Fired OpenAI boss Sam Altman may join Microsoft The story of Sam Altman and OpenAI took a twist this morning that even the most hallucinatory of chatbots would struggle to conjure: he and other OpenAI chums - including co-founder Greg Brockman - may be off to Microsoft. Altman was abruptly ousted from OpenAI on Friday and was followed through the doors by several OpenAI …
OpenAI boardroom meeting secretly recorded and uploaded to YouTube.
As I understand it the majority of Microsoft's investment was not in form of a transfer of money but in the form of donated computing capacity at Azure. Even if OpenAI were to tank, MS wouldn't have lost that investment.
What happens now is interesting. I don't get the impression Altman was the brains behind OpenAI, he was the smooth talking figure head (who converted the existing non-profit into an investment vehicle), not the scientific brain. It will depend on how many scientists he can persuade him to follow him to MS whether it has a chance of taking off. Meanwhile MS could use access to its computing capacity to put pressure on OpenAI.
Well he did convince those scientists to sign on to a startup in return for massive future pay out, which was suddenly jeopardized (and now cut by as much as 50%). They'll follow that promise if he can repeat it while he's now I guess at Microsoft. If he really is an employee of Microsoft he, as someone who ran Y Combinator as effectively as Graham, I'm sure will finagle some similarly remunerative way to incentivise colleagues to follow him or they'll stay at OpenAI. And maybe that's not such a bad deal after all, so someone who joined in year three will only cash out 5M instead of 10M, but the alternatives are far more risky. I doubt openAI will fail to cash out high enough for stock-incentivizes employees to have leveled up in the silicon valley skunkworks.
> OpenAI's reasons for ejecting Altman remain unclear. Under his leadership, the company has seen its value skyrocket and, according to reports, was in talks to sell existing employees' shares at a $86 billion valuation. It's hard to regard that deal as looking anything other than uncertain following the sudden departure of several top executives.
Sounds like a pump-and-dump of the latest Big Tech Bubble to me.. Has Microsoft sold its OpenAI stake yet? Meanwhile I wouldn't be surprised if Sam Altman-Fried and chums are shorting their own stock..
You just put Ex Machina in charge of microsoft. You people seriously don't give a flip about anything or anyone. You WANT the borg hive mind. You WANT to destroy the universe. You WANT to devour and extinguish all life. The lack of vision and complete self absorption in charge of humanities future is ASTONISHING.
Seems like a brilliant move by Satya.
For better or worse the near term stock price is tied to ChatGPT.
Kept the leadership in the Microsoft orbit and still has connections to Open AI.
Stock was down as much as $10 after the initial dismissal and now is up in the pre-market.
That's why he's the CEO.
It seems that around 500 members of OpenAI staff are threatening to resign.
While Microsoft might want to take a proportion of them onto its books, I can't help feeling that some of the other OpenAI stakeholders might be carefully reading their shareholder agreements.
It's probably also not ultimately in Microsoft's interest if the expertise gets fragmented in a hiring frenzy that might follow an OpenAI implosion.
I'm inclined to reserve judgment on his wisdom for now.
My guess is that the board feel that OpenAI (probably GPT 5) has met their threshold for Artificial General Intelligence(AGI) and Sam wasn't forthcoming with that information. Apparently their deal with Microsoft doesn't include sharing AGI, so they wouldn't share GPT5 with Microsoft.
The OpenAI board kept referring back to their mission of helping all of humanity.
Given Sam is now joining Microsoft...the plot thickens.
By going he's vastly reduced the value of every employee's stock - no wonder they want him back.
This goes one of two ways. Either Altman is maligned and the board is incompetent, which seems to be the popular conception.
Or, he was trying to change the direction of the company in some way: "OpenAI was deliberately structured to advance our mission: to ensure artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits all humanity. The board remains fully committed to serving this mission." was the statement they made. If he was selling the family silver to feather his own nest then the board did exactly what they were required to do. Which, to be fair, would be a first for a board of directors in a company like this, most of whom would only be watching the stock price.
Either way it feels too early to make presumptions on who is in the wrong, although I'll concede there might be some knowledge out there on this that I've missed.
A significant number of the employees were not happy that they created a for profit part of the company.
Some true believers thinking there work was for the altruistic and for the betterment of mankind and not to get rich.
Not something I understand but then I don't understand FOSS either.
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