Why Sam Altman Was Booted From OpenAI, According To New Testimony (theverge.com) 38
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: What did Ilya see?" Two years ago, it was the meme seen 'round the world (or at least 'round the tech industry). OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had been briefly ousted in November 2023 by members of the company's board of directors, including his longtime collaborator and fellow cofounder Ilya Sutskever. The board claimed Altman "was not consistently candid in his communications with the board," undermining their confidence in him. He was out for less than a week before being reinstated after hundreds of employees threatened to resign. But observers wondered: What hadn't Altman been candid about? And what led Sutskever to turn against him?
Now, new details have come to light in a legal deposition involving Sutskever, part of Musk's ongoing lawsuit against Altman and OpenAI. For nearly 10 hours on October 1st, bookended by repeated sniping between Musk's and Sutsever's attorneys, Sutskever answered questions about the turmoil around Altman's ouster, from conflicts between executives to short-lived merger talks with Anthropic. He testified that from personal experience and documentation he'd viewed, he'd seen Altman pit high-ranking executives against each other and offer conflicting information about his plans for the company, telling people what they wanted to hear.
The testimony paints a picture of a leader who could be manipulative and chameleon-like in the relentless pursuit of his own agenda -- though Sutskever expressed hesitation about his reliance on some of the secondhand accounts later in testimony, saying he "learned the critical importance of firsthand knowledge for matters like this." In a statement toThe Verge, OpenAI spokesperson Liz Bourgeois said that "The events of 2023 are behind us. These claims were fully examined during the board's independent review, which unanimously concluded Sam and Greg are the right leaders for OpenAI." The comment echoes a 2024 statement by board chair Bret Taylor, following an investigation conducted by the company. Altman "exhibits a consistent pattern of lying, undermining his execs, and pitting his execs against one another," reads a quote from the memo Sutskever. Altman told him and Jakub Pachocki, who is now OpenAI's chief scientist, "conflicting things about the way the company would be run," leading to internal conflict and repeated undermining.
Sutskever said he also faulted Altman for "not accepting or rejecting" former OpenAI research executive Dario Amodei Dario's conditions when he wanted to run all research and fire OpenAI president Greg Brockman, implying Altman played both sides.
Furthermore, OpenAI CTO Mira Murati surfaced claims that Altman left Y Combinator for "similar behaviors. He was creating chaos, starting lots of new projects, pitting people against each other, and thus was not managing YC well."
Now, new details have come to light in a legal deposition involving Sutskever, part of Musk's ongoing lawsuit against Altman and OpenAI. For nearly 10 hours on October 1st, bookended by repeated sniping between Musk's and Sutsever's attorneys, Sutskever answered questions about the turmoil around Altman's ouster, from conflicts between executives to short-lived merger talks with Anthropic. He testified that from personal experience and documentation he'd viewed, he'd seen Altman pit high-ranking executives against each other and offer conflicting information about his plans for the company, telling people what they wanted to hear.
The testimony paints a picture of a leader who could be manipulative and chameleon-like in the relentless pursuit of his own agenda -- though Sutskever expressed hesitation about his reliance on some of the secondhand accounts later in testimony, saying he "learned the critical importance of firsthand knowledge for matters like this." In a statement toThe Verge, OpenAI spokesperson Liz Bourgeois said that "The events of 2023 are behind us. These claims were fully examined during the board's independent review, which unanimously concluded Sam and Greg are the right leaders for OpenAI." The comment echoes a 2024 statement by board chair Bret Taylor, following an investigation conducted by the company. Altman "exhibits a consistent pattern of lying, undermining his execs, and pitting his execs against one another," reads a quote from the memo Sutskever. Altman told him and Jakub Pachocki, who is now OpenAI's chief scientist, "conflicting things about the way the company would be run," leading to internal conflict and repeated undermining.
Sutskever said he also faulted Altman for "not accepting or rejecting" former OpenAI research executive Dario Amodei Dario's conditions when he wanted to run all research and fire OpenAI president Greg Brockman, implying Altman played both sides.
Furthermore, OpenAI CTO Mira Murati surfaced claims that Altman left Y Combinator for "similar behaviors. He was creating chaos, starting lots of new projects, pitting people against each other, and thus was not managing YC well."
Meh. (Score:2)
The testimony paints a picture of a leader who could be manipulative and chameleon-like in the relentless pursuit of his own agenda
Welcome to the corporate world. The only thing worse than the aforementioned leadership is when middle management runs off in their own multiple directions and leadership can't or won't reign those morons in.
Yeah, fortunately nobody is dumb enough to... (Score:3)
Fortunately, nobody is dumb enough to give these bozos a trillion dollars with just a whiff of a concept of something that could potentially be useful for more than a laugh.
Re:Yeah, fortunately nobody is dumb enough to... (Score:4, Funny)
Fortunately, nobody is dumb enough
Don't get on an airplane.
manipulative and chameleon-like (Score:2)
>The testimony paints a picture of a leader who could be manipulative and chameleon-like in the relentless pursuit of his own agenda
This explains why a large percent of the most talented rising corporate mid-level executives stop working to start a family.
Dealing with sociopaths on a daily basis is not agreeable to having a family, hence bail out of the labor force in ones mid-30s to have the first child.
Dealing with upper executives bent on 996 or more work hours from everyone in the corporation.
Re: (Score:2)
This explains why a large percent of the most talented rising corporate mid-level executives stop working to start a family.
Where are you getting this data? How do you measure "most talented"?
Re: (Score:2)
what, so it should be accepted? It's also common that the new alpha kills the infants of the previous one.
Well I always suspected those that wormed their way to the top behaved little better than animals, this just confirms it! Very glad I have no money wrapped up in all this
Re: (Score:1)
Delusion of Divinity of Man rather than accepting that human is an evolved animal is a pretty common reason for having problems dealing with reality nowadays.
Notably human leaders generally don't kill infants of previous leaders, because our tribal structures evolved to be different from lions. We had our evolutionary divergence from them a very long time ago.
Re: (Score:2)
Delusion of Divinity of Man rather than accepting that human is an evolved animal is a pretty common reason for having problems dealing with reality nowadays.
Notably human leaders generally don't kill infants of previous leaders, because our tribal structures evolved to be different from lions. We had our evolutionary divergence from them a very long time ago.
There are a lot of Apes, our closest living relatives, that still practice the behavior of killing the previous leader's offspring.
It's not "Delusion of Divinity of Man" to expect ourselves to behave somewhat better than the animals we evolved from. It's the expectation that we can escape our animal nature by not promoting the biggest psychopaths to the top of the societal heap. Sadly, too many are hung up on the idea that animalism is some form of ideal to not just strive for, but to dwell in and hold up a
Re: (Score:1)
Yes, our closest surviving relative great apes do.
We diverged from them a very long time as well. There are no close relatives alive to us left, because we won that evolutionary competition. Unless you would prefer to start splitting homo sapiens into the currently existing three mainline genetically trees of homo sapiens development we have today (Pygmies, Sub-Saharans and everyone else).
None of our groups practice this.
P.S. "I can escape my nature" is indeed a delusion of Divinity of Man. It is a delusion
Re: (Score:1)
That's not what lions do. Not even remotely, because lion tribe system is completely different from human one. There, the core unit is group of females. Males simply fight each other for having the sole male slot within this structure.
There are no human tribes where core unit is a group of females, and there's only one male. Because that's not survivable in human condition, as human females are poor hunters and territorial defenders, unlike female lions.
Re:Meh. (Score:4, Funny)
chameleon-like in the relentless pursuit of his own agenda
Huh, so America really *is* run by lizard people? I guess I owe some apologies.
Re: (Score:1)
actual lizard or just lizardbrained, the lack or under-use of midbrain and cortical structure reveals itself either way.
The right wing is openly espousing actual brainlessness with their hate-on for empathy. They'd probably think that was pretty funny until they saw the degree of self-own
Re: (Score:3)
> Huh, so America really *is* run by lizard people? I guess I owe some apologies.
I, for one, welcome our new reptilian overlords.
Re: Meh. (Score:2)
I'm sure the attorneys are happy.
TLDR; (Score:5, Insightful)
He didn't lie! (Score:5, Funny)
He hallucinated.
Re: Why he was booted (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Already Knew That (Score:2)
That was already known. Those are literally the reasons cited by the board when they removed him. Heck, it was talked about extensively throughout the book Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI. This isn't news.
Re: (Score:1)
Re:This was known, the interesting part is... (Score:4, Interesting)
Altman delivers results? Guess he didn't flew into a rant when asked by business journalist how he spouts large numbers for future endeavors while making so little revenue with OpenAI. Oops, he did just that.
Anthropic however doesn't care that much about the common user and has a business model that caters for the enterprise. their numbers are a lot lower than OpenAI's numbers, but Anthropic is on much more solid footing, financially speaking. So if the AI bubble pops sooner than later, I see OpenAI fail so miserably that they will go bankrupt.
Understand me correctly, I don't think that the OpenAI ChatGPT models are bad, just that there are far too many users in their free plan, creating a lot of overhead and very little returns. At some point, investors want, nay, need to see returns and I don't expect Altman to be around for very long as he isn't the best person to lead OpenAI.
Re: (Score:1)
You could start with the fact that he secured by far the most investments out of all AI companies for his company.
You could then go on to note them being top attractors of relevant talent in the field, and having stayed that way for many years at this point.
Then you can proceed to noting that he has become the de facto public face of current AI push. Most people have no idea who leads Anthropic. Meanwhile pretty much everyone who follows AI even remotely knows who Altman is.
So best investment acquisition, b
Re: (Score:2)
Most of the talent at OpenAI ends up leaving... typically for Anthropic. Of course if you pay enough you'll get employees, but it seems that's more despite the management rather than because of it.
AFAIK there's only 3/11 of the original founders still there (Altman, Brockman & Wojciech Zaremba).
Re: (Score:1)
Important factor: "most talent" typically means the opposite of "best talent".
In AI like in most things, it's the top talent that actually matters the most. Normal distribution is top 20% does more than 80%. More recently distribution shifted to 5/95 in many fields because modern technologies increasingly empower top performers to be even more performant.
And with AI, it's shaping to be empowering something like top 0.01% to be as performant as the rest in fields where outcome is sufficiently multiplicative.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah - only 5% of ChatGPT users pay for it.
OpenAI's focus, and revenue, is mostly from ChatGPT, as opposed to Anthropic's being from API use (coding + business use).
API use seems more scalable than interactive ChatGPT use, which is limited by number of humans on the planet, with users willing to pay evidentially being a tiny percentage of that. OpenAI already has 800M weekly users, so you are not going to see a 10x increase than that unless they are selling to aliens.
API use has almost no limit since it's d
Re: (Score:3)
I have to ask, what results is he delivering? Smoke and mirrors? Yeah, he's sucking up money and resources like a vacuum, but if you consider that results you're so far off the reservation that you just as well already be planting the flag on Mars.
Why does Sam Altman totally creep me out ? (Score:2)
$ChatGPT: Sam Altman may come across as "creepy" to some people due to a combination of his demeanor and reported behaviors that have unsettled certain observers and former OpenAI employees. Some sources mention his body language and communication style as off-putting or manipulative, which has led to a perception of him as someone who can be disconcerting or unsettling in interactions. Additionally, some criticism points to his leadership style as divisive
Breaking News! (Score:3)
He testified that from personal experience and documentation he'd viewed, he'd seen Altman pit high-ranking executives against each other and offer conflicting information about his plans for the company, telling people what they wanted to hear.
Breaking news: Sam Altman is ChatGPT!
A future in US Politics? (Score:2)
Sounds like an ideal candidate for MAGA 2028!
Not that board, THAT board (Score:2)
It's weird to say that without mentioning that Microsoft and Altman teamed up to have the entire board fired, then picked a replacement board that, big surprise, decided Altman is a great guy.