OpenAI investors push to bring Altman back as CEO one day after he was ousted by board

ZeroCool@feddit.ch to Technology@lemmy.world – 160 points –
OpenAI investors push to bring Altman back as CEO one day after he was ousted by board
nbcnews.com
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And they still don't know why he was fired? What the hey is going on?

How embarrassing must it be for both sides if no one is willing to go public?
If it were something illegal, they wouldn't be holding back. Unless the board is somehow complicit by default.

Yeah when I heard this, and after I read the available information, I was like did they walk in on him f****** a dog in his office or something? Like the secrecy around his dismissal is so total. But then all these people he has so much support within the company. Very confusing

You can swear here, no one is going to arrest you.

Haha, My speech to text has a built-in f*** stopper. Which I find funny, gives me a good chuckle

The boards job is to deliver shareholder value. Ergo, it may or may not be something illegal, all ypu can guarantee is that they think that revealing information might lose shareholder value.

The board that fired him was that of the nonprofit, so they don't answer to shareholders.

They don't have shareholders. Open AI is a nonprofit. So the job of the board is literally to do what is best for the organization, I can't see how it could possibly be good for the organisation to fire the CEO and then point right refused to elaborators to the reason.

To be honest the shareholder value on a non-profit is, uh, lackluster.

Official statement is that Altman was not being "candid" with the board. The current best theory I've seen is that Altman is investing in AI hardware startups (he is, in fact) and likely planning on having OpenAI doing business with them. buying them, or merging with them in the future.

Oh, good read. I saw that "candid" comment as well, but didn't think of a possible connection. That makes sense. Thanks

I'd put money on it being about money

Like he wanted more money and they didn't think he was worth it?

If OpenAI actually achieves their stated goal then any amount of money he demands will be worth it. They will basically be the company that controls the world, they will have so much money that they won't actually even care how much money they have.

I'm not aware of that stated goal, what goal are you talking about? I haven't been following AI news or this company

Their goal is to bring about Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Basically sci-fi level AI that is genuinely capable of independent thought with superhuman processing speeds.

Something on the order of 10,000 years worth of effective personal time for every 24 hours of real time.

Think about what an entity capable of experiencing 10,000 years worth of time every 24 hours would be capable of after just 15 minutes. We would just hand over every single human job to the AI and then I don't know go have fun for the rest of time. Theoretically every problem that comes about could be resolved by the AI.

Cure for every disease, every logistics problem resolved, every possible technology invented instantly.

The board really needs to explain to the investors why he was fired, It is utterly ridiculous that they don't know.

He may very well have been fired for a reasonable reason, but I'm not seeing it because why would you just fire someone out of the blue and then not release a statement if you've got reasonable cause? The only reason to act like they've got something to hide is because they do have something to hide.

If they had just fired him secretly it wouldn't be so weird, but such open support from his co-workers and co-managers of the company and even other people resigning because of his firing are what is making me interested in the issue.

Ars posted that there's some evidence to suggest board wanted to chase profit over ethics or somesuch. Altman apparently did not listen.

You have that totally backwards.

The board (which is the board of the non-profit) wanted the company to be more focused on its mission and less profit-driven. Altman is the one that's been letting Microsoft get its tendrils around OpenAI and push a narrative that everything must be closed off and profit focused.

yeah, recent revelations seem to point that way

I thought it was the reverse, and Altman wanted to push forward recklessly while the board wanted to hew closer to ethical guidelines?