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The not so open goings-on of OpenAI
Sam Altman: The rise and fall...and rise and fall...and
Christian Duvall
November 20, 2023
If you’re not confused, you’re not paying attention.
Yeah, that seems like the right way to start this thing…
Here’s what we got for you:
The Secret Coup (?) of OpenAI
That Drip
The Secret Coup (?) of OpenAI
Late day on Friday the Internet was stunned by the news of Sam Altman’s exit from OpenAI as its CEO. If you haven’t been seeing the rapidly evolving story over the weekend, we’ll help to catch you up a bit.
X and LinkedIn went absolutely crazy. A lot of shock, a lot of dismay, and the best part – a lot of conspiracy theories.
But in this particular case, at least a few of the conspiracies might actually be true.
First off, let’s see what the official word was:
Mr. Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities. The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.
So, what could he have been less than candid about?
Some of the speculations that we quickly heard:
Sam lied about how GPT-4 was operating and it was far more manual than he made it appear
Sam lied about the latest “breakthrough” during OpenAI DevDay 2023 (the first and possibly last of its kind)
Sam revealed trade secrets, like hints about how DALL-E 3 works
Within just a few hours, Co-Founder Greg Brockman took to X to peace out in a way that reminded me a little of something else (NSFW).
After learning today’s news, this is the message I sent to the OpenAI team:
— Greg Brockman (@gdb)
12:09 AM • Nov 18, 2023
Right, so now it started getting interesting. People started dropping more and more theories on what was happening and compared to the official word, these were…well….more fun.
Speculations that I read:
There was a massive leak of data that was available through the most recent GPT-4 update, which is why new signups were shut off for several days. Microsoft was secretly pulling out of its support due to its customer data being breached (yet again).
Internally, Sam ignored pleas from the tech team to slow down its go-to-market plans due to safety concerns, but he wouldn’t listen. He was only concerned about fame and fortune and constantly diverged from its nonprofit mission. Greg was an enabler and Mira was the hero who would save the day and bring the company back to its tech-driven mission. (TLDR; capitalism is bad)
OpenAI had reached AGI and it recommended that it should be the new CEO (this was the best one)
It was a coup, set up by Ilya and Mira Murati to get Sam out of the way
We also were reminded of very interesting facts, such as the fact that Sam had literally no equity in the company.
Later, Greg revealed that there was an emergency board meeting (that took place on Google Meet…), which excluded Greg. The next day, Greg was told he was removed from the board but they wanted him to keep his role. That wasn’t going to happen.
Then further stories refuted that as false.
Then more stories claimed that it was actually true and those efforts were led by none other than Satya Nadella (CEO of Microsoft, for those of you who keep thinking it’s Bill Gates of Steve Ballmer).
This reminds me of that one high school couple that would break up in epic fashion in the middle of the hallway between periods, just to get back together by the end of the day (and do it all over again the next). Can’t we just skip to the part where the board gets pregnant, they have a shotgun wedding with Sam, only to find out much later that the baby is actually Elon Musk’s?
Perhaps not.
So it’s safe to say – no one knows what the hell is happening over there right now, except for Ilya Sutskever, Adam D’Angelo, Tasha McCauley, and Helen Toner.
I’m sure, like all tales involving Sams (-Altman, -Bankman-Fried, Son of-), we’ll learn a lot more after the bodies are dug up.
That Spooky Drip
I just checked the Post-It under my keyboard and thankfully it didn’t make this list.
Disney announced it’s getting into…NFTs?? In a fashion that screams “if you stand perfectly still, they won’t see you”, the media giant has opted to avoid the phrase NFT entirely assuming everyone will be fooled into thinking it’s like…totally not that thing everyone got ripped off by before.
I was told by my editor that the joke I’d prepared for this article – “Nearly 80% of women’s jobs are under threat from generative AI” was inappropriate and would likely get me canceled, soooo.
This friggen guy still doesn’t seem to understand what the hell is happening.
