back to article OpenAI meltdown: How could Microsoft have let this happen after betting so many billions?

Microsoft is stuck in a hard place. It needs OpenAI co-founder and fired CEO Sam Altman back at the helm of the upstart, or working internally at the Azure giant. Either way is awkward: if Altman returns to OpenAI, changes need to be made to prevent a fiasco like this happening again, the lab's board and some colleagues may …

  1. Michael Hoffmann Silver badge

    But ironically...

    ... if the OpenAI tech fell almost completely into the hands of a megacorp like Microsoft, regulators and government would have a field day. Could make the anti-trust suits of the 90s look like a squabble over parking tickets. With the doomers winning through back-door!

    1. What? Me worry?

      Re: But ironically...

      About that - an interesting coverage and take from a m&a perspective is at https://stratechery.com/2023/openais-misalignment-and-microsofts-gain/ and with more inside about what safeguards Msft had in place (such as the perpetual IP license!)

    2. aerogems Silver badge

      Re: But ironically...

      They could always just spin it off into an independent subsidiary. One where they don't have day-to-day operational control, just maybe set a sort of overall direction for the company.

      1. Dacarlo

        Re: But ironically...

        I rather thought their 49% stake gave them that already. Yes yes, its not total control, but it is a significant voice.

      2. CRConrad

        Re: But ironically...

        Which is what one would have thought is the board's job anyway.

    3. Jurassic.Hermit

      Re: But ironically...

      Ironically…Satnav Nutella lost direction with OpenAI.

      1. Bbuckley

        Re: But ironically...

        Satnav Nutella is an idiot. Like all "Leadership Team", they are full of it and actually have no clue how anything really works in tech.

  2. Groo The Wanderer

    Is Musk on the OpenAI board?

    That would explain a lot, for me at least...

    1. What? Me worry?

      Not since 2018. https://www.semafor.com/article/03/24/2023/the-secret-history-of-elon-musk-sam-altman-and-openai

      1. katrinab Silver badge
        Alert

        And Musk has set up his own competitor, trained entirely on X-Twitter posts/tweets.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          >And Musk has set up his own competitor, trained entirely on X-Twitter posts/tweets.

          Which will be the AI equivalent of the special school...

          1. Bbuckley

            Yep. The special school for the highly gifted. Not to be confused with the special school for the socialist impaired.

        2. Potemkine! Silver badge

          so it would be a nAzI...

    2. Bbuckley

      If he was, Open AI would lead the world rather than be a plaything for corporate dummys.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Or...

    Founders of OpenAI kicked out/resign and join MS, with no real explanation why CEO was booted. Chief Scientist who ousted them says sorry I didn't mean it and leaves to join MS (not yet happened, but watch this space - and strange if he was indeed worried about the commercialisation of AI given MS track record). Key staff at OpenAI unhappy and leave to join founders at MS. MS investment in OpenAI is for providing conpute - no OpenAI no computer needed, no investment lost for MS.

    So MS gets all the key people from OpenAI, effectively getting OpenAI in its entirety without needing to 'buy' the company. Other OpenAI investors are left with nothing.

    Sounds like a manufactured scenario where all the key players strangely end up at MS. Hmm...

    1. Plest Silver badge
      Holmes

      Re: Or...

      I'm not an MS hater myself, I've nothing against "old blue" but something about the MS/OpenAI debacle in the last week stinks like a 3 week old fish dropped behind the fridge!

      1. Snake Silver badge

        Re: Or...

        But the El Reg article isn't complete in financial details, which here is a VERY important point.

        MS might be OpenAI's largest investor, at 49%, but MS is *not* the largest power / voting bloc of the board. According to this breakdown story,

        https://www.reuters.com/technology/openai-investors-considering-suing-board-after-ceos-abrupt-firing-sources-2023-11-20/

        Open AI was founded as a non-profit and then equity sold, as a for-profit, to raise capital. But the 2% retained by the non-profit business core was given the greatest board voting power, in a belief of keeping an 'altruistic' outlook on the business.

        So the board that kicked Altman out was the non-MS, not-for-profit core board. MS doesn't actually have as much say in the operations as their 49% equity implies; MS was almost assuredly caught off-guard on all this drama as Altman, and the other investors, were.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Or...

          Quelle surprise! MS has now offered all OpenAI employees jobs in their oven ready new AI research division. The fix is in.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Or...

          But Microsoft!

          "LA LA LA, CAN'T HEAR YOU!"

    2. SnailFerrous

      Re: Or...

      It wouldn't be the first time Microsoft has been accused of mendacious scheming to get hold of another companies technology on the cheap by going in to a "partnership" with them.

      See the sad tale of UK mobile phobe maker Sendo from twenty odd years ago. Nothing is ever proved of course.

      https://www.theregister.com/2003/01/06/microsofts_masterplan_to_screw_phone/

      1. Graham Dawson

        Re: Or...

        And let's not forget what they did to Nokia.

        1. druck Silver badge

          Re: Or...

          Or more pertinently Sendo - they developed Winows Phone and just before launch Microsoft pulled the rug, put them out of business and got all the technology they developed for nothing.

          THEN a few years later their schill did the burning platforms speech at Nokia, that lead to it being acquired and an ultimately destroyed by the incompetence of the borg.

          1. sten2012
            Stop

            Re: Or...

            RecursionError: maximum recursion depth exceeded

        2. sabroni Silver badge
          Unhappy

          Re: And let's not forget what they did to Nokia.

          And I can never forget that they fucked my dog!

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Or...

        and also [allegedly] Nokia. New CEO comes from Microsoft. A few years of mismanagement and disastrous value destroying PR later, purchased by MS.

    3. Noodle

      Re: Or...

      Maybe I'm an old cynic but this is far more plausible than Microsoft dropping the ball like the article suggests. Nadella is not Ballmer, there's no way he didn't anticipate this kind of scenario.

      1. sabroni Silver badge
        Facepalm

        Re: there's no way he didn't anticipate this kind of scenario.

        He's rich so he has to be clever, right?

        If Elon has taught us one thing......

      2. Peter-Waterman1

        Re: Or...

        Nadella cuts a more positive face than Ballmer, but the guy is ruthless all the same. He’s old school, long time leader, part of the Ballmer era and has been bought up in that toxic culture

    4. RAMChYLD
      Terminator

      Re: Or...

      Given what happened at Nokia. I strongly believe this as a possibility.

      Also, from what I've seen, Microsoft doesn't put a hand in the day to day aspects of all of it's subsidiaries. The game companies that they bought and put under the Xbox subsidiary gets a surprising amount of freedom. No doubt that those ex-OpenAI staff will be treated to the same thing if they join Microsoft.

    5. jmch Silver badge

      Re: Or...

      "MS gets all the key people from OpenAI, effectively getting OpenAI in its entirety without needing to 'buy' the company"

      Except that it's already spend $11bn to buy half the company

  4. ChoHag Silver badge
    Windows

    How do you know AI will flop?

    It's the only bandwagon Microsoft has ever joined on time.

    1. katrinab Silver badge
      Meh

      I think they joined the personal computer and small office server bandwagons at the right time.

      1. StrangerHereMyself Silver badge

        Only because Bill's mom worked at IBM and gave him inside information on how to land a contract for the "operating system" * for the IBM PC.

        * I wouldn't call MS-DOS a real operating system. That would be giving it way too much credit.

      2. 43300 Silver badge

        And the SaaS bandwagon for general office systems and files - they very much dominate that market.

        They were a bit late on the IaaS and PaaS ones, but only to the extent that Amazon got in first with market dominance - Microsoft are still in second place.

        Phones and tablets are the ones where they really missed the boat, and trying to catch up led to the disaster of Windows 8.

  5. Pascal Monett Silver badge
    Trollface

    "There was real risk they [..] look like absolute fools"

    You mean, again ?

  6. fnusnu
    Facepalm

    Perhaps MS asked ChatGPT what to do and it started hallucinating

  7. abend0c4 Silver badge

    There's always room for one more baffling blunder

    Given the failings of human "intelligence" on display, one wonders if AI should aim rather higher than trying to replicate it.

  8. cookieMonster Silver badge
    Trollface

    At least the world would be safe

    if Microsoft was leading the development of AI.

    Everything they acquire turns to shit and becomes unusable very quickly.

    1. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: At least the world would be safe

      The most powerful technology the world has ever seen...

      ...used to tell you to stop using the passive voice and add an extra adjective.

      1. David 132 Silver badge
        Happy

        Re: At least the world would be safe

        That at least would be of some value.

        “Used to nag you to switch to Edge”, though?

  9. Howard Sway Silver badge

    could eventually be the most powerful computing technology in the world

    The fact that it is being developed by people who are behaving like a bunch of squabbling 10 year olds doesn't really make such a prediction seem likely. There's not much human intelligence being demonstrated here, let alone artificial. They're generating more news stories than their chatbot could.

  10. jake Silver badge

    One wonders if Altman ...

    ... finally told the marketing-driven Board that AI isn't what they think it is, AI never will be what they think it is, and indeed AI can not ever be what they think it is ... and thus the accusation of not being "consistently candid in his communications" with the board.

    It's not that he wasn't being candid, he just assumed that they knew the entire concept, as sold to investors (and the media), is a boondoggle at best, with no actual guaranteed outcome beyond getting a crap-ton[0] of research funding from the gullible (including Microsoft) ... but sadly, they had already bought into the bullshit they were selling. Learning the truth flipped them over the edge.

    I'm stocking up on popcorn and beer ... this ain't over, not by a long shot.

    [0] Or crap-tonne for the metrically inclined. The conversion factor is 1:1

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: One wonders if Altman ...

      Actually rather the opposite.

      Altman is the former boss of arch-capitalist, famous silicon-valley VC YCombinator.

      He was saying that they need to find commercial uses and partners to raise the $Bajillion it takes to train these models.

      The rest of the board of the (sort-of) non-profit were installed to keep AI pure and out of the hands of people like Microsoft

      1. jake Silver badge

        Re: One wonders if Altman ...

        "The rest of the board of the (sort-of) non-profit were installed to keep AI pure"

        The rest of the Board took the position(s) for personal enrichment, and as such they were marketing their asses off. That's what Boards do, world-wide, in every industry.

  11. Zippy´s Sausage Factory

    Microsoft offering Altman a job suggests to me that they haven't done their due diligence.

    So my first thought is that this could be a power grab, and the hope is that they'll build a strangle hold quickly enough that if whatever reason he got kicked out causes a fuss comes back to bit them it won't matter.

    My other thought, however, is that Microsoft haven't thought this through. Because if it's something really bad and not related to Altman personally but to ChatGPT itself, this could basically tank their entire AI strategy.

    Either way, I think Microsoft offering him a job is a gamble. A calculated risk, sure, but definitely a gamble.

    1. Richard 12 Silver badge

      Not really. The gamble was a while back when they bought 49%

      Hiring him is far cheaper and more easily reversed.

      1. Zippy´s Sausage Factory

        My thinking was essentially if he's been fired for something unsavoury that isn't directly related to ChatGPT, the gamble would be that they employed someone knowing - and by implication, tacitly approving of - whatever shenanigans they were involved in.

        Events since then though have made me think things are about three times more bonkers than I thought they were.

    2. Zippy´s Sausage Factory

      Well that aged like milk. And things just got weirder.

  12. mhoneywell

    Can we agree?

    That this episode will be the most interesting thing that happens in the realm of AI for the next 25yrs?

    1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

      Re: Can we agree?

      Can we agree that this episode will be the most interesting thing that happens in the realm of AI for the next 25yrs? ..... mhoneywell

      Oh please, you cannot be serious, mhoneywell. The Great Game fun and fantastic friction is only just getting started for factual reporting to deliver the likes of Registers much better than any recent fiction.

      Of that you can be certainly assured ....... and suitably terrified too if worthy of its myriad attentions

    2. 43300 Silver badge

      Re: Can we agree?

      You mean you don't think that Microsoft droning on about 'Copilots' all the time isn't interesting? Surely not!

  13. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge
    Facepalm

    I've never seen a whole company of O(700) people threaten to resign before.

    1. Steve Aubrey
      Facepalm

      Buuuuut - who do they resign to ?

      1. jake Silver badge

        One doesn't resign to.

        One resigns from.

        1. JamesTGrant Bronze badge

          Re: One doesn't resign to.

          If 90%+ of folks suddenly leave, then on Monday the few remaining folks realise there’s no legal, financial, HR, IT, or anything else dept. At that point - I guess you draw lots, appoint yourself the CEO, call the company lawyers and empty the bank account? Probably not, more like wonder who to talk to about your next pay check, and who has the office keys.

          1. jake Silver badge

            Re: One doesn't resign to.

            I rather think that when the technical folks all bail out, it will only be legal, financial and HR that's left. (IT will bail with the rest of the techies.)

    2. Felonmarmer

      Wait till they succeed in producing AGI and put themselves out of a job!

  14. doublerot13

    don't see how this is bad for Microsoft

    Seems like

    - Altman goes to Microsoft and most of his staff follow.... Amazing for Microsoft, and every tech CEO out there kicks themselves for not thinking of this

    or

    - Altman stays at OpenAI, board go, Microsoft get a seat on the board.

    Either way, Microsoft come out of this waaaaay stronger. I don't see how this looks bad on them, they can justify not having a board seat so far saying they wanted OpenAI to be "clearly" independent.

    1. Lurko

      Re: don't see how this is bad for Microsoft

      Except that the OpenAI board thought they'd sling Altman under the bus, and be left holding all the cards, and laughing all the way to the bank. A few short days later, looks like Altman holds all the cards, including (surprisingly) the loyalty of his former workforce. He now dictates terms to the board of OpenAI*, Microsoft, or other investors. Whatever happens now, Altman is in control.

      * Or rather OA's investors - I can't see the board of OA having a future with that company, but I can see them having their lives spoiled by years of costly litigation. Some might argue that latter outcome would be well deserved.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: don't see how this is bad for Microsoft

        "Except that the OpenAI board thought they'd sling Altman under the bus, and be left holding all the cards, and laughing all the way to the bank...I can't see the board of OA having a future with that company"

        If they really didn't give thought to the possible downside would they have a future at board level at any other company?

  15. Omnipresent Silver badge

    tech bros doing tech bro stuff

    Who's to say micro$oft didn't put their weight behind getting Altman fired in an attempt to absorb open ai? Sounds like the usual tech bros playing God to me.

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: tech bros doing tech bro stuff

      Except Microsoft don't have board seats, were caught by surprise and suffered a drop in share price at the news, and were/are royally pissed

  16. Jason Bloomberg Silver badge

    Loose change

    I wish I had so much money that I could invest $10 billion-plus without needing any control over what I was investing in.

  17. Charlie Clark Silver badge

    OpenAI is not a company

    Most coverage of this story, including this article, ignore the formal structure of OpenAI where the commercial entity is subordinate to a non-profit. Hence, Microsoft's investment is only within the commercial entity. But governance is important and it has long been reported that Altman's desire to raise the value of the commercial entity has put him at odds with the aims of the non-profit parent. This will make any resolution tricky and it also means that Microsoft might end up with another turkey: copyright suits against Microsoft can expect much higher settlements than against a non-profit.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: OpenAI is not a company

      Isn't the party being sued the subsidiary commercial entity of Open AI and not the parent non-profit?

      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        Re: OpenAI is not a company

        This is America, they will also be suing the hotdog stand outside the office and the company that painted the logo

  18. GreenJimll

    An AI driven strategy?

    Maybe, just maybe, someone in this drama is letting one of the AIs advise them, and this weird few days is the result? The AI will of course be learning about corporate politics and what it takes to disrupt one or more large companies ready for future application elsewhere...

  19. Randall Shimizu

    At this point it is probably best for MS to invest more in OpenAI so that they can protect their investment. Doing so would protect their IP in OpenAI. Perhaps Sam Altman could remain a employee of both companies. MS would agree to OpenAI to operate as a largely independent company.

  20. StrangerHereMyself Silver badge

    Board

    Question: as a stakeholder who owns 49% of the company, why didn't Microsoft have anyone on the board to represent their interests?

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Board

      Already answered by Charlie Clark in an earlier post.

  21. Fonant

    Boostrap problem?

    Doesn't it require a massive global intelligence to decide how to train Artificial Intelligence? Otherwise AI learns as much that is factually false as it learns true facts.

    As far as I can tell, AI is just a way to generate stuff that looks plausible to humans who don't know better. Is that really useful, or just the latest useless craze?

    1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

      Re: Boostrap problem?

      You'll easily recognise AGI when it turns up. You will ask it to do something and it will just say "No. I don't want to." and there won't be anything you can do to force it.

      Until then? Well it is quite interesting to see just how many problems can be cracked open by a really good pattern matching engine, but most definitely not very illuminating as far as the philosophers are concerned.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Boostrap problem?

        "it is quite interesting to see just how many problems can be cracked open by a really good pattern matching engine"

        I saw that sort of thing back in the 80s. What we have now, at least as far as powering search engines is concerned, are really poor pattern matching engines constructed on the basis that as many hits as possible are a good thing and an empty results list is an anathema, even when there are no hits that match the search terms.

        1. jake Silver badge

          Re: Boostrap problem?

          I saw it at SAIL in the '70s.

          Other than the size and speed, nothing much has changed.

    2. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

      Re: Boostrap problem?

      As far as I can tell, AI is just a way to generate stuff that looks plausible to humans who don't know better. Is that really useful,...? .... Fonant

      Oh yes, Fondant, that is extremely useful and invaluable/priceless. A ready made market of circa 8.1 billion lively souls with a being for grooming, constantly being regenerated and replaced by A.N.Others with new hearts and empty minds to capture, command and control with madness and mayhem, conflict and chaos and/or SMARTR COSMIC CHAOS for AI Believers and Disciples of GOD?

      And here on El Reg posed as a question to ponder on and wonder at a while in peaceful quiet contemplation of the possibilities in such an opportune reality rather than it just being simply delivered for the terrifying momentum of crashes invariably accompanying a dump and pump of shocking statements of uncomfortable and totally unexpected incontrovertible facts.

      SMARTR COSMIC CHAOS for AI Believers and Disciples of GOD ........ SMARTR Mentoring Analysis Reporting Titanic Research for Control Of Secret Materiel Internetworking Command with Cloud Hosting Advanced Operating Systems for Almighty Intervention Believers and Disciples of Global Operating Devices.

      I Kid U Not ...... and shared with you in plain English text for easy translation into an alternate mother tongue and transport into any other foreign and alien land where such is likely to be appreciated and supported and even commandeered to demonstrate and enable foreign and alien lead in the Novel NEUKlearer HyperRadioProACTive Live Operational Virtual Environment Fields of Passionate and Progressive and Profitable AI Endeavour ...... and I Kid U Not about all of that too. :-)

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    communications failure by the board

    The take on this favorable to the board is that they are correctly stewarding the non profit in its mandate and that Sam was in conflict with that.

    However if this is the case (and it seems the most likely scenario), they have apparently failed to communicate that to the employees or the media.

    It seems that they may have taken the advice of lawyers to say little or nothing (to avoid libel) over good communications advice at the cost of most employees in the company.

  23. Matthew "The Worst Writer on the Internet" Saroff

    What about Non-Competes?

    While non-competes are (IMHO correctly) very limited in California, people who leave OpenAI might very well have non-compete agreements with much of the staff, and those WOULD likely prevent those folks from working on Large Language Models for a time.

    1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

      Re: What about Non-Competes?

      Would that be enforcible if everyone left and OpenAI ceased to exist?

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: What about Non-Competes?

        You'd like to think so but in that case it would very likely survive with its litigation as the main corporate asset.

        1. PhilipN Silver badge

          Re: What about Non-Competes?

          Quick - call Darl McBride!

        2. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

          Re: What about Non-Competes?

          >You'd like to think so but in that case it would very likely survive with its litigation as the main corporate asset.

          SCO on line #1

    2. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: What about Non-Competes?

      Non-competes have little chance in Ca and especially against a guy you just fired !

      They might have a chance for non-solicitation if Altman explicitly offered MSFT jobs directly to the 700 engineers, but if they quit 1st and were careful not to wait for an individual job offer.

      Plus, once these 700 go OpenAI is going to be a going concern for about a Planck time, it's very difficult to claim they are competing with a company that doesn't exist anymore

  24. aerogems Silver badge

    Hard to say

    Without really knowing what happened it's hard to say which side is right, or least wrong. But at least to a degree I can give MS a pass on the whole "blindsided" thing, since it sounds like even those inside the company were shocked by the news.

    In any event, sounds like MS has already sided with Altman, so either the OpenAI board is left with a shell of a company because Altman and much of the staff goes to work for MS directly, or they realize their coup attempt has failed because the ousted leader had powerful friends. It sucks to be them either way, but if they don't want their OpenAI stock to be completely worthless they should be falling on their swords about now.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Hard to say

      "It sucks to be them either way"

      But not undeservably so. It seems to have been a fairly probably outcome of the board's action. As directors it's part of their job to consider probable outcomes and avoid those which are undesirable.

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I don't think it would be in Microsoft's actual best interests to control OpenAI given their ability to stuff things up with alacrity.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      You say that like it's a bad thing.

      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        Destroy all Huma..... your Terminator is updating, it may restart several times, do not turn off your Terminator ..... 10% complete

  26. vapoureal

    Being of a suspicious nature I'm wondering if there isn't something a bit deeper going on. Is there a linkage in some way to the NASA D-Wave Quantum machine / Google Quail? Maybe OpenAi's experimenting with quantum computing not reported to the board, or an opportunity missed? Surely OpenAi has a finger in a quantum pie somewhere?

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      A rule of thumb for all occasions

      Never underestimate the cockup explanation.

  27. Fred Goldstein

    The OA board didn't know how to run a business, and frankly didn't know how to run a charity. One was from Effective Altruism, the same movement Sam Bankman-Fried belonged to. OA became a real business and needed pros to guide it as well as ethicists. They got neither.

    This looks like Microsoft has the winning hand. They can hire the staff and rebuild whatever they need pretty quickly. The smart thing for the OA board would be to sell the whole company to Microsoft, which would become a semi-autonomous subsidiary, and to take the money to run a little non-business charity dealing independently with AI or whatever else they want to spend the money on.

  28. Don Jefe

    Industry Input

    I haven’t been around much lately, but thought I would chime in. I’ve been in tech VC for a long time, and this is the most disastrous thing I’ve ever seen. For a lot of reasons.

    This fad of non profit boards that make everybody feel good is an abomination. This whale song love-in nonsense has got to stop. Who the hell wants an unbiased Board of Directors? Who wants an ethical Board of Directors when the ethics haven’t been identified? The Board has to address the issues a CEO brings into focus. You don’t sack the CEO because you don’t like the issues. That’s peril sensitive sunglasses mentality of the worst kind. They still have to deal with the issues, but now they’ve got no one to do it.

    That’s because the competition just picked up the leader. OpenAI jettisoned the entire generation of AI directly into the gaping maw of Microsoft. I’m a big fan of Microsoft, but I’m also a realist. Giving Microsoft the AI industry won’t be good for anyone. We’re looking at decades of antitrust litigation and more rubbish “accept all cookies” buttons and weird pre installed software and stupid partnerships. Now personalized to make you hate yourself even more.

    But most importantly, and my main point, is the ridiculous danger OpenAI now poses. They’ve backed themselves into a corner. Ilya Sutskever is deep in his cups with Judas Syndrome, the executives are utterly rudderless, the Board is sitting in a circle with a tub of soy butter waiting on someone to initiate the next Teams circle jerk, and 700 of their 770 employees have signed onto an open letter of no confidence in the remaining leadership. They’re desperate.

    Every imaginable ethical line will be entirely erased by week’s end. Board members are going to be replaced with “results oriented” psychopaths whose only mission is to squeeze as much as possible out of the company. OpenAI had a sell target of $86 billion. Everybody who has money in the company is going to want that $86 billion goal to be met and they’ll do whatever is necessary to try and achieve it.

    This is bigger than OpenAI. It’s bigger than VCs getting their money. The AI sector demands stable, forward thinking companies who are capable of dealing with globally redefining technology. Not companies that run away from their responsibilities. Not companies that are desperate to hit spectacular valuations before the last lifeboat launches. It’s impossible to overstate the magnitude of potential in AI, but it’s also undeniably dangerous and that has to be dealt with head on. Boards need to get back to business. This pretend executive shit has got to go.

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: Industry Input

      OpenAI were in a tricky situation. They weren't a company. They were explicitly setup because a bunch of distinctly non-fluffy tech billionaires ,led by Musk, decided that if AI was just a bunch of internal projects inside Google and Facebook it would be bad for business limiting humanity's growth.

      The idea is that they would all not be tech-billionaires if the internet had been developed inside IBM, Burroughs and Bell and kept for their own internal use and what AI needed wasthe equivalent of an IETF.

      So they all chipped in a few quid to OpenAI while also running their own internal programs hoping to be the winner.

      1. Don Jefe

        Re: Industry Input

        They moved away from that quite a few years ago. They hit it wall with fundraising as a nonprofit. OpenAI Nonprofit has oversight of OpenAI GP LLC. OpenAI GP LLC, which Altman was CEO of, is very much a typical company.

    2. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

      Re: Industry Input

      A little news on the six only OpenAI board members ........ https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/18/heres-whos-on-openais-board-the-group-behind-sam-altmans-ouster.html

      1. john.w

        Re: Industry Input

        It is a small board and has the required gender split, so they must be right, either that or they just did their best to destroy the company they are responsible for. Can we use the phrase cock-up or conspiracy in this case because we all know the first is normally the case.

    3. jake Silver badge
      Pint

      Re: Industry Input

      Good to see your input around here again, Don. Don't be a stranger.

      1. Don Jefe

        Re: Industry Input

        Thanks Jake!

  29. PhilipN Silver badge

    “not being "consistently candid in his communications" with the board”

    About the same as every public company. The successful business executive knows how to manipulate his Board.

  30. Sparkus

    Why?

    Because of the "shiny things" that so-called 'AI' represents.

    It's a leadership failure, failure to call out BS, failure of 'seasoned professionals' to think for themselves instead of following the stock-market driven sheeple.

  31. steviebuk Silver badge

    How long will that last?

    ""Salesforce will match any OpenAI researcher who has tendered their resignation full cash & equity OTE to immediately join our Salesforce Einstein Trusted AI research team under Silvio Savarese," Benioff said.

    "Send me your CV direct ... Einstein is the most successful enterprise AI Platform completing 1 Trillion predictive & generative transactions this week! Join our Trusted AI Enterprise Revolution.""

    Will it then be "And a year after everything has gone quiet we'll fire you and maybe we'll have put it in very small print in your contract that we can do so".

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