I’m so tired of hearing the shenanigans of billionaires.
The interesting part about this story isn’t Altman himself. It’s more about the weird decisions and inner politics of a $90bn company. A board firing their ceo without official reasoning, MS sweeping in while owning 49% of said company, 95% of the staff threatening to quit and the ceo coming back and firing the board while everybody else still tries to understand what the fuck just happened.
Like another commenter said, this could straight up be an episode of Silicon Valley.
And at the end of the day what it really boils down to is that ethics in tech is a PR byline, and the money will always win within the system that exists
Yeah, it’s actually pathetic how many people immediately sided with this clown too. Dude is another generic salesman type CEO who commercialized what was supposed to be open source software and lobbied the EU for loose regulations in AI, yet people act like it’s bad thing that they dumped him.
Just proves to me that most people involved in tech are greedy scumbags, from the top all the way down.
Okay, so can we shunt all the “tech billionaire celebrity entertainment” posts somewhere else?
It is tech news, but I get you. It’s hard to find a place with news about actual technological innovations, advances, updates etc rather than the machinations of the corporations involved. I completely understand the relevance, but it’s often not the sort of genuinely interesting read you’re looking for.
This is such a confusing and messy situation. There is definitely more going on that we dont know about. I already posted this in another thread but:
heres what I think could be going on:
tinfoil hat on
Some Microsoft bigwigs read the OpenAI foundation contract again and realise that they gave them a bunch of money but didnt get the nonprofit, and that they are now fully dependant on them, and that Altman is an experienced shark that knows this. They cant just buy the non-profit, the board would never agree. So they hatch a plan.
They get the lead researcher and a bunch of board members riled up against Altman, with a bunch of dirt they have on him. They tell them hes going to run off with the money and show some proof. The board decides to fire Altman. In the same breath but in another room microsoft hires altman, and promise all openAI employees employment at their new openAI bootleg. They then tell the board through the official channels, that they fucked up and need to resign.
Now, the situation was like this:
- Either the board resigns, and microsoft gets to put some puppets in their place and complete buying openAI
- The board doesnt resign, microsoft gets all their employees and the company in anything but name and openAI slowly fades in relevancy until Microsoft makes a generous offer of 150% above what they are worth(half of their price right now)
either way, microsoft wins.
so yeah, I think the next thing we are going to see is microsoft buying more openAI and getting actual control, or a complete buy.
but thats exactly why they did it! They want to be majority shareholder to get the company under their control, and the board was likely against putting more shares on the market!
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/20/technology/openai-artifical-intelligence-value.html
Here it says that just a month ago, there were rumors that they would do it, but then it didnt happen, so I believe altman wanted to but the board did not.
What in the shit is going on. Goddamn. This has been a wild fucking weekend.
For every year that passes Silicon Valley slides further and further from comedy to documentary.
At least in the US, most people will have Thursday-Sunday off, so it’s basically “Friday.”
Small correction, most people have Thursday off. They have to take leave if they want Wednesday and Friday as well.
I had never even heard of this guy until like 4 days ago. Now I have to wonder if he can turn water into wine and raise the dead because everyone’s losing their shit over him.
For fucking real. It’s like he’s God himself, because everyone want him, nevermind the consequences.
I have to believe it’s mostly hype. The man was at the helm when OpenAI suddenly “changed the world” with “AI” (note the quotes) but that seems to be almost entirely a case of luck.
Like, generative AI models aren’t really brand new. OpenAI just made them really accessible and easy to use for other applications, which is where Altman comes in. He had an ounce of foresight to see the tech was “the future” and a whole lot of luck executing on his plan to bring it to market.
As a figurehead and leader, that does count for a lot, but not the table-flipping freak outs we see happening.
I think its mostly popcorn at this point. The general opinion as I’ve noticed is that OpenAI is severely failing at living up to what it promised. Nobody particularly gives a shit about the board or Altman except some folks that seem fixated about the honestly unhinged postings of his sister.
I didn’t even know anything was going on with his sister, either. The plot thickens.
Someone will come along with them and call me names for dismissing them, but I don’t really want to get into it.
Really? Why do people think that? All this news made me try it out yesterday and it completely blew my mind.
Somehow, Altman returned.
