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OpenAI's Board May Be Coming Around To Sam Altman Returning (techcrunch.com) 32

Posted by BeauHD from the wild-ride dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: OpenAI's board of directors is reportedly in talks with Sam Altman, ex-Y Combinator president and an OpenAI co-founder, to return to OpenAI as CEO as soon as this week. That's according to Bloomberg, which in a brief this morning -- citing sources close to the matter -- said that discussions are happening between Quora CEO Adam D'Angelo, one current member of the OpenAI board, and Altman -- and possibly other board members as well. Per Bloomberg, the board member (or members) and Altman are discussing a number of possible scenarios that could play out. In one, Altman would return as a director on a transitional board. In another -- or perhaps the same -- former Salesforce Inc. co-CEO Bret Taylor could serve as a director on a new board. (Taylor's name was floated as a potential future OpenAI board member in some reporting over the weekend.)

Investors are also in on the talks, Bloomberg reports, with Thrive Capital, Khosla Ventures, Tiger Global Management and Sequoia Capital aggressively pushing for Altman's return. The hope is to resolve the management crisis before Thanksgiving, so as to give OpenAI employees less uncertainty around the state of the company -- and stem the broader bleeding. Were Altman to return to OpenAI, he'd presumably renege on his acceptance of Microsoft's offer to head up a new AI research lab at the tech giant with Greg Brockman, OpenAI's former president, who resigned in protest with Altman on Friday. Altman is said to have demanded "significant" managerial and governance changes at OpenAI as a condition of returning, a demand which many OpenAI backers -- including Microsoft -- share.

Today's developments follow a memo sent by OpenAI VP of global affairs Anna Makanju late Monday indicating that OpenAI's management had been in "intense discussions" with the board, Altman and interim CEO Emmett Shear, who took over from OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, to attempt to re-unify the company. Shear has reportedly been left in the dark for the most part, indicating to Bloomberg sources that he doesn't plan to stick around if the board can't clearly communicate its reasoning for Altman's abrupt dismissal. Shear previously said in a note to employees Sunday that his first order of business would be to "hire an independent investigator to dig into the entire process leading up to this point and generate a full report."
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OpenAI's Board May Be Coming Around To Sam Altman Returning More

OpenAI's Board May Be Coming Around To Sam Altman Returning

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  • That's how I told my GF.

  • and we don't need an investigation, snip the portion of the zoom call where they discussed the firing and release it

  • When he comes back he gets his revenge and really shows them... oh no oh god what have we done what did... *BZZRT*

  • Can you un-ring the bell?

    If they agree to put aside their differences and move forward, will they be able to work together long term?

  • My Gen X take on this (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Zontar_Thing_From_Ve ( 949321 ) on Tuesday November 21, 2023 @05:22PM (#64022375)
    When 500 Zoomers and Millennials threaten to quit a tech company that let the CEO go unless he is brought back, that CEO is actually a cult leader. Let's be clear here. If the choice came down to Altman losing his job or those 500 employees losing their jobs, my money is that Altman stays and they are let go. The minute the company feels it will be in better financial shape to not have those 500 employees around, they're gone. I thought the whole thing about Zoomers and Millennials was that they supposedly didn't trust companies like "everybody else does" and that they won't be stupid enough to believe that a company has their best interests at heart. I guess that just goes out the winder if your CEO is charismatic. I'm warning you all - A guy with this kind of cult like following is going to run for President someday.

    Is Altman really all that smart? I read about his background and he got started on his journey into the world of wealth and fame by founding a company nobody has ever heard of that took on Facebook, he sold it for a fortune before it collapsed and get this - he got scurvy because his dumb ass didn't know you needed to eat fruits and veggies . I'm kind of skeptical that he a genius who must be saved at all costs, but hey, half the country worships Donald Trump as their god, so I guess I should have seen this one coming.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Talon0ne ( 10115958 )

      More like 500 people who thought they were about to become millionaires getting shafted by the board when they decided to nuke their hopes and dreams.

      • 500 people thought they were going to get rich by working for a subsidiary of a nonprofit, and were sold on this dream by Altman. It's mind-boggling to me. Like how techbros have fantasies about people going off to work for the US government running the Digital Service or whatever and not still making some large fraction of what they did in big tech.

      • That's pretty much it exactly:

        "A planned sale of OpenAI employee shares that would value the startup at about $86 billion on paper hangs in the balance after the sudden firing of CEO Sam Altman and a slew of top executive departures. The tender offer, which Thrive Capital is leading, has not yet closed but has been in its final stages and was expected to be completed as soon as next month, according to a person familiar with the matter." --www.theinformation.com

        Much like on the TV series "Succession" on wh

        • > Also there are like 12 people max that are vital to that company, the other 500 are just riding coat tails

          The main asset OpenAI has is not code or people, but the dataset. Dataset engineering is hard work, and requires many skills including UI design, ML and just plain domain expertise on all topics. Remember the "Data Engine" Andrej Karpathy designed at Tesla? The core of the work is data. After you have that, you just need to run train and eval.

      • More like 500 people who thought they were about to become millionaires getting shafted by the board when they decided to nuke their hopes and dreams.

        This right here. The people signing to bring him back had bought into his vision of a for-profit OpenAI making them all millionaires or maybe even billionaires. The board was focused on something other than profit, so booted Altman, the day-dreamers went, "But, mah profits?" and demanded he be brought back.

        If you ever question motives in any large-scale drama in the modern world, just ask yourself, "Where's the money?" It almost inevitably comes down to profit motivation. Even if you can't see it that way f

    • > A guy with this kind of cult like following is going to run for President someday.

      He already explored a run for California Governor

      > his dumb ass didn't know you needed to eat fruits and veggies

      checks out.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by taustin ( 171655 )

      When 500 Zoomers and Millennials threaten to quit a tech company that let the CEO go unless he is brought back, that CEO is actually a cult leader.

      Given all the backroom game playing on Microsoft's part, this is starting to remind me of of Market Basket [wikipedia.org]. Good Arthur might well be described as having cult-like characteristics, but the real issue was Bad Arthur and his cohorts were - pretty openly - planning to loot the company for all is was worth and sell the desiccated husk off for whatever they could get, and the thousands of employees and millions of customers took exception to that.

      Cult like it might be, but it's pretty clear who the good guys wer

    • he got scurvy because his dumb ass didn't know you needed to eat fruits and veggies

      And Tim Cook died of cancer because herbal remedies and Chinese tea are better than known western treatment. There's no such thing as universal intelligence. I know people with PhDs who do dumb shit. I know people who flunked high school who have gone to do great things.

      People should be judged based on what they do within the role they have. The only question of whether Altman is a good leader for OpenAI should be based on the results of OpenAI and the potential for alternatives. He was president of Y Combi

    • > that CEO is actually a cult leader

      No, that CEO is tied to their compensation and the valuation of OpenAI, and they know it. They are pissed the board spoiled their comp packages.
  • But it seems that you have all missed the point

    The boards only goal is to increase short term shareholder value. Since they are all shareholders, shareholder value is their one and only goal.

    Sam has chosen to take a longer and less self-centered view. Therefore his views must, as usual, be suppressed.
    Thank you Milton Friedman.

    • If you're going to be ripped for anything it's because of your ignorance. Half of the board of OpenAI has a singular purpose of promoting its non-profit side and has nothing to do with shareholders. Less frothing at the mouth, more thinking please.

    • OpenAI is a non-profit. Its goal is literally its explicit goal, as stated in its charter. Its board is tasked with enforcing that goal, not non-existente shareholders.

      OpenAI also owns a for-profit company it has total control over. That company must maximize whatever its owner, OpenAI, wants it to maximize. According OpenAI's charter, that something isn't profit, though secondarily profits, if any, are welcome.

      The clash is precisely in that OpenAI decided to enforce its charter against those who want to fo

  • Seriously. These people think they are creating an AI singularity; a General Artificial Intelligence that can think and have consciousness on par with a human but with the processing power of a computer. I am now more convinced than ever that AI will destroy humanity, because if a super powerful AI is birthed from these people, it'll look at humanity like we're a bunch of idiot baboons that barely survived through evolution and shouldn't continue to exist.

    Frankly the caliber of the people involved with

  • I have no idea if Altman deserved to be fired. But now that it's happened, un-firing him won't un-ring the bell. That kind of whiplash does serious damage in many ways. For example, if he is re-hired, the board will lose a significant amount of power, having had their biggest decision essentially overridden. The board's ability to govern will be greatly eroded.

    Getting re-hired might seem like a win for Altman, but it's not so clear-cut. What *was* behind his firing? Where there's smoke, there's fire, right?

  • OpenAI is closed.

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