News Microsoft hires OpenAI co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman to lead advanced AI research team

[Admin]

Ousted OpenAI chief executive lands at Microsoft less than two days after being fired from the company he co-founded.

Microsoft hires OpenAI co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman to lead advanced AI research team : Read more

 

[RedBear87]

As an update, Ilya Sutskever deeply regrets his partecipation in the board's actions:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1726590052392956028

View: https://twitter.com/ilyasut/status/1726590052392956028

Sam Altman replied posting three hearts:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1726594398098780570

View: https://twitter.com/sama/status/1726594398098780570

Previously Sam was reposting OpenAI staffers who say "OpenAI is nothing without its people" with a single heart.

I need to grab more popcorn.

 

[peachpuff]

Is it me or have the titles of topics doubled in length recently?

 

[ezst036]

This is a big reason why Microsoft continues to be a market leader. They poach or hire quality talent to lead their divisions.

It's just too bad that their job now will be to find new and unique ways to embed factory adware into Windows OS with Copilot.

 

[baboma]

NYTimes has a good piece on the winners & losers of the ongoing OpenAI fiasco (disable Javascript if necessary to view):

The Winners and Losers of OpenAI’s Wild Weekend

It is hard to see the past few days as anything but a big loss for the A.I. company.

nytimes.com

It's a dramatic development from the tension between the "fast AI progress" and "safe AI" camps. It draws attention to OpenAI's unique governing structure that ultimately fails under stress, with the two sides coming to an irrevocable split.

I praise MS CEO Nadella for his quick thinking in turning a fiasco into an opportunity. If the event unfolds as expected, and MS hires the bulk of defecting OpenAI employees under its newly-formed Advanced AI subsidiary, MS will be an AI powerhouse to contend with.

For Windows users, which many here are, the impact will not be immediately felt, but IMO, MS will likely leverage its new-found talent to deploy AI tech even more aggressively on the one major platform that it controls. I can imagine both positive and negative implications from this.

As an investor, I do feel for those who have invested in OpenAI, as they are the biggest loser in this. If the bulk of OpenAI employees defect, the company will be a shell of its self, and the investors will effectively lose most of their money. And the upshot is, there is nobody to blame. It's a freak event that no one would have anticipated.

Edit: Stratechery has a good impromptu analysis of the development. One comment stuck out for me: "...you can make the case that Microsoft just acquired OpenAI for $0 and zero risk of an antitrust lawsuit." MS is undoubtely the biggest winner in this.

OpenAI’s Misalignment and Microsoft’s Gain

The end of a dramatic weekend in tech is that OpenAI has split and Microsoft is partnered with one and has hired the other; this is the ultimate failure case of what should have been a for-profit c…

stratechery.com

 

[jasonf2]

This mess is going to grossly redefine the board of directors roll going forward in these startup IPOs. Depending on how this plays out OpenAI's board just gave the company to Microsoft for free.

 

[baboma]

>This mess is going to grossly redefine the board of directors roll going forward in these startup IPOs.

OpenAI's governance isn't representative of other companies. It is a capped-profit company built atop a non-profit (501c3) organization. The tensions between the for-profit and non-profit "tribes" are what led to the breakup.

>Depending on how this plays out OpenAI's board just gave the company to Microsoft for free.

There'll be lawsuits from stakeholders, certainly, but as per the Stratchery piece, the board was doing its job, to advance the company's mission statement of " "build[ing] general-purpose artificial intelligence that benefits humanity," which reportedly Altman was not doing, in pursuit of fast AI development.

Edit: This piece below explains the motivations of OpenAI's board in firing Altman.

Give OpenAI's Board Some Time. The Future of AI Could Hinge on It

Sam Altman has had contentious corporate breakups before

newcomer.co

Sure, most people would jump on the "they just destroyed a multi-billion-dollar company" bandwagon. But it's worthwhile to see the event from both sides. The board is a non-profit board. While I agree that it should communicate better with stakeholders as to the firing, I commend them for standing by their principles in the face of undoubtedly extreme pressure to reverse their decision. Whether I agree with the firing is a separate matter.

 

[toffty]

...
Edit: Stratechery has a good impromptu analysis of the development. One comment stuck out for me: "...you can make the case that Microsoft just acquired OpenAI for $0 and zero risk of an antitrust lawsuit." MS is undoubtely the biggest winner in this.

Quoting you to requote your quote. The amount of code needed to create the AI is, relatively speaking, tiny. It's how the data is learned and organized. Sam Altman gets to start from scratch with everything he's learned. He'll bring along his best developers who are already angry and voicing their complaints internally. Sure, MS already invested $10B into OAI. Now they can invest another billion and get everything OAI was and more.

This is probably the easiest "print money" win MS has ever had.

 

[RedBear87]

Edit: This piece below explains the motivations of OpenAI's board in firing Altman.

Give OpenAI's Board Some Time. The Future of AI Could Hinge on It

Sam Altman has had contentious corporate breakups before

newcomer.co

Sure, most people would jump on the "they just destroyed a multi-billion-dollar company" bandwagon. But it's worthwhile to see the event from both sides. The board is a non-profit board. While I agree that it should communicate better with stakeholders as to the firing, I commend them for standing by their principles in the face of undoubtedly extreme pressure to reverse their decision. Whether I agree with the firing is a separate matter.

Well, most people would jump on that bandwagon because that's exactly how things look like; normally you don't get to piss off both your investors and most of your employees and still expect them to act as if nothing at at all has happened. If they had legitimate reasons to fire Altman they should have engaged with both investors and employees, instead the board seemingly acted as if they were a vengeful, almighty and all-knowing, God that should not be judged by mere mortals. They're getting what they deserve.

EDIT: For the record, I'm not sure how Elon Musk criticising Sam Altman and his leadership can count as a plus for the board, Elon is widely considered a villain by most of the mainstream media and thinkers...

 

[bit_user]

It's a dramatic development from the tension between the "fast AI progress" and "safe AI" camps. It draws attention to OpenAI's unique governing structure that ultimately fails under stress, with the two sides coming to an irrevocable split.

Thanks for the links & summary, but please just tell me which side Altman is on.

Edit: okay, so your later post says:

the board was doing its job, to advance the company's mission statement of "building general-purpose artificial intelligence that benefits humanity," which reportedly Altman was not doing, in pursuit of fast AI development.

So, if you're alarmed by AI, then it's probably not good that Altman is now out from under their oversight.

 

[bit_user]

If they had legitimate reasons to fire Altman they should have engaged with both investors and employees, instead the board seemingly acted as if they were a vengeful, almighty and all-knowing, God that should not be judged by mere mortals.

I'm not sure you know how corporate governance works. Boards are elected by shareholders to do precisely these sorts of things (among others).

When making such personnel decisions, there's normally a lot more to lose by having a drawn-out, more public process. I wonder if you can point to another example that ever happened the way you think this should've.

 

[NinoPino]

This is a big reason why Microsoft continues to be a market leader. They poach or hire quality talent to lead their divisions..

Microsoft is the leader because have the money.
If you cannot win, buy.
If you cannot buy, hire.

 

[NinoPino]

I think that the speed of Altman and Brock hiring is suspicious. And the immediate moving of 500 (ex) OpenAI employers (on a total of 700) to MS is even more suspicious.

 

[RedBear87]

I'm not sure you know how corporate governance works. Boards are elected by shareholders to do precisely these sorts of things (among others).

When making such personnel decisions, there's normally a lot more to lose by having a drawn-out, more public process. I wonder if you can point to another example that ever happened the way you think this should've.

I can't really point it out because I'm not saying that they should have discussed this publicly, on the media, etc. But I expect that they would at least informally assuage the opinion of the people involved. It was widely reported that both Altman and Microsoft were impressed by the suddenness of this decision, the FT reports one investor saying "I've never seen anything like this", so this hardly seems the norm to me. Anyway OpenAI is anything like a regular corporation and even after displeasing investors and staff members their directors have been actively resisting attempts at replacing themselves by vetting their prospective replacements.

On another note, Ilya keeps giving us more drama, his name appears on the 702 long (atm) list of OpenAI staff members that are menacing to resign if Altman isn't reinstated as CEO. Just. Wow. It's like watching a show like Game of Thrones, but on X and the media.

EDIT:
At last it looks like investors are considering to sue those fine gentlemen and ladies running OpenAI's board of directors:

Exclusive: OpenAI investors considering suing the board after CEO's firing, sources say

Some investors in OpenAI, makers of ChatGPT, are exploring legal recourse against the company's board, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Monday, after the board ousted CEO Sam Altman and sparked a potential mass exodus of employees.

www.reuters.com

 

[bit_user]

the FT reports one investor saying "I've never seen anything like this", so this hardly seems the norm to me.

I can't read the article, but I'm pretty sure that's referring to the drama of the whole situation - not the fact that a board decided to fire its CEO without consulting a bunch of other people.

On another note, Ilya keeps giving us more drama, his name appears on the 702 long (atm) list of OpenAI staff members that are menacing to resign if Altman isn't reinstated as CEO.

What surprised me most about that is just how many employees OpenAI seems to have! About 1000 (total) employees is a lot, for a startup!

At last it looks like investors are considering to sue those fine gentlemen and ladies running OpenAI's board of directors

That still doesn't mean there's anything abnormal about a company's board firing its CEO without consulting others - just that they made a bad or unjustified decision. It happens.

 

[RedBear87]

That still doesn't mean there's anything abnormal about a company's board firing its CEO without consulting others - just that they made a bad or unjustified decision. It happens.

It happens, but it doesn't have to happen, afaik there are companies where the board consults with involved parties, either periodically or on an ad-hoc basis. Even setting aside this matter, the board doubling down on its position, even after Ilya has seemingly "repented" and everyone else showed them the finger is quite something to behold.

Just in case anyone is interested, there's an interesting article on the NYT, the most impressive part, in my opinion, was where Helen Toner reportedly said:

The board’s mission is to ensure that the company creates artificial intelligence that “benefits all of humanity,” and if the company was destroyed, she said, that could be consistent with its mission

So yeah, it looks like they are really crazy. It almost looks like they didn't even consider for a millisecond that Sam and pretty much everyone else could simply move somewhere else, Microsoft for instance. What does destroying/breaking OpenAI even achieve? If anything it gives less influences to those who truly believes that AI could have very negative effects on humanity and the world.

 

[bit_user]

It almost looks like they didn't even consider for a millisecond that Sam and pretty much everyone else could simply move somewhere else, Microsoft for instance. What does destroying/breaking OpenAI even achieve? If anything it gives less influences to those who truly believes that AI could have very negative effects on humanity and the world.

For a moment, let's consider that OpenAI likely has patents on some of the key technologies it's using. In that way, OpenAI's board members could continue to exercise influence over Altman and his cohort, even after they left for greener pastures.