back to article OpenAI makes it official: Sam Altman is back as CEO

OpenAI has made the return of Sam Altman as its CEO official. A Wednesday post delivered the news, sharing two missives sent to OpenAI employees and shared with the world: one from Altman and the other from board chair Bret Taylor. Both deliver news that the OpenAI board will henceforth include a non-voting observer from …

  1. HuBo Silver badge
    Thumb Down

    Sun Don't Shine

    A genuine salad tossing bummer IMHAIO!

  2. well meaning but ultimately self defeating

    They’re all white men”

    I’m center left politically and mixed race, have many(not just the one) friends, worked with and hired the most diverse set of people imaginable over decades in tech, yet for some reason this sentence irks me. Choosing skin colour as the sole characteristic to represent the diversity of experience and thought necessary for this critical role feels ridiculous and having just running a thought experiment where the word white was replaced with any other skin colour/racial group/identity driven divisor and could not come up with an acceptable equivalent, made me question whether we have gone too far. El Reg was never a source of divisive identity politics in the past. People should be judged and accepted based on the entirety of what they have said and done, not what they look like.

    1. ChoHag Silver badge

      Re: They’re all white men”

      FYI: Satya Nadella is not white. The clue is in the name.

      I suspect Mira Murati might not be either.

      How many exceptions can we ignore while we keep that "all" for maximum outrage?

      1. katrinab Silver badge

        Re: They’re all white men”

        Mira Murati is apparently from Albania, so probably white.

        1. Krassi

          Re: They’re all white men”

          I guess she's not a man though ...

      2. well meaning but ultimately self defeating

        Re: They’re all white men”

        As much as a supportive post of my undeniable genius is appreciated, I regret to say yours is flawed. Satya is not the board member for Microsoft, and Mira is not on the board either.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: They’re all white men”

      Skin color is one factor. What if "properly done", the diversification should employ haplogroups. Or should we consider that whites are a global minority?

      From personal experience inter-race acceptance depends on many factors, some of which have nothing to do with physical looks. Language skills, lack of common cultural references, or food eaten - are often sufficient divisive factors. We have not even touched the religion yet.

      Even within "whites" there are sufficient divisions based on looks, if you are from a different country. Not all whites look the same. For example, could you distinguish between Chinese, Korean, and Japanese? Or African ethnicities?

      Summarizing: the problem is harder than it seems. Meritocracy is probably the optimal way.

      Besides, it is not that fun to spend your whole life doing hard science, as they do in OpenAI. Why suddenly so attractive? High paycheck?

    3. WolfFan

      Re: They’re all white men”

      Feh. I note the distinct shortage of not-as-old-as-you-might-think Irishmen, born in British East Africa, married to Sikhs, and currently residing in Florida. I think that every Big Tech board should have at least one. Why, yes, I do have one in mind. Going cheap, too.

      Irish Africans unite! Rebel against this blatant discrimination!

      On a related note: when the next census arrives, I plan to fill in the African-American box. Just to screw with TPTB.

    4. mostly average

      Re: They’re all white men”

      Any consideration of race in personnel decisions is by definition racist. Ditto for sex, religion, national origin, etc. Those things have no business being included in personnel files. If they must be included, they must be redacted (including names) wherever possible when an individual is being assessed for any personnel decisions. It's impossible to be racist if it's impossible to know the race.

  3. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    To the Valiant Victor the Worthy Venerable Viral Spoils.

    Is Uncle Sam Altman also back at the helm of the OpenAI/Microsoft vessel because of the understandably secret [as in proprietary intellectual property] in-house research which led to others declaring him as not being “consistently candid in his communications,” now being outed as a leading AI development being bred and groomed for public deployment and new virtual flight operations from a UK/USA Google DeepMind facility ..... https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/28/ai_agents_can_copy_humans/ ....... and thus is there something of a cyber space race on between the two mega metadata base protagonists to be first past the post as often as is possible to pick up any sponsors' prizes, technocrat rewards, noble and Nobel awards?

    Strangers things have happened whenever allies tangle as competitors and become Sp00Key Quantum Leap Entangled ...... :-) Licensed to Thrill.

    1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

      Re: To the Valiant Victor the Worthy Venerable Viral Spoils.

      And here's some opinion providing similar context to the above alien speculation on the OpenAI shenanigans ..... and from someone well known for not suffering the useless fool.

      The xAI founder warns that "AI is more dangerous than nuclear bombs," when asked about about OpenAI (the company he co-founded):

      “I have mixed feelings about Sam,” Musk said about CEO Sam Altman, who was recently ousted and reinstated.

      “The ring of power can corrupt.”

      Musk added that he wanted to know why OpenAI cofounder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever "felt so strongly as to fight Sam."

      "That sounds like a serious thing. I don't think it was trivial. And I'm quite concerned that there's some dangerous element of AI that they've discovered," he added.

      Musk said he believes Sutskever has a "strong moral compass."

      "He really sweats it over questions of what is right," Musk told Sorkin.

      "And if Ilya felt strongly enough to want to fire Sam. Well, I think the world should know what was that reason." ..... https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/they-can-go-fk-themselves-musk-slams-advertising-boycott-blackmail

      Now, .... regarding these more dangerous than nuclear bombs/NEUKlearer HyperRadioProACTive IT Bombes.? Who/What do you think is in command and control of them and able to drop them on humanity with impunity/without suffering colossal collateral damage?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: To the Valiant Victor the Worthy Venerable Viral Spoils.

        Musk is a walking example of "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely"

        Lord Acton may have been talking of the pope, but the phrase seems to hold true in secular world too.

  4. ChoHag Silver badge

    > Microsoft joins the board in non-voting role

    Embrasure complete. Begin operation Extend.

    1. Krassi

      non-voting role

      I'm imagining the future board meetings: meeting opens, Microsoft rep says what he wants, everyone else votes "yes", meeting ends. "if you don't do what we want, then you have no computers and all your staff are taken away " is rather more powerful than having a vote.

      1. cyberdemon Silver badge
        Devil

        Re: non-voting role

        Azure is after all, not just Someone Else's computer, but Microsoft's computer

  5. W.S.Gosset Silver badge

    "Error: replace Toner"

    Board member Helen Toner has been ousted.

    The little I've seen of her suggests dizzy parroting of buzzwords and vague melodramas, and she's in the same "effective altruism" club as Sam Bankman-Fried, so her absence probably won't be noticed.

  6. Howard Sway Silver badge

    the OpenAI board will henceforth include a non-voting observer from Microsoft

    So Sugar Daddy has decided that the brats need a grown up present to stop the World's Most AI-xciting Computer Project turning into Lord of the Flies.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Imagine having a PhD and leading a mass employee revolt to reinstate the CEO who doesn't even have a bachelors degree as CEO. They've all been duped.

    1. TheWeetabix Bronze badge

      Riiiiiiiiight

      Because wallpaper is the only way to know anything in the industry? Degrees are mostly useful to satisfy other people with degrees. (Proper engineers excluded)

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like