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Why Sam Altman was booted from OpenAI, according to new testimony

52 points| paladin314159 | 3 months ago |theverge.com

12 comments

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timmg|3 months ago

Hopefully Aaron Sorkin will write a screenplay about this sometime in the next decade.

keeganpoppen|3 months ago

im guessing it’s no more than two years away

neumann|3 months ago

Yes please. Or Jesse armstrong and Adam McKay

kittikitti|3 months ago

I don't think Sam Altman should have been fired even after reading this. It's definitely bad behavior but I was expecting something more significant. The consequences don't match the crime.

rifty|3 months ago

“All four of us who fired him came to the conclusion that we just couldn’t believe things that Sam was telling us, and that’s just a completely unworkable place to be in as a board — especially a board that is supposed to be providing independent oversight over the company, not just helping the CEO to raise more money.”

I think I have to disagree here because they talk about loss of trust. Loss of trust is enough when deciding who you want to work associate with. Firing seems steep, but when working with someone feels forever untenable, your options are really you or them exiting. There's not really an in-between option to balance the response for how much the issue crossed the line of trust when you don't see it coming back.

Maybe they shouldn't have lost total trust at Sam's behaviour. But personally I'd lean towards it being a pretty normal response from people existing in the environment itself; whom are at the time feeling the active shift effect Sam was having on the power balance to their detriment.

9rx|3 months ago

Like others have said, Altman didn't provide trust. That's the very thing a CEO is expected to do. That is their job. A CEO not being able to offer trust is like a programmer not being able to build programs. You'd fire said programmer, no?

Zigurd|3 months ago

Both sides were nerds playing office politics, as badly as nerds generally do.

zhengiszen|3 months ago

It is called trust, that's what was lacking in their relationship.

jalapenos|3 months ago

The dude is clearly a slippery snake.

What's not clear is what special sauce he brings, beyond being a slippery snake, that someone else couldn't bring.