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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s ouster today from the San Francisco startup he co-founded quickly overtook the artificial intelligence community, where some dubbed it “the biggest news since the AI boom.”
No AI enthusiasts saw the departure coming. “I was having lunch with some friends, and everybody’s phone started ringing,” said one participant of an X Space discussion. “I was up in the elevator, and I heard, and I tripped and fell,” said another.
The implications of the country’s leading spokesperson for AI leaving the company he founded left many gobsmacked.
“Confidence is shaken in OpenAI, for sure,” said Shawn Wang, an AI founder and the host of one of the X Spaces. “You think you understand OpenAI, then this happens; you realize you don’t understand OpenAI. You think Sam picks the board. Now you realize he didn’t pick the board.”
Within hours, OpenAI President Greg Brockman, who was also the biggest contributor to GPT-4, announced on Twitter that, “based on today’s news, I quit.” Kara Swisher, the longtime tech journalist insider, predicted that there would be “a lot more major departures of top folks” at the company within hours.
Altman himself said very little, writing that “I loved my time at OpenAI,” and that he would “have more to say about what’s next later.”
That did not stop the speculation. Thousands of tech-savvy X users crammed into a couple of X Spaces dedicated to the news of Altman’s departure. Each discussion had over 2,000 participants at any given minute.
“Let’s crowdsource news,” said one of the co-hosts at “Generative AI Friday Recap: Sam Altman OUT at OpenAI,” an X Space that kicked off at 2 p.m. Even Elon Musk, a co-founder of OpenAI, attended at least one of the audio discussions. He appeared to be as ignorant of the true story as the rest of the participants. Many employees of OpenAI, too, logged on and were eager to figure out what happened with their former boss.
“He did not see it coming,” said a participant of “OpenAI Narrative violation. Emergency @latentspacepod,” an X Space that started within an hour of the news breaking.
Altman’s last public appearance as the CEO of OpenAI was at a fireside talk about art and artists Thursday night, at which he appeared “extremely relaxed.” Earlier yesterday, he made a high-profile appearance at the Asia-Pacific Economic Conference, a widely documented event addressing hundreds, if not thousands, of audience members.
The official announcement said only that Altman was “not consistently candid in his communications with the board,” and that the board “no longer has confidence” in his leadership. At the time, the board envisioned that Brockman would step down as chair but remain in his role as president of the company, indicating his departure later in the day was a surprise.
ChatGPT itself was unhelpful: “I don’t have real-time information, so I recommend checking the latest sources … ”
Those sources also proved unhelpful.
The X Spaces provided little news, and lots of shocked tech workers. “Quite an insane decision. For me, Sam is the company,” said one speaker. “He’s a Steve Jobs comparable,” said another during the 2 p.m. X Space discussion.
A “Why was Sam Altman fired?” poll was held on Manifold and widely shared; the top two guesses were “misalignment with nonprofit mission” and “consistently making business decisions without Board knowledge.”
Some said the departure could not be due to technical problems within the company, because otherwise the board would have held former Chief Technical Officer Mira Murati accountable. Instead, they promoted her to interim CEO.
While many techies admired the rocket-ship career trajectory of Murati and believed she would make a trustworthy leader, they were also skeptical. Maybe “it’s gonna be a lot more mundane than a lot of us expected,” one said. And, besides that, would she become the actual CEO?
The back-to-back departures of two of the company’s most important technical gurus left many wondering if this “is going to result in brain drain at OpenAI,” said a speaker during an X Space discussion. People even wondered whether the world would ever actually witness the launch of GPT-5, the much-anticipated large language model from the company.
Still, despite all the fog and uncertainty surrounding Altman’s departure, the AI community remained optimistic. “At the end of the day, the exciting thing about AI is what it enables,” said one speaker. “I think Sam did a good job … but building goes on.”
As to Altman, no one knew, Friday evening, exactly where he might be.
Quoting Lambert Strether at Naked Capitalism: ” A firm whose product generates bvllshlt had a CEO who generated bvllshlt.”
Let’s hope this kind of muddled self-terminating illogic hasn’t already been baked into the AI product they’ve created
Well, this is all yesterday’s news, Altman and Brookman are at Microsoft now. Money talks, as they say,
SF touting itself as AI central seems to a bit of lipstick on a pig – the pig being vacant office space and the fact that selling out to tech companies wasn’t a balance approach.
Daniel,
Others have speculated that, like in the movies, something happened in Ilya’s lab.
One guess is that AI has become sentient and whoooaaa, where’s that lead ?
Go Niners !
h.
Campers,
It was the last chance for the Scientist to fire the Salesman.
He was fired by Ilya for same reason his mentor, Jeff Hinton quit Microsoft.
They invented this beast and the biggest danger is that it makes decisions that are not in alignment with those of its creators.
Once it does we are either a precious antique in a Cosmic Zoo Planet or gone.
Having lived past my own shelf life I watch in absolute wonder.
Go Niners !!
h.
This story is so weird. I don’t understand it at all.
Mission Local is uniquely situated right where the AI industry is centered. I know AI isn’t your usual area of coverage, but if you could shed some light on what happened here, that would be great. Good luck.
Candace,
They’re a couple of blocks over from my North Mission digs on Howard (I’m on Valencia).
A major investor in many of these successful startups, Andreesseen, says that it may be necessary to call in air strikes on all of the Quantum Computers.
Yuval Noah Harari says that AI has already hacked the Human Operating System which is Language and that it will be able to control us through that just as we have been able to do the same to ‘lower’ species.
For background dial in Lex Fridman’s work and his interviews with Musk and Ilya Sutskeyver and Jeff Hinton and any of David Shapiro’s work (once you get past the Star Wars uniform) …
One respected physicist says that there are people alive now who could conceivably be alive in a thousand years if we got it right.
Am I the only one studying this stuff?
It has to do with something called, ‘Super Position’ and nothing to do with Sex.
Go Niners !!
h.
The board slapped leather and shot both their feet off. Maybe they should have consulted an AI…just sayin.
Campers,
The Scientist who built it all fired the Salesman becoming its face.
While he still could.
Same thing happened to Apple with Jobs.
Musk put in ten million as seed money and got a billion going out.
I wish I’d put in ten million when I could.
Go Niners !!
h.
Grab your popcorn….
New AI startup coming in 3, 2, 1…
According to reporting by the NY Times, Brockman – chairman of the board at the time – wasn’t even on the video call Friday when Altman was fired. How, under this circumstance, the rest of the board “envisioned Brockman would be stepping down as chair but remaining in his role as president of the company” is rather baffling. This doesn’t add up at all.