retinas of third-world citizens?

[strikelaserclaw]

like SBF and his effective altruism?

[smcleod]

I highly doubt he's ideologically driven. He's as much of a VC loving silicon valley tech-bro as the next. The company has been anything but "open".

[bmitc]

> He is ideologically driven

Is that actually confirmed? What has he done to make that a true statement? Is he not just an investor? He seems pretty egoist like every other Silicon Valley venture capitalist and executive.

[PaulRobinson]

It is probably - for him - a once in a lifetime sale.

[goatherders]

Billions of dollars is a "mere sale?"

Lol

[pbadams]

Altman has claimed before that he doesn't hold equity in OpenAI. He could have some kind of more opaque arrangement that gives him a material stake in the financial success of OpenAI, and downplayed it or didn't disclose it to the board.

Who knows, though -- I'm sure we'll find out more in the next few weeks, but it's fun to guess.

[chubot]

Yeah that's my guess too. The claim that he doesn't hold equity always struck me as suspect. It's a little like SBF driving around in the Toyota Corolla while buying tens of millions of dollars of real estate for himself and his family.

It's better to claim your stake in a forthright way, than to have some kind of lucrative side deal, off the books.

For a non-profit, there was too much secrecy about the company structure (the shift to being closed rather than Open), the source of training data, and the financial arrangements with Microsoft. And a few years ago a whole bunch of employees left to start a different company/non-profit, etc.

It feels like a ton of stuff was simmering below the surface.

(I should add that I have no idea why someone who was wealthy before OpenAI would want to do such a thing, but it's the only reason I can imagine for this abrupt firing. There are staggering amounts of money at play, so there's room for portions of it to be un-noticed.)

[leptons]

He's not just a CEO, he's a co-founder, and thinking he has no stake in the company is just ridiculous.

[numbsafari]

Could be that they had an expectation that he not own stock in MSFT since they have such a direct relationship there and found out that he has been holding shares in MSFT.

[jy1]

Doesn't everyone at openai have "profit participation units"? https://www.levels.fyi/blog/openai-compensation.html

[enonimal]

Worldcoin deserves a look: https://worldcoin.org/

[Solvency]

What kind of opaque arrangement? What would be better than equity?

[ignoramous]

Kara Swisher just tweeted that MSFT knew about it merely minutes before the statement went out: https://twitter.com/karaswisher/status/1725657068575592617

Folks like Schmidt, Levchin, Chesky, Conrad have twitter posts up that weirdly read like obituaries.

[mark_l_watson]

Check out Microsoft’s stock price today. Looks like it dropped by almost $50B at one point.

EDIT Microsoft is such a huge company, so maybe this is not a big deal?

[kashyapc]

On lying: There's a great irony here. Altman apparently accepted[1] "Hawking Fellowship Award on behalf of OpenAI" at the University of Cambridge.

I kid you not, sitting in a fancy seat, Altman is talking about "Platonic ideals". See the penultimate question on whether AI should be prescriptive or descriptive about human rights (around 1h 35sec mark). I'll let you decide what to make of it.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjpNG0CJRMM&t=3632s

[ohbleek]

Am I misunderstanding his answer, or does he not essentially say it should be "descriptive"? In which case, I misunderstood what your comment is implying.

[robbie-c]

> Cant be a personal scandal, press release would be worded much more differently

I'm not sure, I agree with your point re wording but the situation with his sister that really got resolved, so I can't help but wonder if it's related. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QDczBduZorG4dxZiW/sam-altman...

[cedarseagull]

It seems like if it was the Annie Altman accusations, they could have just paid her off. If they wanted him around and he was a creep, there are ways to make this stuff go away. AFAIK a lot of the sister's accusations were accompanied by being excluded from the father's will. Not saying she made it up, but it seems like if those grievances are bundled, there's a easy way to make that problem go away.

[paxys]

Why do people think it has to be some single big incident? Sam Altman has been the head of OpenAI for many years now, while the company has been in intense public spotlight only in the recent few months. The dynamic today is very different from 2019 or whenever he was hired. He also doesn't have any voting shares, which means he is entirely at the mercy of the board. It's entirely possible that they simply don't like the direction he has been taking the company in, and today was more of some minor straw that broke the camel's back situation.

[cowl]

The knives out language is very unusual for any CEO dismissal. The urgent timing (they didnt even wait for the closure of markets just 30 min later, causing MSFT to lose billions). Anything less than massive Legal and Financial/regulatory risk or a complete behind the back Deal with someone, would have been handled with much more calm and a much less adversive language. Also Greg Borkman has now resigned after it was annoucned that he would step down as chairman of the board. https://twitter.com/gdb/status/1725667410387378559

[sainez]

If it was a simple disagreement in direction then (1) the transition wouldn't be so abrupt and (2) they wouldn't publicly call him a liar.

[romanhn]

Or rejected a sale without the board knowing.

[givemeethekeys]

Are non-profit businesses allowed to sell? Who gets the money?

[fudged71]

This seems more likely!

[DiogoSnows]

It could also be related to a conflict of interests (or unreasonable use of OpenAI resources) with his other Ventures and investments which he failed to disclose?

[jameyk]

This is the most likely. Also considering Humane recently announced their AI Pin and Sam has a large stake in that company.

[tompetry]

Not so sure about that. It reads to me like there is a personal scandal on the horizon that has come to the board's attention, and the board feels their hands are tied. Hard for me to believe its business decision related; Sam is elite in this regard, and is not really incentivized to violate their charter.

Bummer in any situation... the progress in this domain is truly exciting, and OpenAI was executing so well. This will slow things down considerably.

[JohnFen]

> would have violated the “open” nature of the company

What's "open" about OpenAI?

[kazinator]

Probably about the same thing as what is open about The Open Group (formed when X/Open merged with The Open Software Foundation), the Open Look graphical interface, and such abuses of "open". OpenGL, OpenMax, ...

[wickedsickeune]

The door for a CEO

[km3r]

Tbh surprised some of the personal stuff hasn't come to light. Nothing horrendous, but enough to push him out of any CEO role.

[thequadehunter]

Like what?

[dizzydes]

Like what?

[jsksjfjksmekfiz]

That is no exaggeration absolutely a horrendous thing and is likely going to get him killed one way or another as it comes out. I've finally found a plausible explanation for his deranged savior of humanity shtick (thats the only way he can live with himself I'm sure). If that is indeed his sister (which I believe is established beyond a reasonable doubt by what I just read), I would not vote to convict anyone that strangled him or to death in public, and every single person that knew but did not say anything ought to be expelled from society so thoroughly that they die of exposure and never earn another cent from anybody. Including each and every one of you motherfucking pieces of shit on this site that knew about this and weren't shouting it from the rooftops.

[angryasian]

Could world coin be a part of this ? Its weird he'd use open AI for world coin?

[paulddraper]

> Cant be a personal scandal

And Brockman (Chairman of the board) has resigned.

https://twitter.com/gdb/status/1725667410387378559

[neilkk]

That doesn't mean it's not a personal scandal. If Brockman disagreed with the board about the advisability of firing him for whatever personal scandal it was, this is how you'd expect things to play out.

[P_I_Staker]

It is a personal scandal and I thought it was obvious from the press release.

Prior to the Reddit comments, I thought this might be the case, but perhaps I was somehow influenced. Actually, I thought it would be something inappropriate in the workplace.

His sister says he molested her when he was a teenager.

The way these things break, I’m not surprised it went down that way. Here’s what I thought reading the release: “They had to fire him before deciding on what to actually say eg. to formally accuse him”

It seemed like signaling that this is someone firing him kinda desperately. When you discover a diddler theres some weird shit when people panic and suddenly drop catapult them out of their lives… they just start leaping out of moving cars and shit to get away.

Keep in mind there could be ongoing investigations, definitely strategies being formed. They can get to a point in an investigation where they’re virtually 100% he molested his sister, but can’t really prove it yet. What they do have is irrefutable evidence of lying about something incredibly serious. Gets him out of the building and powers stripped today.

[whynotminot]

The sister has been making these accusations for months and nothing happened. What changed today?

[SamAltmanRapist]

I'm virtually 100% sure he did it after just looking into it today so I can see exactly what you're saying about people backflipping out of cars and stuff to get away from it.

[jayde2767]

I have no knowledge of why, but it seems it's always about the money or the power/control. I cannot wait to see what it is...

[sainez]

I agree this is the most likely explanation. Is it possible Sam tried to wrestle power away from the board? He wouldn't even need to sell the whole company, just enough tech for a large company to kill OpenAI.

[SheinhardtWigCo]

Or, not commercial, but military/gov.

[smolder]

Yeah. OpenAI is valuable not just commercially, but to the worlds governments, some of which can probably find ways to force out leadership they don't get along with.

[andrewstuart]

Prediction: board resignation.

Sam Altman returns.

[jnaina]

Prediction:

1/ Sam goes on to create NeXTAI and starts wearing mostly turtleneck sweaters and jeans 2/ OpenAI buys NeXTAI 3/ OpenAI board appoints Sam Altman as Interim CEO

[eshack94]

Wild take, but that would sure be a sight to see. I'm not speculating at the moment, since I know nothing about the situation.

[PDSCodes]

Turn that on it’s head - was he standing in the way of a commercial sale or agreement with Microsoft!

He may not be the villain.

But who knows, it feels like an episode of silicon valley!

[jablongo]

If you look at who is on the board, how it's structured (they don't have equity right?), it seems like it's actually because he violated the charter. Why would Ilya Sutskever punish Sam for doing the right thing wrt AI safety?

[cooper_ganglia]

This was my first thought after seeing a clip of Sam and Satya during OpenAI's DevDay. I wonder if he was standing in the way of a Microsoft acquisition, and Microsoft has just forced in those who would allow the purchase to happen?

I don't know, so much wild speculation all over the place, it's all just very interesting.

[DonHopkins]

I can do anything I want with her - Silicon Valley S5:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29MPk85tMhc

>That guy definitely fucks that robot, right?

That "handsy greasy little weirdo" Silicon Valley character Ariel and his robot Fiona were obviously based on Ben Goertzel and Sophia, not Sam Altman, though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Goertzel

https://www.reddit.com/r/SiliconValleyHBO/comments/8edbk9/th...

>The character of Ariel in the current episode instantly reminded me of Ben Goertzel, whom i stumbled upon couple of years ago, but did not really paid close attention to his progress. One search later:

VIDEO Interview: SingularityNET's Dr Ben Goertzel, robot Sophia and open source AI:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKbltBLaFeI

[adrr]

Who owns the equity and who has dedicated seats on the board? Altman can easily just boot the board if he gets majority of the equity to back him.

[pyuser583]

How would that work? Does a non profit have shares?

[hackerlight]

Eric Schmidt calling Sam a hero also makes me think it isn't a personal scandal.

[JohnFen]

I'm pretty confident it's not a personal scandal (or if it is, it's one that is truly monumental and that there hasn't even been a rumor of).

If it was a personal scandal, the messaging around his dismissal would have been very, very different. The messaging they gave makes it clear that whatever dirty deed he did, he did it to OpenAI itself.

[next_xibalba]

This doesn’t make sense to me. It assumes Schmidt has inside info on why Altman was fired.

[outside1234]

Not sure Eric Schmidt is exactly a great judge of character. If anything that is an anti-signal

[tiahura]

Everybody's a comedian on Friday.