Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor (opens in new tab)

In the case of YC, removing him was better for PG and YC.

In this case, having Sam on top of OpenAI gets them better returns on their investment.

Wow, not the kind of compliment I’d want to receive.

This situation is rotten with conspiracy, backstabbing, money-grabs, rumor, innuendo, etc.

This(?!) is what Sam is so great at?

Nothing is worse than religious fanatics. While I am not implying she is so, for this kind of enterprise I would personally prefer scientific method of evidential support of Sam being this and that, rather then fanatical speaches how they like him.

I didn't see anything in the article that there was bad blood, just that Paul fired Sam. Those are not the same thing.

Yes, absolutely, AI will reach superhuman persuasion before it reaches AGI. Yes, that's an extraordinary threat. The reason it's a threat is that it's a weapon without self-guidance or direction: a paperclip maximizer, as it were. A gray-goo problem.

I still think Sam has access to exactly this, and panic about it is what caused his firing. Whether his use of his persuasion-weapon has played a role in what ensued is not as clear.

I get that huge swathes of OpenAI appear to have been persuaded, but I don't think this weapon applies as much to them, nor do I think it is unique and different in nature from what already exists. It's a way of short-cutting the process of persuasion and coming out with the answer right away. Everything superhuman persuasion can offer, has already been deployed by trial-and-error using tools like Google Analytics and whatever metrics Facebook offered, in recent (and not-so-recent) years.

Just because you can now push a button and get the killer argument to sway a demographic doesn't mean people haven't got to that argument more slowly in previous years, whether it's watching the results of persuasion campaigns in click-through feedback… or issuing radio broadcasts and observing the results.

Back in the day there was a man named George Wallace who spoke of the things he'd done in public service, and nobody cared, and then he began talking of something else 'and they stomped the floor'. AI persuasion is nothing more than a short-cut for getting to 'and they stomped the floor', and there's more than one way to elicit that.

Sam with his slick black hair, looking like Tom Hiddleston's Loki... "my ambition knows no bounds, I will build AGI and then you will understand my TRUE power."

Reading some recent pg tweets through this lens, though, I think it makes sense. E.g. there is this tweet: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1726198939517378988. Both of the following can be true (and more to the point, I think the following two items are flip sides of the same coin):

1. Sam is an absolute masterful negotiator and is incredibly well-respected in the valley because his skills at assembling people and resources are unmatched.

2. Sam can be manipulative and self-serving, sometimes making decisions that are nominally about a higher goal but (not really coincidentally) are self-aggrandizing.

I see this trait in lots of effective, famous people. There have been tons of comparisons in the news recently to Steve Jobs, but for me for some reason Anna Wintour comes to mind. I don't think many people would describe Wintour as "nice" as she is known for being kind of ruthless and manipulative (she was "The Devil" after all...), but tons of people in the fashion industry are incredibly loyal to her based on her abilities to identify talent and get shit done.

But despite comments to the effect that the YC post indicated Sam’s departure, it doesn’t seem to say anything about it right now?

I imagine most of us think, "S/he was so close to success. Maybe s/he'll have learned! What could be the harm in talking them up a bit? Besides, no one wants to ruin someone else's life,"

It's not in either man's interests to create drama, either.

It all makes me wonder what really happened with Musk and OpenAI. There's so much we don't and can't know about these billionaires and their internal sparring, despite the fact that we give them such huge amounts of control over our society.

Say the next US election, you have Biden against Hitler. I would expect no less than 95% for Biden. Not everyone likes Biden, but most everyone hates Hitler.

I think his stock as potential boardmember probably went down with his service on the Theranos board.

(no other reason than to understand how all the puzzle pieces come together)

After some reflection, I've found that I sympathize with Ilya Sustkever a bit more now. I'm autistic and I suspect he is neurodiverse in some way. I've definitely been misled by manipulative leaders and peers, been enthusiastic for whatever scheme they had, but regretted it after seeing the aftermath or fallout. I can absolutely see ways Sustkever could have been manipulated by others on the board.

Ilya, a nobody who wrote the most seminal paper of the last 10 years. The guy that Eric Schmidt and Elon broke their friendship over was just a random nobody.

Come on. It is no secret that when OpenAI formed, every single researcher joined so they could work with Ilya (and Zaremba who worked with him, but was less famous). Greg is brilliant but ML people didn't care for him and Sam 'one of those VC guys'. A lot of their best hires had already worked in Ilya/Zaremba before they joined OpenAI.

OpenAI might have moved past needing Ilya's brilliance to innovate, but if anyone gets to claim that they 'made' OpenAI, it is Ilya.

>I deeply regret my participation in the board's actions. I never intended to harm OpenAI. I love everything we've built together and I will do everything I can to reunite the company.

https://twitter.com/geoffreyirving/status/172675427022402397...

> 1. He was always nice to me.

> 2. He lied to me on various occasions

> 3. He was deceptive, manipulative, and worse to others, including my close friends (again, only nice to me, for reasons)

Greatest mistake you can make is watch someone speak live about what they're selling. If they're a good actor they'll win you over.

It would be nice to see him be down to Earth for a change and show some compassion but what do I know.. maybe those aren’t his strongest qualities.

At least Adam Neumann is a weirdo with a personality.

You can say the same thing about Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs is a jerk for sure but a bad personality does not predict success or failure as much as you (or we) hope to. And what people say about your character is also overly dependent on results. Only time will tell whether Sam Altman will be considered a villain or a flawed hero in media.

The Gist was posted by HN user xena and deleted after Elon's tweet led to a deluge of transphobic comments being left on it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38371837

[1] https://www.insider.com/you-can-spot-psychopaths-by-looking-...

either this annie character is making stuff up, or the whole rest of her family are some kind of comic book villains

Sam has zero charisma. Zero looks. No technical ability. He's not a storyteller. He's not a hype man. He comes off as a mildly surly sloth when he talks.

His actual pre-OpenAI achievements from a product perspective are a joke.

But he was nevertheless "there" for YC and "there" in OpenAI, and a bunch of money was raised, and he's successfully managed to get all spotlights on him at all times, so he's highly visible.

He's like a weird geek following plays from Trumps book: just stay highly visible, associate with any possible win, and be at the center of attention.

Why does it work? Because subconsciously who WOULDNT want to operate this way in life? It takes the least amount of effort compared to many other job tracks or even CEO tracks, and it's become wildly profitable for him.

So the cult of personality idolizing America of today can't help but want their tech Jesus fantasy to work out.

Companies, specially start up, are growth garbage. Grow. Grow. Grow.

And CEOs today who get visibility win. Period. e.g. Musk, Sam.

relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/125/

Who would you prefer, a sensible, technical, honest CEO driving real efforts or this media circus? There might be a dime a dozen AI startups doing more science based innovation instead of this moore-law-llm. But they don't have the media attention, so their offices are probably empty.

(btw, IMHO i think all of this board non-sense is planned PR, by the company or Sam, which might have gotten out of hand)

PS: The only thing people should be talking from that article is the only fact. That he was hired by YC to vet startups, and instead invested in them from his brother fund. Yet, here we are, talking about everything but it.

That's kind of silly, isn't it? Altman is a college dropout who has barely ever worked and somehow fell upward into CEO positions very quickly.

His level of communication in talks and interviews is terrible, so I am genuinely confused where all this mystique comes from. He sounds like a college student being asked and talking about management.

It seems that if you have any title or personal relationship attached to you, people will listen to anything you say, and even say things or just conjure up an ora for you.

But Sam the CEO has totally failed to manage the narrative throughout this episode. [A CEO needs to communicate better]

Surely he could have stated it was a disagreement in direction? Instead he left it open to rumours: rumours which mostly assumed the board had good reason to sack him (everyone presumed the board couldn't be that stupid plus he didn't defend himself). : Many of those rumours were extremely damaging to Sam. Even if he couldn't say a thing, he could have got other third parties to endorse him.

Nadella and Eric came out looking pretty good.

I read it in the middle of purchasing a new car in 2010, and had signed paperwork and a purchase agreement to buy car at $X. Next day I'm told "My manager won't let me sell for anything less than $X+Y", after I'd gone through all the trouble of filling out all that paperwork.

Fortunetly I'd just finished a chapter in the book outlining this EXACT sales technique, that relies on a person being more willing to go through with an action if they've committed something to it... like filling out half an hours worth of paperwork. Said no thanks, and found the exact same car an hour away at less than $X.

Haven't underestimated the impact of a salesperson since, and no longer delude myself trying to believe somehow I'm special and immune to such things.

There are no qualifications to be a CEO, ultimately, except the board happens to want you as CEO.

It’s just a title.

Elon Musk has entered the chat...

The unfairly maligned genius ceo whose on company fired him for some bullshit reason and then had to publicly embarrass themselves by begging for him to take them back?

That makes him look pretty cool - and I didn’t even know who he was a couple weeks ago.

Same reason top football players contracted with Mino Raiola.

A scum bag (or tough/sleazy negotiator depending on how you see it) who can be a scum bag without everyone hating him is an exceedingly rare talent.

Sam seems to have it and is valued accordingly.

However, I absolutely would have been livid at the board and wanted Sama to come back if I was an employee, simply because I would have joined being aligned with the 'commercialize and make money' side, and not the other.

So I think a lot of OpenAI employees probably don't care if Sama is CEO vs someone else, as long as they get to ship and get paid. The board firing sam wasn't just a 'let's get a new CEO' it was a pivot from 'ship and make $$$'.

Corporations have been acting in this capacity (making massive changes to the ecosystem, human lives, etc) just fine. The corporate "organisms" have caused humans to erect massive projects to shave a few milliseconds from HFT, for example. AI-based decision support tools will just make that process more efficient.

Of course it was flagged within a few minutes.

I've worked for the type of people you mention and no one followed them when they leave. 95% threatening to leave in this case is hard to ignore.

>I just saw Sam Altman speak at YCNYC and I was impressed. I have never actually met him or heard him speak before Monday, but one of his stories really stuck out and went something like this:

> "We were trying to get a big client for weeks, and they said no and went with a competitor. The competitor already had a terms sheet from the company were we trying to sign up. It was real serious.

> We were devastated, but we decided to fly down and sit in their lobby until they would meet with us. So they finally let us talk to them after most of the day.

> We then had a few more meetings, and the company wanted to come visit our offices so they could make sure we were a 'real' company. At that time, we were only 5 guys. So we hired a bunch of our college friends to 'work' for us for the day so we could look larger than we actually were. It worked, and we got the contract."

> I think the reason why PG respects Sam so much is he is charismatic, resourceful, and just overall seems like a genuine person.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3048944

I think the article mentions what may be this same incident, without saying how it was done:

> Rabois noted that Altman, as a Stanford dropout, persuaded a major telecommunications company to do business with his start-up Loopt — the same quality, he said, that enabled Altman to persuade Microsoft to invest in OpenAI.

From the earlier comment, it seems he persuaded the telecom essentially through fraud though maybe not legally so.

The best career decision I ever made was to prioritize working with Good People and one of my few regrets was putting up with smart jerks for so long.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch. These types must have weaknesses of their own. I’m growing the cynicism necessary to tolerate them, but I’d like to know more robust strategies to manage them and keep them in check.

I find it hard to truly hate people, but with this type I can muster some pretty flowery invective on the spot.

[edited]: sorry means to replied one comment replied to this comment

However, sunlight is the best disinfectant. A bully cannot stand in isolation unless he is enabled. But if left too long they can amass too much power as the bully can manipulate enough people to vote for him (see Trump) or manufacture the vote.

In those cases it takes a far larger force to bring about change.

You must be a sociopath to think that's a good idea.

> “Sam lives on the edge of what other people will accept,” said one of the people who had worked with him closely. “Sometimes he goes too far.”

Silicon Valley has a profound problem with (a lack of) morals and ethics.

I've had a chance to work with some HR people who genuinely wanted to improve the work environment on their respective companies (I know! Please believe me, lol).

One of the bigger issues was corruption in general, of which this sort of behavior could fall under. The line of reasoning for that is that people usually resort to these behaviors in order to immorally/unlawfully attain some material benefit to them (it is very strange to find a pure blooded sociopath that just does it for the sake of it). When people artificially distort any system that is set up (for acquisitions, promotions, terminations, you name it) so that it no longer serves the company's interest but that of a group of rogue employees, well ... that's corruption. This framing is nice as it makes company exec's take a look at it from a business' gain/loss perspective instead of "meh, it's just employee's gossip".

Anyway, the proposed solution was a sort of ombudsman for companies (it's actually a tech thing, not an actual person), a private channel where people could raise these issues without fear of retaliation. There cannot be a clear cut criteria by which one could define whether a particular employee is being corrupt or not, but we've observed something like a bi-modal distribution where problematic individuals truly stand out! Quoting Warren Buffet, "there's never just one cockroach in the kitchen"; you usually observe a lot of employees with no comments on them, a few getting like one or two remarks per month (and you can just ignore those, shit happens everyday) and then you have this guy who is getting 10+ comments per week and that's who you really need to sit down with and ask what's going on.

Obviously this relies on the HR person being fair and honest, not part of the plot, and that comes with its own set of caveats; but at least, it's much easier to control that for one person than for 100s. Overall, the whole thing felt like an improvement.

But, conclusion, the app didn't go much farther than being used at a couple companies, and then we realized it would be very hard to monetize, the team disbanded and we all moved on to other things :P.

He’s the CEO of OpenAI, which is responsible for the most-discussed advancement in technology for the past year. So it’s not that unusual for this to be discussed on a technology-focused forum.

He’s also the centre of a massive firestorm, where extremely atypical corporate behaviour was very recently taking place. Again, highly relevant topic for a forum that deals with startups.

In short, it’s news, and specifically news of interest to people on this site. No need for cults or obsession.

This whole thing feels like Altman expected some back and forth here between him and the board, but in their inexperience they vastly overreacted to what was probably “standard” corporate maneuvering. He assumed there would be steady escalation, but they went right for the endgame well before passing the many opportunities for compromise that usually show up in fights between CEOs and their board.

Why do people follow movie stars?

Because we’re human, and we gossip and obsess over high performers.

For no other topic have I seen so many flagged stories, and all of them are the ones that paint Sam in a negative light.

What I did see is lots of people wondering how he lied to the board. Almost a week later and we still don't know how he lied to the board. We can all speculate away but there has been zero evidence of wrong doing, what else are we supposed to do? I guess we can just call him a sleaze-bag like you do.

My impression was rather a overwhelmingly "wtf is going on?"

edit: I still don't know enough, to judge anyone involved

I've always said that in another country, like Germany, it might take time to get to know someone and, if you don't know them, you certainly shouldn't ask how they are doing. In the United States, we say hello and ask how people are, even if they are complete strangers.

This is a generalization, not something to be used for every single person, or culture, but it's a good indication of how cultures deal with trust up front. Here in the US, we'll give you "trust credit" and then roll over you like a semi truck if you screw up later.

Even the worst criminal in the world should be declared "not guilty" if they were caught for a crime they did not commit for which the prosecution did not make a convincing case. In law, there no "innocent", only "not guilty" and most people surmised that sama is not guilty in this context irrelevant of a larger backstory.

Did they? You should try scrolling through the original thread and ctrl-Fing [edit: removed the single word that was getting me downvoted to oblivion, my point is that people were quick to jump to very serious/troubling conclusions to explain his firing and explicitly weren't jumping to innocent] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38309611

What is your reasoning for stating that closed-source proprietary LLMs are a bad idea and that anyone with long-term interest in the subject (AGI?) should switch to open-source models?

Open-source tends to foster monopoly and relies on free labor (see Google, Meta). AI also relies on free labor.

WaPo has been an atrocious wreck lately and I’d be surprised at someone still subscribing to it while actually reading their content in anger. Hastily drumming up some palace intrigue puff piece like this has been their business model for years and I don’t see the appeal.