Sam Altman is back as OpenAI CEO | Mashable.
Surprise: Sam Altman is back as OpenAI CEO
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| Guess who's back? This guy! Credit: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images |
One of the twistiest tech stories of the year seemingly has a resolution: Sam Altman is once again working for OpenAI.
If you haven't been following, here's a quick recap of the events so far. Last week, Sam Altman was unexpectedly fired as OpenAI CEO and replaced (after an extremely brief stint by OpenAI CTO Mira Murati) by Twitch co-founder Emmett Shear.
Microsoft, which owns a large stake in OpenAI, reacted by hiring Altman, alongside OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman, for its own research AI team.
But according to Nadella and Altman himself, it appears that Altman will once again return to OpenAI, following a reshuffling of its board.
OpenAI tweeted that it has "reached an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board of Bret Taylor (Chair), Larry Summers, and Adam D'Angelo."
"We are encouraged by the changes to the OpenAI board," Nadella wrote in a tweet. "We believe this is a first essential step on a path to more stable, well-informed, and effective governance. Sam, Greg, and I have talked and agreed they have a key role to play along with the OAI leadership team in ensuring OAI continues to thrive and build on its mission. We look forward to building on our strong partnership and delivering the value of this next generation of AI to our customers and partners."
"I love openai, and everything i’ve done over the past few days has been in service of keeping this team and its mission together. when i decided to join msft on sun evening, it was clear that was the best path for me and the team. with the new board and w satya’s support, i’m looking forward to returning to openai, and building on our strong partnership with msft," tweeted Altman.
The news follows reports that some OpenAI investors, members of the board, and employees, have been pushing to reinstate Altman as CEO.
On Wednesday, The Washington Post reported that the newly appointed, three-member board will appoint a formal board of up to nine members, with members who tried to oust Altman leaving. The CEO that never was, Emmett Shear, will reportedly leave the company too; on the other hand, Brockman, who quit in solidarity with Altman, is also returning to OpenAI.
While this now appears as a power struggle resolved, with Altman-unfriendly board members leaving, many questions remain, including whether there was any good reason to fire Altman in the first place. There's also the question of what happens to Microsoft's "new advanced AI research team," which was supposed to be led by Altman. For our sanity's sake, though, we hope that there will be no more immediate changes at the top of OpenAI, as this saga is getting impossible to follow.
Topics OpenAI
this is what happens when sky net takes over…
ReplyDeleteWait for Season 2.
ReplyDeleteSo much anticipated. Not a surprise. Share holders threatened the board, reports say.
ReplyDeleteSeems he is going to abscond Microsoft 😂😂
ReplyDeleteso basically openai is msft 😃
ReplyDeleteWhat a mess…
ReplyDeleteI hope all global employees understand that without them, there is ZERO company.
ReplyDeleteanother creative legal take on squeezing out other investors? what would the old investors do now if microsoft offers to buy them out? refuse?
ReplyDeleteAsking if you would mind writing a recommendation for me and my www.learning-pace.com
ReplyDeleteWho needs Netflix for drama? I have a gutt feeling that this saga will a) not end here b) have remarkable impact to the future of AI 🤖🧠
ReplyDeleteHehehe
ReplyDeleteI don't know why something else is telling me it's Marketing
ReplyDelete👀
DeleteOh dear openAI and microsoft hit with a lawsuit by non fiction authors ?
ReplyDeleteWhatever it is, hope the new board maintains the original board’s mission
ReplyDeleteWhy would there be a need to change the board ?
DeleteYes sam altman is ONE OF US ..irobot !
ReplyDeleteso did they FIRE that Ilya Sutskever guy? if not fire him, at least force him to shave his head or get hair implants...jfc
ReplyDeleteSo we don't know the reason he was fired and we don't know the reason he was reinstated ? But we did know that the board who fired him was a openAI non profit company but is the board that reinstated him a non profit company or are they a openAI profit at any cost company now !
ReplyDeleteEveryone has an opinion and position.
ReplyDeleteIn the end Sam Altman is back.
What the actual f-. Everyone comes off badly from this. Genuinely shocked the board didn't release their reasoning for Altman's firing.
ReplyDeleteI know some commenters are screaming it's blind incompetence by the board members, but I mean even an incompetent board must have had some sort of logic for firing their CEO. People are getting weirdly invested in saying board members are awful without knowing this reasoning, don't make it personal.
Played the Uno reverse card, then made the old board pick up 40
ReplyDeleteWell, looks like everyone wants a peaceful Thanksgiving...
ReplyDeleteYou guys did excellent work covering this whole drama for the last 5 or so days. Go ahead and eat some turkey, pie, stuffing, drink some beer and watch football, and enjoy time with your families. You guys have earned a good rest.
ReplyDeleteThis is turning into an episode of Succession lol. What a farce!
ReplyDeleteIt really inspires confidence in the leaders of those behind the AI push, doesn't it? :D
DeleteSo could this all just been a huge publicity stunt?
ReplyDeletetoo many people look bad and why would they have chosen to do it over a weekend? it’s simply CEOs and business leaders being not very good (which is often the answer)
Delete"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
DeleteWon't let us have any sleep, grumble grumble
ReplyDeleteSo when John Connor and Arnold will come back from the future?
ReplyDeleteman. same time next week?
ReplyDeleteCan AI companies all just die please? They're honestly worse than crypto companies.
ReplyDeleteYou might have had a point if AI was useless but we have the opposite situation.
DeleteIt is useless
DeleteIf only it were. Unfortunately, the primary use is putting people out of work.
DeleteOk horse drawn carriage driver.
DeletePlease do enlighten me about all of its the other employment generating uses.
DeleteThey literally just named Larry Summers, the guy who said his goal is for millions to be out of work and replaced by AI, to the board.
DeleteOkay Luddite. You're not going to enjoy much going forward. I only wish we could put you back into the stone ages so you would be happy.
DeleteEnjoy your Spanish Inquisition
"Luddite".
DeleteThe crutch for every regressive that doesn't have an actual argument.
An understandable, but reductive argument. AI is marketed as far more useful than it is, and far more than it ever will likely be able to accomplish in this era - and as much as I hate the techbros erroneously insisting we're on the verge of AGI and tech utopia, AI (today) still isn't useless. It's actually really applicable in certain situations, e.g. video meeting summary notes.
DeletePeople are joking that Altman‘s firing was instigated by ChatGPT.
DeleteWell, there will come a day when this won’t be a joke anymore.
T2 isn't a documentary. It's fiction
DeleteYou’re wrong though. It’s a cautionary tale.
DeleteAnd before you discard cautionary tales because the turn of events suggested by James Cameron has not played out yet, go watch Oppenheimer and reconsider if your superficial and negligently shortsighted assessment will stand the test of time.
The only reason why everyone was so invested in this situation is because of how important and useful this technology is. If the same weekend of chaos happened at Apple or Microsoft or Facebook it would be interesting sure but the stakes wouldn't be anywhere near as high.
Deleteevery year the tech world has its obsession. i think AI will be around longer than the crypto hype though…then again, that’s what all the crypto people said
DeleteIf the events of the past week teach any lesson, it should serve us as a reminder of human nature. No human being whatsoever, not even those who reach for the stars and among them even the people who propose a course of action that is guided by the goals of responsibility and altruism, is so pristine that they are safe from doing damage, if they get swept away by history happening (or their personal life evolving) and lose sight of their selfproposed purpose.
ReplyDeleteThis is a reminder of human limitations only, no blanket pass for blind trust in AI though.
[Addendum for those who need it explained like a five year old: Every system created by humans will inevitably inherit human limitations as well. Limited beings we are, we can only pour the resources we have into that what we create. If you expect this limitations to be eradicated by way of a miraculous saving grace appearing out of „nowhere“, you literally believe in divine intervention.]
A wise plan of action would be to let this maelstrom of occurrences serve as an appreciated occasion to come to a halt, take a deep breath and execute a thorough assessment of the development and the ultimate goals of AI.
People really should start to learn to look further ahead into the future and not have their gaze bedazzled by the glitz of the glass beads they have in front of them.
But since social media ruined everyone’s attention span to thirty seconds and the only treatment for the ailments (not the sickness itself) is instant gratification, I’m not entirely optimistic a plan predicated on valueing long term goals over short time wins even stands a chance of being successful.
Sending thoughts and prayers anyway…
I found this whole thing to be a completely unedifying mess from which nobody comes out looking good. Childish, honestly; the stupid pictures and emojis. Grown adults playing out their workplace psychodrama on social media. Genuinely embarrassing.
ReplyDeleteAnd embarrassing for Microsoft too who came off as far too desperate to hang onto these idiots. The announcement that he’d joined followed by the reversal is stunning for such a large corporation.
People ridiculing themselves with their use of social media should be an expected occurrence after the FTX trial.
DeleteThat said: I give you that Microsoft looked ridiculous in their understandable attempt to make the most of it. They should have simply announced that they are willing to hire Altman and Brockman. But announcing it as a done deal really was amateurish. Which once again goes to show what we know for decades already: Microsoft has solid engineering and legal departments. But their PR is run by clowns.
This is a strange read of the situation. Microsoft comes out here better than ever, since the instability is now resolved and there’s much better governance for OpenAI, including an MS seat on the Board.
DeleteI can’t imagine how you perceive a quick action to safeguard a $10bn investment as ‘embarrassing’, even when you have hard evidence of how the markets reacted to the move. Satya has clearly indicated it’s much better for all involved that OpenAI remains separate.
I agree - Microsoft has most likely gotten itself a board seat AND and likely a lot more control over its 10 billion investment. Even if having to walk back on 'done deal' announcements is embarrassing, I'd say they've won way more than they've lost.
DeleteThis was the best possible outcome for Microsoft. Any researcher who wanted to join MS would have already done so. Keeping OpenAI separate makes it much easier for them to recruit researchers who align with OpenAI's AGI goals but aren't quite into the whole MS productisation angle or brand name. It allows them to grow 2 separate AI entities and likely achieve more than if they were merged under a single entity.
DeleteI don't agree with OP, but I would say that they having to "take quick action to safeguard a $10bn investment" is pretty embarrassing in in itself. I mean, how come they didn't have enough safeguards in place to prevent that situation from even happening?
DeleteTheir damage control was in fact rocksolid. Everyone claiming the opposite has no grounds to stand upon. Which is, I would suppose, once again a strong testament of Frank Shaw‘s (Microsoft‘s president of the legal department) prowess to harness trouble.
DeleteTheir PR department proved the usual though: it is run by clowns.
I don't know, I would say that a "strong testament of Fran Shaw's" would've been a contract that would prevent this situation from even happening. The best damage control is NOT NEEDING to do damage control.
DeleteThe Mashable authors often appear biased and uninformed/ unintelligent. Trying to push an agenda that is not true. You will find at the heart of this author is an inner desire to see MS fail. I'll keep an eye out for more articles by this author just to confirm my point.
DeleteMS got a board seat, how is it that desperate is the only thing the the verge author saw?
Once again, Silicon Valley reminds us that these people are not as smart and organised as they pretend to be.
ReplyDeleteTrue. Thinking that the people at OpenAI who propose a careful and considerate course of action are the ones who created this mess, really makes one worry about the thoughtfulness of the rest of Silicon Valley.
DeleteOh, we're absolutely not -- lol. I consider myself fairly in-tune with not being your typical tech stereotype, but I've never worked at a tech company that doesn't have a significant amount of behind-the-scenes drama playing out on a daily basis, and most of these are companies you've likely heard of. There is an attitude, arrogance, and immaturity in a huge slice of tech that's exceptionally toxic and spills out into the public eye every now and then (e.g., here).
Delete"New board composed of Bret Taylor, Larry Summers, and Adam D’Angelo. D’Angelo is a holdover from the previous board that initially fired Altman on Friday. He remains on this new board to give the previous board some representation."
ReplyDeleteI cannot see a future where this two will not have an altercation. Its been rumored that one of reasons of the firing last Friday, was because OpenAI sherlocked D’Angelo’s GPT Store idea last week from DevDay.
Poe AI’s GPT Store (which was a sister company of Quora) was first announced 2 weeks before DevDay. The board wasn’t informed about anything about GPT Store and revenue sharing prior to DevDay.
How on earth is Adam D'Angelo of all people the only surviving member of the board. I guess they weren't exaggerating when they said he was stubborn.
DeleteHe wants his payday.
DeleteWell well how the turntables…
ReplyDeleteWait until they fire him again, and Sheryl Sandberg comes in as CEO
ReplyDeleteTalk about appointing the goat as a gardener…
DeleteIt's an incestuous industry, it wouldn't be that surprising.
DeleteI think specifically Microsoft has been very resourcefull in this mess. At every twist or turn, they were on the winning side of the solution, without ever burning the bridges with for what was coming after.
ReplyDeleteBy doing so, they secured a very powerful voice in the board.
4d chess by satya
DeleteI agree with you absolutely. Microsoft always tried to make the most of every singular turn of events.
DeleteStill there‘s people here in the comments who said they crashed and burned their $10 billion investment in OpenAI. Of course their is nothing to support this ridiculous contortion of facts. With Altman being back at OpenAI Microsoft is literally back to where it was Friday morning. No damage to their side, except Microsoft‘s PR department giving their customary testament that it is run by clowns.
What bamboozled me the most in this whole saga was the amount of people praising Satya and putting him on a pedestal as "Best 4D Chess Player In the World", "Best Tech CEO EVER", and so on...
ReplyDeleteWhile I do think he is a great CEO and is doing a great job at MS, to me, his actions during this whole mess only seemed like him signing blank checks left and right in a desperate attempt to fix his own mistake, mistake which only happened because he initially signed a 10 Billion check, in another attempt to fix yet another mistake.
I'll explain:
- Despite managing a multi-trillion dollar company, company which is one of the top 3 in the world when it comes to computational resources, Satya failed to put up an in-house AI team solid enough to compete in the AI race.
- Then OpenAI took the lead and started moving fast, and Google started following. In an "desperate attempt" to not be left behind, Satya went on and signed a 10 billion check to OpenAI, buying MS some time while he could try to properly fix his initial mistake, which was not having a solid in-house AI team.
- However, he FAILED BADLY in making sure that the company he invested 10 FOCKING BILLIONS, wouldn't try to implode itself in a single weekend. And guess what? This is exactly what happened.
- Then, in a "desperate attempt" to avoid even more damage, he proceeded to sign more checks, trying to bring in Sam and Co. to MS, probably adding another few billions on top of the 10 he had already paid. Action which could also backfire badly, just as the OpenAI investment. Not to mention that his move would completely cripple OpenAI, meaning his initial 10 Billion investment went down the drain.
So yes, if Satya was indeed a true "4D Chess Grandmaster", he wouldn't have needed OpenAI to start with.
Then, if he was at least a "4D Chess International Master", he would have forced enough safeguards into his OpenAI deal to prevent this coup attempt from happening.
So at the end of the day, he was just very luck for having an absurd amount of money available to cover up his mistakes. I do agree that, given the situation he was in, his actions were correct, but if he was indeed the genius people are claiming he is, he wouldn't have gotten himself into that situation to begin with.
Exactly! Calling Satya's desperate moves as he scrambled to contain the fallout at his 10 billion dollars investment, for which he apparently failed to vet and consider the motivations of the board for, as a masterstroke, is hilarious - all the more so when reminded of how he boastfully declared he made Google 'dance' with this very investment.
DeleteGoogle alledgedly invested up to 200 billion dollars in AI in the last decade, and is nevertheless playing catch up with ChatGPT. Badly enough to invest up to $2 billion in OpenAI rival Anthropic only last month.
DeleteIt's very likely that buying themselves into ChatGPT got Microsoft much further than any in house AI team would ever have. Acquiring 49% of ownershop and securing a seat on the board gets Microsoft in a very good situation.
On top, much of the 10 billion investment alledgely consists of Azure capacity - on which Microsoft has a 62% margin. So, that 10 billion investment presumably only costs them 3,8 billion.
You've assumed that Google does not have comparable AI tech and models to ChatGPT.
DeleteRather I think it is more the case of them not wanting to kill their most lucrative product - Search. Why would they want to boil down results to your search to a single response prompt? Why would they want to sacrifice ad revenue from the SERPs and their massive ad network when you do visit the link-outs.
Not sure what Microsoft's excuse is here.
Google has been boiling down results to single response prompts for a long time. For many search prompts, you get a result positioned above the first result. The quality of this service is increasing constantly. However, so far it seems to be a curated assembly of quotes, not AI generated retranscription.
DeleteGoogle has been investing in AI research for a long time. It has always been one of the prime employers of AI phd's. If anyone was going to take a big leap like the one ChatGPT made, everyone in the field expected this would probably be Google.
"However, so far it seems to be a curated assembly of quotes, not AI generated retranscription."
DeleteThanks for pointing out the flaw in your own response.
First off, OpenAI is merely the first to market with a prompt-response product based on a LLM. Again you have made the assumption Google does not have comparable tech and models. The Google engineer fired over claims LaMDA is sentient would like a word with you.
"If anyone was going to take a big leap like the one ChatGPT made, everyone in the field expected this would probably be Google."
Yes, so why didn't they?- make a single-response result good as ChatGPT so you would never need to visit links below and ads above ever? Do I need to spell it out for you?
Yes. Like a serial monopolist, they’re buying their way into this AI race, not out of pure invention of their own, but to be falsely called by the industry as the innovators of this race.
DeleteWhat Satya did last Sunday night was an incredible leverage move, but its all smoke and mirrors, and to false pad their stocks in Wall Street with that sweet bump and take a victory lap in CNBC.
You can see it in their marketing. You can see it in their press tours. How they design their AI products.
I believe Microsoft will squander this race as well, if they’re left in their own devices. Just like how they squandered AR and smartphones. They can’t helped, it’s in their culture.
Another thing, it’s been reported it will only cost Microsoft 6-8 billion to hire away most of OpenAI to form Microsoft AI.
They're not buying themselves in to be called innovators, they buy themselves in to make money.
DeleteThey foresee that it's going be extremely important to solidly positioned in this race. Not even so much in terms of end product (as you say, Microsoft is really good at squandering whatever quality the manage to produce in terms of end-products), but as the go-to infrastructure on which a whole new world of applications will rely.
And if there's one place where Microsoft has been undeniably succesfull, it's this. Even if Azure is only half the size of that other hidden infrastructural giant called Amazon ...
The usual Google shill antics. Google won’t be anywhere except search if they hadn’t bought Android from Andy Rubin and if they hadn’t acquired YouTube. So corpos buying their way into territory is part of the game. But to do so they need money, which serves as a proof of their former „rightful“ successes.
DeleteUsing the term corpo unironically? That’s hilarious
DeleteLOL
Delete- Wrong, they arguably have one of the better smaller models, their entire AI research team is focused on smaller models and specific models. i.e checkout Phi 2 and their medicine specific models. Checkout their demo of voice cloning or something, using just 3 second of audio.
- They didn't invest suddenly. It started back in 2018/19? at $1B azure credit. Then again once more, before they saw the demo of ChatGPT and invested more.
- They haven't just given all $10B, lol, you think Microsoft's lawyers are dumb? Only small portion is given as cash, everything else is Azure credit, and it only given in small tranches.
- Also, the investment wouldn't have gone down the drain, they have access to all OpenAI IP until they reach "AGI". If whole team would have moved over to Microsoft, they would have essentially just continued working on what they were working within few weeks.
Get your *facts* right next time.
"you think Microsoft's lawyers are dumb?"
DeleteI absolutely do, yes.
Sorry, but I cannot consider them anything else but dumb for letting a 10 BILLION deal go through without enough safeguard clauses to make 1000% sure that a ridiculous mess as we just witnessed wouldn't take place.
I'm not sure I agree with you (but I don't know that I disagree with you either - this is just a counterpoint...)
DeleteIBM were ahead of the game or as you put it
"put up an in-house AI team solid enough to compete in the AI race"
with Watson, but they could only maintain their lead for as long as AI progress was happening in a rarefied, specialised atmosphere and wasn't something that had become sufficiently established to be driven forward by thousands of post-grads in start-up scale teams who all had a solid grounding in the newly established principles and also had access to the building blocks (transformers, etc.) with which to develop and test LLMs and ML configs.
By the time Satya had done his initial housekeeping at MS (a large part of which was shifting the culture to a partnering mindset where MS focused on capturing value from participation in/presence on other platforms rather than outright ownership of a vertical as previously preferred by MSFT) he needed to evaluate what his strategy on generative AI should be. He focused on building infrastructure for AI (e.g. compute resources) and on product development for enterprise/business use cases, something that means he can be 'landlord to', and channel partner to, any number of LLMs.
Just like he determined that owning and investing in a third place mobile OS was a waste of time when there was 15 years-worth of patent licence income flowing in and a better chance of monetisation on mobile by SaaSifying office, I think he may have concluded that owning the compute that any AI that gets traction can run on, and partnering closely with bleeding edge practitioners so that he could gatekeep their access to the enterprise, was the highest value way to participate in this (with becoming a bit more competitive in search being just a side benefit). He basically owns the infrastructure, and he owns the channel/customers. He doesn't own the tech but the owners of the tech are very dependent on him meaning that it's a safe bet that he can expect to monetise it hard for the foreseeable future. When creating generative AIs is becoming commodified, but creating AGI approaching AIs and harnessing them to the enterprise is a massively compute intensive undertaking, you could argue that he's positioned himself well.
The slightly strange thing is that he partnered a venture that he couldn't really expect to ever acquire, but there may have been a hygiene factor there - OpenAI initially had the biggest commitment to safety, reflected in their governance structure, and after MSFTs experience with Tay this could have been very attractive. It also insulates him from lawsuits relating to whether LLM scraping of copyrighted content, or in contravention of terms of service, is not fair use. A safety first non-profit that claims fair use for training its LLMs has a better chance of seeing off the avalanche of lawsuits that are coming for owners of Generative AIs, and, as putting ChatGPT/co-pilot into the enterprises results in the acquisition of a massive, authorised, highly relevant lake of training data, MSFT has a good chance of avoiding legal grey-areas.
I think on balance, Satya, who has lots of plates to spin, has probably handled the advent of AI as a necessary element of enterprise solutions pretty well.
No time to read this back, so sorry for typos...
Yes, I understand your point in a agree with most of them.
DeleteMy point is that while Satya did handle situation well, and probably the best way he could've handled it, he didn't do anything out of this world, there was not genius play in his action.
I could argue that what he did was the bare minimum one would expect from someone managing a 3 TRILLION dollar company, nothing more.
If he had somehow put MS ahead of the A.I race without relying on OpenAI, which would've kept him out of this whole fiasco, that would've been impressive and true "4D Chess Play".
But in summary he bought his way into a bad situation, then tried to buy himself out of it. What is so impressive about that?
Solid take
DeleteHow this rambling mess of a post has this many recommends is a mystery.
Delete- Says Microsoft failed by not having an in house team rivaling Google. Might as well claim every other megacorp like Apple and Meta failed, then.
- Claims MS jumped in with the $10bn investment after OpenAI took the lead. In fact, Microsoft has been working with OpenAI since 2016 and they invested $1bn in them back in 2019. They’re a major part of the reason why OpenAI took the lead in the first place, ahead of the $10bn additional investment
Why would he have ‘signed checks’ over the weekend to bring Altman into MS? It’s clear this was a big stick approach to cement the threat of mass resignations and force OpenAI’s board to the negotiating table. Now it’s worked and they’ve brought back Sam and completely rejigged the Board to a much more favorable makeup for Microsoft.
I don’t think you’ve given this any thought at all.
- Apple and Meta aren't trying to compete with Google in the AI race, MS is. BTW, Meta in-house AI team is much more advanced the MS's.
Delete- MS have been investing in OpenAI for a long while indeed, and so have a lot of other companies, and even Elon Musk lol Now, what other investor just poured 10bn into it right after ChatGPT was released?
- He wouldn't have need to run and sign checks to bring Altman and co. into MS if 1 - He had an in-house AI team strong enough to allow him to ditch OpenAI; 2 - He made sure that his 10bn investment had enough safeguards to prevent something like that from even happening.
- and MS hasn’t had a need to devote as much resources as Google and Meta because they own a substantial chunk of OpenAI, and they’ve inked watertight deals with them. Microsoft has invested more into AI and has more consumer facing products with AI hooks than Meta has…so I’m not sure what the distinction is.
Delete- Which other company matched MS for investment level in OpenAI? None! Even before the $10bn investment (which - as many have already pointed out to you - hasnt been fully disbursed and much of it isn’t cash), the $1bn they put up was the largest investment tranche for the company. Elon Musk famously failed to make good on his investment promises.
- A legally binding contract is usually enough safeguards in these cases. Even with the upheaval, OpenAI was going nowhere. Many deals don’t come with conditions that the CEO remains in place.
It just sounds like you have some beef with Microsoft and have made up your own justification to sneer at the way they’ve handled this
If you think that MS doesn't have a world-class in-house AI team, you clearly haven't got a clue what you're talking about. They simply focus way more on the research side than the product side.
DeleteYou and your fellow „crash and burn“ theory proponents have literally no facts to base your contortion of the events on.
DeleteWith Altman and Brockman being back at OpenAI, Microsoft is literally in the position they were friday morning. So their investment in openAI is safe and sound. With their position strengthened in the future with a seat on the board, the whole kerfuffle delivered them an even better turnout right to their doorstep.
There is literally nothing to support the fairytale that Microsoft’s OpenAI investment is damaged or lost in any way.
And regarding the past lapse of not having a strong AI team on their own. They surely have a lot of folks developing their roster of „Copilots“, but singular talents like Altman are, well, singular and can’t be hired by the dozen. So they are in short supply.
Microsoft investing in OpenAI is literally part of the game. If big companies couldn’t buy their way into a field of interest Google would be nowhere except search without their acquisitions of Android and YouTube.
This is overly simplistic.
Delete1) The AI race did start yesterday, Google was in a prime position in many things not just AI as Nadella at Microsoft was kept super busy trying to right ship from various disasters - proprietary code debt, anti-trust, product failures, strategic shift from insular to open structure, etc - of his predecessors, and find at least one big winning thread out of that (cloud), plus the very skillful joint campaign mounted by Google & Apple (incumbents in The Valley) to delegitimize Microsoft amongst Silicon Valley techies. Once Google & Apple made it culturally uncool to work for or collaborate with Micrsoft they were able to keep the super best research talent, super best startups looking to sell, etc, coming out of Stanford and feeder universities (which are very few and not replicable) to themselves, ergo they took the lead in many new areas.
2) In real life situations, you have to make the best use of the cards you are dealt. Nadella did not have any control of what OpenAI was, it was already a non-profit structured with a funny board (and in fact this was an essential "sell" in my reading of it, that Musk, Altman & co used to lure the key researchers out of Google way before Microsoft showed up, and it is the tension between what they sold folks like Sutskever and what they are doing now that led to this little kerfuffle). And if you push for too much, they just check-in with Amazon. That is the beauty of capitalism, it when it works correctly it keeps everyone on their toes. With that background Micrsoft negotiated the best deal they could, and it still worked throughout this drama. They have perpetual license on the technology, they have exclusive rights to cloud supply (just roundtripping their own money), they have rights to prevent a merger, they have all sorts of things that are great fall backs so that even if this had not turned out in their preferred outcome (Altman going back) they could exercise those rights along with things like hiring Altman and still be a little dented but generally fine. Not too shabby of a come back from where they were vs. Google before they made the deal. Probably the best $10B Nadella will ever spend.
Not entirely accurate.
DeleteYou forgot to mention, long before the 10 Billion, MS had already invested over a billion years earlier and sown up their relationship with OpenAI - years before most people had even heard of ChatGPT.
He is far from a 4D Chess master - no CEO out there really is. He has access to money, he saw a growing industry, a leading player in that industry and took a bet on them. Nothing masterful about it.
DeleteAnd to break that down - "he saw a growing industry" really means he has a whole bunch of directors and senior people dedicating time to finding new growth areas and presenting options to Satya to rubber-stamp. Anyone can spot - if it's your job to do so - potential growth areas and potential investment opportunities.
Not bashing Satya specifically, but he's nowhere near a pedestal in my view. Arguably his skill is in deciding what to invest in but the number crunching, risk profiles blah blah - that's just presented to him, probably in PowerPoint (ha).
The mistake that Microsoft and many other big rich players in any industry make is they inject money and expect miracles to continue. Money doesn't buy miracles if you are not also overlaying that with other good practices and processes that those big companies inherently should have - you need to invest money and time and your expertise into making that company flourish.
I didn't like 'As the Boardroom Turns.' Sloppy plot and characters more flip-floppy than a pair of sandals in a summer sale. Plus, the season finale with Altman negotiating with himself? It's like they ran out of characters and just started cloning them. They really should've gone with my idea for a crossover episode with 'The IT Crowd.' Now that's a board meeting I'd tune in for – complete with accidentally fire, not firing, and mistaking a coffee maker for the new AI prototype.
ReplyDeleteI won't be surprised if it will turn out that ChatGPT was the one who suggested firing Altman.
ReplyDeleteWhoever started this , was it worth it ?
ReplyDeleteI'd say it was Microsoft and given that they are getting a board seat now to have a better control of their huge investment, it was definitely worth it.
Delete“What did we learn Palmer?”
Delete“I don't know, sir.”
“I don't know either. I guess we learned not to do it again.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I'm fucked if I know what we did.”
“Yes, sir, it's, uh, hard to say”
C.R.E.A.M. If AGI does happen it's gonna happen with minimal alignment and wreck shit. At least Sam has his hill in Big Sur to fly to when the world dies.
ReplyDeleteMoney talks.
ReplyDeleteWith of course a step in between where Sam instates himself as interim CEO before becoming full CEO again.
ReplyDeleteNeed a new summary of the winners and losers
ReplyDeleteAltman definitely wins, Microsoft kinda loses (because their investment is apparently governed by crackheads), Google loses, the (soon to be former) OAI board definitely loses.
Delete"Microsoft kinda loses (because their investment is apparently governed by crackheads)"
DeleteNot anymore. That’s the point
Maybe, but this fiasco has shown that OAI’s structure makes it vulnerable to the whims of a few board members. Can that be fixed by just replacing the board? Maybe, maybe not.
DeleteI mean, they're also expanding the board, which does mean you need a larger number of board members to be in on something for it to happen. That's something.
DeleteI will say this about this whole saga: I never knew who Sam Altman was before all of this happened and now that I’ve seen his name repeatedly in the headlines for the last week I can definitely say I don’t think I’ll forget his name now. Plus the fact that there were so many people upset over his ousting and were willing to quit in his honor spoke of his character.
ReplyDeleteSo if nothing else this was a spectacular PR campaign.
Plot twist: the new board comprised of Sam Altman will vote to remove him as CEO, in a motion spearheaded by Altman himself. It's the only fitting next step.
ReplyDeleteUntil Sam Altman regrets his decision, joins team Altman and negotiates with Sam Altman for Sam Altman to return to to AltmanAI
DeleteReplacing him with Sam Ctrlman
Deletehttps://giphy.com/gifs/robert-deniro-awesome-pointing-12ZDIx1Mw1cXVm
DeleteHonestly it’s kind of wild how people who will most likely be responsible for creating AGI couldn’t think one day ahead and started all this in the first place. I sure hope the company ends up changing for the better.
ReplyDeleteThe state of people valuing their vanity over responsibility is in fact wild. But it gets even wilder and sad when you consider the people who started this tsunami are the faction who root for a responsible course of action. Makes you really wonder about the rest of the bunch.
DeleteMadness.
ReplyDeletewhy is adam d'angelo still on the board - the conflict of interest is readily apparent with his endeavors through POE - and why didn't microsoft force a board seat, hopefully new board members will get added for more adults in the room.
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/emilychangtv/status/1727218927200264420?s=20Seems like they think regulators might get involved, not sure how that concludes
DeleteIt is time.
ReplyDeletehttps://giphy.com/gifs/disneymusic-the-lion-king-Lp71UWmAAeJHi
Well that was exciting three days. Glad I can go back to regular scheduled programming.
ReplyDeleteBut seriously, huge kudos to you all for the exceptional coverage. You guys killed it. Top notch. 🙏
I just want to say thanks to the Verge staff who are trying to cram a lot of news into a truncated holiday week with all the OpenAI drama adding to the workload, too. Y'all are rockstars.
ReplyDeletehttps://giphy.com/gifs/the-simpsons-awkward-bart-simpson-11gC4odpiRKuha
ReplyDeleteOh the drama.
ReplyDeleteI can’t wait for us to find out what the original issue that prompted all of this was. Given the level that the rest of this saga has been playing out at you just know it’s going to have been some A-Grade nonsense.
ReplyDeleteIt's wild that even now we still have NO IDEA what the cause/reasoning was. Seems like there were only a couple of people who actually know. When kara swisher doesn't know its insane
DeleteWhat are the still the odds of: they actually achieved hints of AGI internally, but in a very human way acted emotionally, try to fire the master with the whole board, because they’re afraid breakneck commercialization of this AI will pose danger to the humanity?
DeleteIt would certainly be exciting and scary at the same time if they had created an internal version of Vast Silver
DeleteThat's the worst case scenario. It would mean the board was right, but couldn't do it jobs.
DeleteThe NYT has a good article that starts to fill in some details that helps explain the firing. I'm sure there's more reporting to come, but this is a good start. Lots of long-simmering tensions, among other reasons:
Deletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/21/technology/openai-altman-board-fight.html?smid=url-share
what a strange, corporate play of peek-a-boo.
ReplyDeletehttps://giphy.com/gifs/baby-yoda-Wn74RUT0vjnoU98Hnt
ReplyDeleteMarry me!
DeleteSnip, snap, snip, snap, snip snap! You have no idea the physical toll that 3 CEO changes have on an investor!
ReplyDeleteLegendary turn of events. The Mashable has been killing it, thank you!
ReplyDeleteIt’s been an honor going insane with all of you.
ReplyDeleteWas there some kind of nasty news that needed distracting from this last week?
ReplyDeleteWhat a bizarre turn of events all around
Biden turned 181?
DeleteSpacex launch failure?
DeleteElon used his Stan's that work on the board of directors to fire the ceo knowing his rocket would fail and distract everyone...
Nah, not a big deal. Do you know what the success rate is for brand new rocket designs? Do you know how many Falcon 9's had to explode before it became the cheapest, safest, most reliable space launch system in history? I'm no Elon fan, but that also means I feel the need to defend SpaceX from his stink. He's just a figurehead there, the people actually calling the shots and doing the engineering are still doing incredible and exciting work. The results speak for themselves, SpaceX's massive success to the point of completely reinventing this entire sector is no fluke. Starship is doing just fine. Let's hope someday they can jettison him from it altogether.
Delete"Mr. Musk? Your Starship to Mars is ready to go. Please follow me."
DeleteThis is the best drama series for the holiday season. Waiting for season finale.
ReplyDeleteSources now saying a 3rd interim CEO has hit the board! And oh my god, Undertaker comes out of nowhere with a CHAIR--
ReplyDeleteSam Altman announces he's somehow also been hired as the new CEO of AutoZone, then immediately fired again
DeleteTheoretical physicists extrapolate a new theory that Sam Altman exists in a new kind of quantum state such that his CEO status at any given company will only reach certainty upon direct observation. Any time we look away his state can no longer be determined
DeleteDumbest possible outcome
ReplyDelete