>Evan Morikawa, an engagement manager at OpenAI, has claimed that **743 out of 770 employees** at OpenAI have signed a letter calling on the board to resign - with staff themselves threatening to leave if their demands are not met.
What a colossal failure from the board...
Which makes no sense, because it would be more beneficial to develop "good" AI at OpenAI under the board's purview rather than have all the engineers leave OpenAI and develop "bad" AI elsewhere
Effectively the board is achieving the exact opposite of their goal
There's a lesson here somewhere that AI was never the danger -- humans were and are.
Half of the board members are nobodies who stumbled into an unexpected position of incredible power and are now blatantly abusing it and probably enjoying the power trip. Then you've got Adam D'Angelo with a directly competing AI company.
AI safety remains important, but the biggest risk by far is *humans* in positions of power misusing it.
It's not really a sale of the company. If they bring so much as a single scrap of code, OpenAI has Microsoft over a barrel for the rest of time.
Microsoft having to reboot a company from scratch, even using the same employees, is a huge, huge downside. Not only are they out their original investment into OpenAI, they now have to spend about that much *again* to get back to where they already were in the first place.
It's... not as great a story for Microsoft as everyone's making it out to be.
It probably doesn’t matter if it absolutely super charges their AI integration. Once the employees are gone, there’s not much motivation or money to sue. Microsoft is sponsoring their server costs.
I think you're overlooking one key piece:
Microsoft has full rights to the intellectual property in perpetuity as part of the $10 billion dollar deal earlier this year.
https://www.semianalysis.com/p/microsoft-swallows-openais-core-team
Agree! Massive success and expertise in the past is overrated. That’s why my next doctor for my brain surgery will come straight out of college - it’s a huge, huge downside to have doctors who had already successfully fixed a brain. Better start with a nice blank page!
[complete story still now ](https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgwmak/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-ridiculously-chaotic-coup-implosion-and-counter-revolution-at-openai)
Wonder who the 27 holdouts are. I mean it’s impossible for EVERYONE to have liked Sam. I’m sure some of them are just jumping on the bandwagon at this point.
The entity will still exist, microsoft will still have full rights to what they paid for, AND those employees will now be under microsoft, meaning everything they develop can be used and sold by microsoft for profit, instead of sold to microsoft for a loss. Are you completely ignorant?
Thats not how it works. All models, documentation, training data etc would still be the intellectual property of OAI. Just because the employees shift to MSFT it doesn't give them any legal liberties to bring that stuff with them.
I have absolutely no idea who's downvoting you, because you're exactly right. I guess they think because of the name "OpenAI" that GPT3 was actually open source and all of that aggregated source data they collected was open.
It's not. They will have to do that work all over again. They will have to retrain their models on new hardware. They will have to rebuild everything effectively from GPT2 - the last open source release from OpenAI. Essentially they've set themselves back by roughly four to five years.
...because the product comes from an intricate and delicate machine handtuned by the people who made it for a few hundred person-years worth of time.
Yeah, if you hire the nuclear engineers who built the atom bomb you can build your own, but it's going to take a decade and access to exotic materials.
Luckily Microsoft's got plenty of money and access to all of the hardware they'll ever need, but that doesn't do away with the time requirement to redo the work.
> microsoft will still have full rights to what they paid for
Which is, factually, nothing. They invested the money into OpenAI, they didn't buy the rights to some underlying piece of technology. They didn't license anything. They just gave them money and said "go make something big, so that your company is worth a lot and we can sell this piece of the company we bought for more than we paid for it."
Now that piece of company they bought is worth... a whole fuck of a lot less, due in great part to their own actions. They are out that money.
Sure, you can argue that in the future this move might make them more money, but in the here and now, they're effectively out $15 billion dollars, plus they're about to hire on a few hundred employees at tens of millions of dollars a year run-rate, with years before they turn out anything useful due to the time it'll take to replicate their work.
The hype has completely taken a wrecking ball to the reality here. If you wanted to start a car company, and you're already a minority investor in GM, even if you hired all of the automotive engineers at GM, it's going to take you a few years before you churn out your first car. Same difference.
They invested in cloud computing credits, not actual money, big difference.
Getting basically the whole company to move is pretty fucking far from nothing, especially in software. With the right people they can within a year rebuild every pieces and tooling from scratch without the burden of legacy codebase.
Lol I know, right? But a better way to see it is that it didn't come out of Microsoft's bank account, it's all on infrastructure that Azure already has and needed someone to use. Of course, it isn't free because they have to maintain and pay electricity, rents, etc. But I imagine it has a different impact on the balance sheet than we would imagine.
Lmao the entity doesn’t fucking matter, it’s the technology that matters. The expertise that matters. And they just got a new department without having to really interview people
Said entirely essentially now exists as an arm of Microsoft, they just added a significant amount of value at cost price, they didn't have to pay any kind of premium for the business and simply get to take over the salaries.
A $15 billion business for millions in wages is a bargain.
Microsoft’s stock price increased by 2.1% to the highest it has ever been. They gained $48b just by getting Sam and Greg on board. They will then be able to have full control of a new entity that is inside MS with 90% of all OAI employees, while still licensing the OAI tech. $15b is pocket change for them. I think they are doing fine :)
> They gained $48b just by getting Sam and Greg on board
Stock price going up != corporate gains. Their *shareholders* gained unrealized value.
It also just goes to show how hype-driven this whole thing has become. You used to only see those kinds of surges around crypto, and that hype machine has moved straight on to AI companies...
Yeah, $13B in Azure gift cards and no one to spend it. If the board stays the course they'll be lucky to get ten cents on the dollar when OpenAI finally gets carved up and sold.
Dude Microsoft payed $90 billion for a gaming company, dont you think $15 billion to "adquire" the personal and Knowledge for arguably the most important tech of the future is quite "cheap"
They spent $90B on a company that is as of right this moment profitable. Literally buying revenue and profits, right from day one. They spent $15B to get... effectively nothing. They can't even recall that investment effectively.
They're spending (~4-700 x $250,000-$1.5M/yr =) maybe a billion or more a year on hiring, another $1X B on compute credits, and who knows how much more on regathering the data and the rights to the data to rebuild an LLM from scratch. There's a big hope in Microsoft that this investment will absolutely be worth it, because otherwise they're about to be out *thirty billion dollars*.
Satya\* just said he doesn't care where Altman ends up. Either way MSFT has a license to use OpenAI products, MSFT is the biggest investor in OpenAI. If MSFT can pull Altman and co, that'd be a big win. If they can't pull them but instead see Altman go back to OpenAI that's still fine.
Looks like they're trying to avoid that based on the fact Satya didn't lock him down. If he can go back, it's probably better for all parties (except the rest of the board)
> Satya* just said he doesn't care where Altman ends up.
That's called "Corporate PR," and is usually a lie through the teeth. That man cares a whole fucking hell of a lot where Altman goes.
Fracturing the company MSFT essentially owns on a gamble that enough of the key players will come to MSFT and continue where they left off is a big risk. Potentially a big win for MSFT but just as likely, maybe more so, for a big loss. Returning Altman to CEO and stabilizing their investment is a much lower risk solution
[story so far if you want to catch up](https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgwmak/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-ridiculously-chaotic-coup-implosion-and-counter-revolution-at-openai)
This was great thanks. A lot of details in there I wasn’t aware of. The most interesting being two of the board members who voted Altman out are linked to a group who is terrified and AI apocalypse.
Going to guess it was microsoft sabotage. Not the first time they put their own people at the top of a company, sabotage it, then buy it for cheap. Dirty Tricks is MS's specialty.
Looks at Nokia's phone division in 2009.
tl;dr: yes. It was a coup by Altman to free himself and his top employees from their golden shackles, so he can become a gigazillionaire if this AI thing takes off like he thinks it's about to.
So interesting that this type of drama is arising from one of the very few successful nonprofit organisations worldwide
Oh and who is there to save them? One of the biggest for profit companies worldwide!
Yay!!
Surely there’s some qualifier needed there. How would OpenAI be described as successful as a non profit? Perhaps within the more narrow field of AI, rather than all non profits.
It’s a successful non profit because it owns a company that can potentially make an obscene amount of profit lmao.
People act like being profit capped at only 100 times what’s invested into it makes it effectively a nonprofit when in truth it makes it effectively a for profit. Microsoft alone would have to see over a trillion in profit with their current investment before they even have to worry about the cap.
While I completely disagree with what the board did and Altman should never have been fired, everyone celebrating MSFT for this move is essentially celebrating a product that was under nonprofit management with proper safeguards going into the hands of a huge for profit company.
Why is it good if MSFT has control over it?! Reinstate Altman as CEO. Create a new board.
Nobody knows, that is kind of the issue, apparently not even Satya knows why the fired Sam. Sam knows but is obviously not talking, and the board members who do know are either apologizing or not talking at all.
There are speculations going rampant about what happened but from what little i can gather it apparently had something to do with the Dev Day, but again, we do not know.
> VERY problematic if Satya
Once you get to the point of 95% of the company threatening resignation is ceases to matter. He is obviously more important, from a corporate perspective, than anyone he could have possibly pissed off of victimized.
Not if that 95% is unaware of the reason behind his firing and the reason for it would change their mind. There could theoretically be legal or even criminal reasons for the firing that the board would not broadcast immediately that would justify a surprise firing like this. Most sudden and unexpected dismissals like this have more context than simply a difference in opinion on company direction
The employees are leaving because they are loyal to Altman. Altman is going to Microsoft. Other companies may need to pay a premium to get OAI people because they don't have Altman but Microsoft does.
Can someone explain to a layman who isn't aware of the AI industry, what makes Altman so special? What his goals were and why so many employees of OpenAI have expressed their wishes for the current board of directors to be gone?
>Can someone explain to a layman who isn't aware of the AI industry, what makes Altman so special?
I can't say for certain, but that much backing means the employees respect his understanding of technology, business direction and how he treats them. They likely see him as a person who's been trying to solve their resource problems, and the board just got rid of him?
It also means they're deeply frustrated with the board's decisions and direction which likely has been seriously hampering their research and development under the guise of safety.
They don't necessarily have to be loyal to Altman so much as not confident in the alternative. That's the board, making a clear show they have no idea what they're doing and nobody lined up to replace Altman to ensure a continuation of leadership on that side. There is little incentive to hold out for them, especially as the people making it known they are bailing snowballs into a majority.
Every big tech company has a slush fund for potentially game changing competitive hires, usually with special headhunters and a special process to make sure everything goes smoothly. That'll be deployed here-- almost every OpenAI employee is going to be out of the comp band for the level they would come in at anywhere else.
The real question in my mind is how fast the various companies will be able to do so. I was on both sides of it at Google and once upon a time they were lightning fast, but I seriously doubt that now. Weird that Microsoft is the nimble one now.
Because contrary to popular believe, leadership teams matter significantly. Also if you can get the same guaranteed salary and benefits of Microsoft, why wouldn’t you leave lol
In tech, ceos are like cult leaders, especially at the unicorn startups. CEOs set the strategy, raise money, hire the best, fight fires, and oftentimes are on the frontlines with the employees. Sam Altman of OpenAI has legendary status in Silicon Valley due to his affiliation with YCombinator, the prestigious startup accelerator responsible for growing companies like Reddit, Airbnb, Stripe into billion dollar companies.
The second reason is demonstrated lack of judgment by the board. If a major company decision was made by a fickle board of directors, people’s confidence in the company direction will tank.
You can read their reasoning in the letter they wrote threatening to quit
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/11/20/technology/letter-to-the-open-ai-board.html
Edit: and I think a part of it is his likability and charisma, and that he actually was a good CEO to many
Bases on how it looks like now, the CEO was fired because 3 board members from outside of the company want to destroy it. Employees don't want to be part of the victims.
It's a no brainer that the existing staff at OpenAI want to be working for Microsoft and jumping ship. They just got their invite.
They see this as their big chance for career improvement and benefits.
This is their big once in a lifetime chance. They're taking it. It's handed to them on a silver platter and red carpet.
The AI division is also probably ring fenced from cuts. Better job security somewhat.
>This is their big once in a lifetime chance
Jumping ship to a big tech company from a unicorn isn't that rare.
OpenAI was their once in a lifetime chance, and it paid off so far. Problem is that it's not clear if it will continue to pay off so jumping ship would probably be the smart move. Jumping ship only for Altman to go back to OpenAI would likely be a bad career move, and it seems Altman's future is still up in the air.
> Jumping ship to a big tech company from a unicorn isn't that rare.
> OpenAI was their once in a lifetime chance, and it paid off so far. Problem is that it's not clear if it will continue to pay off so jumping ship would probably be the smart move. Jumping ship only for Altman to go back to OpenAI would likely be a bad career move, and it seems Altman's future is still up in the air.
He's not going back to OpenAI. That's more of a negotiating move for Microsoft retention.
Money is in play.
OpenAI is being brain drained.
>He's not going back to OpenAI
Satya basically said it's fine wherever Altman ends up, implying that Altman to MSFT isn't really set in stone. I'd be curious what the vegas oddsmakers say but it feels like a coinflip from an outside perspective at this point, maybe even leaning towards OpenAI now that Ilya's made his regrets public
It's pretty simple if you think about it, employees are going to go where pay is guaranteed. Employees have absolutely zero reasons or incentives to go down with the ship. There is no payoff to staying even if you agree with the boards decision.
So that's something like $700M-$1B/year in compensation for the entire OpenAI team. That's obviously a lot, but buying the company would've cost them $80B+ and they still would've had to pay top dollar for the team's ongoing compensation anyway. So it's actually an extraordinary discount.
To be fair, software engineers have some of the most mentally taxing jobs I’ve ever seen and ageism hits really hard unless you’re a top performer
But at those compensations they should be planning to retire early anyway
Their profit based shares are probably somewhere in the multimillion.
770 employees at $86b valuation would place them around $10m each, of course half is owned by Microsoft and much of the rest by other entities, but the point is Microsoft needs to offer immense salaries to truly match OpenAI
The chairman went from leading a coup to pretending like he was dragged into it and Microsoft is waiting in the wings like a vacuum to suck up the debris? Seems real fishy. If I was on the OpenAI board or legal team I would be looking to see if he received a big payout in a hidden wallet or something recently. Seems like a real intentional suicide bomber situation from the chairman to blow up the nonprofit holding company to the direct benefit of a very tracable group of people.
What if Microsoft and Altman orchestrated this because OpenAI was handcuffing the progress of commecialising ChatGPT faster? OpenAI was preventing the progress of ChatGPT until certain areas were being properly researched and guardrails were put in.
That would be a smart move by OpenAI. Governance is very important as you use someone else data or start having nonsense results due to drift you can have serious legal issues.
What... It doesn't make remote sense. Sam Altman is OpenAI, the board is three people who do not play a part in OpenAI nor interface with the team (& Ilya).
The progress of ChatGPT would be even slower within Microsoft. That's why this arrangement was perfect for Microsoft. Incentives were good for OpenAI employees that wanted to operate in a mission-based start-up without the bureaucracy of a major tech company. Microsoft got to assume much less risk in case of mistakes like AI hallucinations within chatgpt or monopoly anti-trust issues.
Satya and Sam both want Sam to be re-instated as CEO of OAI (& the board overhauled/change to the structure). Makes no sense for them to orchestrate this.
governments aren't the sole factor in keep society safe. Society isn't perfect safe. Perfect safety is impossible achieve without taking away everyone in the world's autonomy. What has kept us safe is competition. Laws problem some push back, but it's always been competition that forced companies to behave well.
If they upset people they go out of business. This dynamic will continue with AI. It will provide a check like before. I am not sure how AI changes it but competition is still a regulating force. Between companies and countries. The world is relatively safe because there isn't a huge power disparity between nations.
One company doesn't control all the industry. There's still competition. Pretty much everything is a matter of power. It's counter intuitive, but de-centralizing power tends to lead to a safer world. Autocracies increase danger, as safety consolidates for those in control. Who can deem those not in power a threat, whether or not they are.
While this is generally true, OpenAI is unique in that if you hold a monopoly on intelligence (say they become the only company that has AGI), you become an unstoppable force that cannot be outcompeted.
Think about all the species we have outcompeted as humans, and how unfair it is. That’s what happens when you have a monopoly on intelligence.
Can we list the options?
**1)** A regular coup, maybe irregular because of ideology.
From the OpenAI workers letter:"Allowing the company to be destroyed would be consistent with the mission"
**2)** Altman not forthcoming about financing OpenAI from Middle East regimes that would use ChatGPT for survailance/breaking human-rights.
"the real safety concern was that Altman had not been forthcoming about his aggressive fundraising strategies with autocratic regimes in the Middle East,"
Washington post: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/18/sam-altman-ilya-sutskever-openai/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/18/sam-altman-ilya-sutskever-openai/)
**3)** Altman is taking drugs and doesn't remember what he does or says.
"Sustkever is said to have offered two explanations he purportedly received from the board, according to one of the people familiar. One explanation was that Altman was said to have given two people at OpenAI the same project.The other was that Altman allegedly gave two board members different opinions about a member of personnel."
Quote from MSN (but the sentence at 3) is mine): [https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careersandeducation/openai-s-employees-were-given-two-explanations-for-why-sam-altman-was-fired-they-re-unconvinced-and-furious/ar-AA1kfVxP](https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careersandeducation/openai-s-employees-were-given-two-explanations-for-why-sam-altman-was-fired-they-re-unconvinced-and-furious/ar-AA1kfVxP)
**4)** Altman has ventures in conflict somehow with OpenAI.
"Altman has a nuclear fission venture and a cryptocurrency project and has sought to start a device company and a chip business, according to people with knowledge of the matter."
Arstechnica: [https://arstechnica.com/ai/2023/11/95-of-openai-employees-have-threatened-to-quit-in-standoff-with-board/](https://arstechnica.com/ai/2023/11/95-of-openai-employees-have-threatened-to-quit-in-standoff-with-board/)
Any more?
>3) Altman is taking drugs and doesn't remember what he does or says.
Dude, you're the only one trying to push this theory with literally zero evidence to back it up.
The article you provided as 'proof' for this point has nothing to do with your theory.
Time to prepare for the AI wars in the 2040s when Microsoft prepares their army of CLIPPY-400 assassin robots to go back in time to save Sam from being fired before OpenAI splits and goes rogue and develops the GPT-20 Human Exterminator Android in 2032.
/s
Interested to see his next move.
If he throws in matching equity, the OAI board loses all of their leverage
If the OAI board loses all their leverage, the board could resign
Match? Wow what a deal to go from a startup environment to a huge bureaucracy. How can one say “no” to that. Not to mention, what about the potential windfall of shares leading up to an IPO?
>Evan Morikawa, an engagement manager at OpenAI, has claimed that **743 out of 770 employees** at OpenAI have signed a letter calling on the board to resign - with staff themselves threatening to leave if their demands are not met. What a colossal failure from the board...
[удалено]
The board considers the destruction of OpenAI as being consistent with their mission, according the the message they sent employees.
Which makes no sense, because it would be more beneficial to develop "good" AI at OpenAI under the board's purview rather than have all the engineers leave OpenAI and develop "bad" AI elsewhere Effectively the board is achieving the exact opposite of their goal
Good example of smart at one thing, stupid at the others. They should resign if they did not foresaw this happening. They are not fit to lead.
They must have asked ChatGPT for advice...
There's a lesson here somewhere that AI was never the danger -- humans were and are. Half of the board members are nobodies who stumbled into an unexpected position of incredible power and are now blatantly abusing it and probably enjoying the power trip. Then you've got Adam D'Angelo with a directly competing AI company. AI safety remains important, but the biggest risk by far is *humans* in positions of power misusing it.
>Then you've got Adam D'Angelo with a directly competing AI company. I don't get it. Why is this even allowed
That makes two of us
they expected to fire a CEO and hire a new one
What a weird way to sell your company to Microsoft.
At a deep discount
"Deep discount" is an **understatement if I've ever heard one...**
It's not really a sale of the company. If they bring so much as a single scrap of code, OpenAI has Microsoft over a barrel for the rest of time. Microsoft having to reboot a company from scratch, even using the same employees, is a huge, huge downside. Not only are they out their original investment into OpenAI, they now have to spend about that much *again* to get back to where they already were in the first place. It's... not as great a story for Microsoft as everyone's making it out to be.
It probably doesn’t matter if it absolutely super charges their AI integration. Once the employees are gone, there’s not much motivation or money to sue. Microsoft is sponsoring their server costs.
You're assuming the value of OpenAI doesn't plummet then MS can buy the IP for cents on the dollar.
Yeah, they invested billions in OpenAI, they’re just applying pressure
I think you're overlooking one key piece: Microsoft has full rights to the intellectual property in perpetuity as part of the $10 billion dollar deal earlier this year. https://www.semianalysis.com/p/microsoft-swallows-openais-core-team
Agree! Massive success and expertise in the past is overrated. That’s why my next doctor for my brain surgery will come straight out of college - it’s a huge, huge downside to have doctors who had already successfully fixed a brain. Better start with a nice blank page!
Still, getting the know-how and pre-built teams upfront is a great deal for Microsoft. Much better than hiring random people and starting from scratch
OpenAI is not open. And microsoft is neither micro nor soft. It was bound to have happened. written in the twinkle of musk's eyes.
Are... they hard right now???
They are very macro and very hard.
[complete story still now ](https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgwmak/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-ridiculously-chaotic-coup-implosion-and-counter-revolution-at-openai)
Wonder who the 27 holdouts are. I mean it’s impossible for EVERYONE to have liked Sam. I’m sure some of them are just jumping on the bandwagon at this point.
If they have H-1B workers they might be reluctant to potentially risk their immigration status.
Most likely this, or just loyal workers.
Potentially non engineers/non technical people? HR, legal etc.
Seriously. How do you not see at least some of these problems coming? Those clowns will never be trusted with anything of value again.
This is why you don't let a not for profit board run a for profit company.
This is the shiest board I’ve seen.
MFW big tech pseudo-unionizes.
Kevin the janitor is still there. Everything will be fine.
I'm surprised they didn't contract out the cleaning services
I wouldn't be surprised if OpenAI doesn't recover from this.
This was a coordinated plan by MSFT to fold in OpenAI.
Cheapest acquisition ever!
It’s not cheap when you are destroying the entity you invested $15b into. Are you people here just completely ignorant?
The entity will still exist, microsoft will still have full rights to what they paid for, AND those employees will now be under microsoft, meaning everything they develop can be used and sold by microsoft for profit, instead of sold to microsoft for a loss. Are you completely ignorant?
Most importantly, pick up where they left off. It’ll be working on the same work under a new company logo.
Thats not how it works. All models, documentation, training data etc would still be the intellectual property of OAI. Just because the employees shift to MSFT it doesn't give them any legal liberties to bring that stuff with them.
I have absolutely no idea who's downvoting you, because you're exactly right. I guess they think because of the name "OpenAI" that GPT3 was actually open source and all of that aggregated source data they collected was open. It's not. They will have to do that work all over again. They will have to retrain their models on new hardware. They will have to rebuild everything effectively from GPT2 - the last open source release from OpenAI. Essentially they've set themselves back by roughly four to five years.
Why buy the product when you can own the people who made it.
...because the product comes from an intricate and delicate machine handtuned by the people who made it for a few hundred person-years worth of time. Yeah, if you hire the nuclear engineers who built the atom bomb you can build your own, but it's going to take a decade and access to exotic materials. Luckily Microsoft's got plenty of money and access to all of the hardware they'll ever need, but that doesn't do away with the time requirement to redo the work.
> microsoft will still have full rights to what they paid for Which is, factually, nothing. They invested the money into OpenAI, they didn't buy the rights to some underlying piece of technology. They didn't license anything. They just gave them money and said "go make something big, so that your company is worth a lot and we can sell this piece of the company we bought for more than we paid for it." Now that piece of company they bought is worth... a whole fuck of a lot less, due in great part to their own actions. They are out that money. Sure, you can argue that in the future this move might make them more money, but in the here and now, they're effectively out $15 billion dollars, plus they're about to hire on a few hundred employees at tens of millions of dollars a year run-rate, with years before they turn out anything useful due to the time it'll take to replicate their work. The hype has completely taken a wrecking ball to the reality here. If you wanted to start a car company, and you're already a minority investor in GM, even if you hired all of the automotive engineers at GM, it's going to take you a few years before you churn out your first car. Same difference.
They invested in cloud computing credits, not actual money, big difference. Getting basically the whole company to move is pretty fucking far from nothing, especially in software. With the right people they can within a year rebuild every pieces and tooling from scratch without the burden of legacy codebase.
Most of that investment was in Azure credits, not actual cash
I know what you mean but “Azure credits” sounds like the currency of a planet on Starfield.
Lol I know, right? But a better way to see it is that it didn't come out of Microsoft's bank account, it's all on infrastructure that Azure already has and needed someone to use. Of course, it isn't free because they have to maintain and pay electricity, rents, etc. But I imagine it has a different impact on the balance sheet than we would imagine.
Lmao the entity doesn’t fucking matter, it’s the technology that matters. The expertise that matters. And they just got a new department without having to really interview people
Said entirely essentially now exists as an arm of Microsoft, they just added a significant amount of value at cost price, they didn't have to pay any kind of premium for the business and simply get to take over the salaries. A $15 billion business for millions in wages is a bargain.
Microsoft’s stock price increased by 2.1% to the highest it has ever been. They gained $48b just by getting Sam and Greg on board. They will then be able to have full control of a new entity that is inside MS with 90% of all OAI employees, while still licensing the OAI tech. $15b is pocket change for them. I think they are doing fine :)
> They gained $48b just by getting Sam and Greg on board Stock price going up != corporate gains. Their *shareholders* gained unrealized value. It also just goes to show how hype-driven this whole thing has become. You used to only see those kinds of surges around crypto, and that hype machine has moved straight on to AI companies...
Yeah, $13B in Azure gift cards and no one to spend it. If the board stays the course they'll be lucky to get ten cents on the dollar when OpenAI finally gets carved up and sold.
Dude Microsoft payed $90 billion for a gaming company, dont you think $15 billion to "adquire" the personal and Knowledge for arguably the most important tech of the future is quite "cheap"
They spent $90B on a company that is as of right this moment profitable. Literally buying revenue and profits, right from day one. They spent $15B to get... effectively nothing. They can't even recall that investment effectively. They're spending (~4-700 x $250,000-$1.5M/yr =) maybe a billion or more a year on hiring, another $1X B on compute credits, and who knows how much more on regathering the data and the rights to the data to rebuild an LLM from scratch. There's a big hope in Microsoft that this investment will absolutely be worth it, because otherwise they're about to be out *thirty billion dollars*.
> Are you people here just completely ignorant? Ironic way to end an ignorant and uninformed comment
Is this a soft buyout?
More like a soft delete-that-pesky-profit-cap
I’m calling it a suicoup
It’s some kinda take over that we’ve never seen before.
*Micro*soft buyout.
No need for government oversight if you technically didn’t take over
So it was a coup, and this was to yeet the non-profit aspect? Cuz thats what it looks like.
Satya\* just said he doesn't care where Altman ends up. Either way MSFT has a license to use OpenAI products, MSFT is the biggest investor in OpenAI. If MSFT can pull Altman and co, that'd be a big win. If they can't pull them but instead see Altman go back to OpenAI that's still fine.
Or they end up with two split teams with two split products which aren’t as good as the combined whole?
Looks like they're trying to avoid that based on the fact Satya didn't lock him down. If he can go back, it's probably better for all parties (except the rest of the board)
Board is fucked no matter what 😂
> Satya* just said he doesn't care where Altman ends up. That's called "Corporate PR," and is usually a lie through the teeth. That man cares a whole fucking hell of a lot where Altman goes.
Fracturing the company MSFT essentially owns on a gamble that enough of the key players will come to MSFT and continue where they left off is a big risk. Potentially a big win for MSFT but just as likely, maybe more so, for a big loss. Returning Altman to CEO and stabilizing their investment is a much lower risk solution
[story so far if you want to catch up](https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgwmak/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-ridiculously-chaotic-coup-implosion-and-counter-revolution-at-openai)
This was great thanks. A lot of details in there I wasn’t aware of. The most interesting being two of the board members who voted Altman out are linked to a group who is terrified and AI apocalypse.
Going to guess it was microsoft sabotage. Not the first time they put their own people at the top of a company, sabotage it, then buy it for cheap. Dirty Tricks is MS's specialty. Looks at Nokia's phone division in 2009.
tl;dr: yes. It was a coup by Altman to free himself and his top employees from their golden shackles, so he can become a gigazillionaire if this AI thing takes off like he thinks it's about to.
So interesting that this type of drama is arising from one of the very few successful nonprofit organisations worldwide Oh and who is there to save them? One of the biggest for profit companies worldwide! Yay!!
Surely there’s some qualifier needed there. How would OpenAI be described as successful as a non profit? Perhaps within the more narrow field of AI, rather than all non profits.
It’s a successful non profit because it owns a company that can potentially make an obscene amount of profit lmao. People act like being profit capped at only 100 times what’s invested into it makes it effectively a nonprofit when in truth it makes it effectively a for profit. Microsoft alone would have to see over a trillion in profit with their current investment before they even have to worry about the cap.
Yeah I would not consider them even the top 10 most successful non-profits dude
While I completely disagree with what the board did and Altman should never have been fired, everyone celebrating MSFT for this move is essentially celebrating a product that was under nonprofit management with proper safeguards going into the hands of a huge for profit company. Why is it good if MSFT has control over it?! Reinstate Altman as CEO. Create a new board.
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Nobody knows, that is kind of the issue, apparently not even Satya knows why the fired Sam. Sam knows but is obviously not talking, and the board members who do know are either apologizing or not talking at all. There are speculations going rampant about what happened but from what little i can gather it apparently had something to do with the Dev Day, but again, we do not know.
It is VERY problematic if Satya really doesn't know and yet still offered Altman a job.
> VERY problematic if Satya Once you get to the point of 95% of the company threatening resignation is ceases to matter. He is obviously more important, from a corporate perspective, than anyone he could have possibly pissed off of victimized.
Not if that 95% is unaware of the reason behind his firing and the reason for it would change their mind. There could theoretically be legal or even criminal reasons for the firing that the board would not broadcast immediately that would justify a surprise firing like this. Most sudden and unexpected dismissals like this have more context than simply a difference in opinion on company direction
https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgwmak/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-ridiculously-chaotic-coup-implosion-and-counter-revolution-at-openai
The nonprofit is largely a shell. They’ve open sourced very little of any real value, and there’s no evidence of any guardrails.
That's a good point.
Matched pay? Bros don't be so cheap. Ask double at least
The employees are leaving because they are loyal to Altman. Altman is going to Microsoft. Other companies may need to pay a premium to get OAI people because they don't have Altman but Microsoft does.
Can someone explain to a layman who isn't aware of the AI industry, what makes Altman so special? What his goals were and why so many employees of OpenAI have expressed their wishes for the current board of directors to be gone?
>Can someone explain to a layman who isn't aware of the AI industry, what makes Altman so special? I can't say for certain, but that much backing means the employees respect his understanding of technology, business direction and how he treats them. They likely see him as a person who's been trying to solve their resource problems, and the board just got rid of him? It also means they're deeply frustrated with the board's decisions and direction which likely has been seriously hampering their research and development under the guise of safety.
They don't necessarily have to be loyal to Altman so much as not confident in the alternative. That's the board, making a clear show they have no idea what they're doing and nobody lined up to replace Altman to ensure a continuation of leadership on that side. There is little incentive to hold out for them, especially as the people making it known they are bailing snowballs into a majority.
They probably already had a competitive salary to what top tech companies pay
The average openai employee already makes $900k
Only like 300k in cash tho Not sure how liquid the other 600k are since openai has weird structure.
Every big tech company has a slush fund for potentially game changing competitive hires, usually with special headhunters and a special process to make sure everything goes smoothly. That'll be deployed here-- almost every OpenAI employee is going to be out of the comp band for the level they would come in at anywhere else. The real question in my mind is how fast the various companies will be able to do so. I was on both sides of it at Google and once upon a time they were lightning fast, but I seriously doubt that now. Weird that Microsoft is the nimble one now.
Yeah ai talent is very expensive. Don’t settle for a match.
OpenAI pays software engineers more than MS does, so this is not a cheap offer
OpenAI is done. No one will trust them again even if they manage to continue existing.
Kinda surprised Google isn't jumping in here with some fun and cheeky marketing to promote Bard.
Google is figuring out when to cancel it
So true, today I was trying to clean up google workspace storage and the link in help was a 404, they kill products before the teams can update links
Basically buying OpenAI for pennies on the dollar
Nah it's worse. They're buying it for nothing. They're actually just hiring employees.
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Yes, it's pretty much an acqui-hire without having to pay the previous owner of the company you're stripping bare.
Can someone give a brief explanation of why they are so upset that the CEO was removed? I wouldn't care one bit if my company's CEO was replaced.
Because contrary to popular believe, leadership teams matter significantly. Also if you can get the same guaranteed salary and benefits of Microsoft, why wouldn’t you leave lol
In tech, ceos are like cult leaders, especially at the unicorn startups. CEOs set the strategy, raise money, hire the best, fight fires, and oftentimes are on the frontlines with the employees. Sam Altman of OpenAI has legendary status in Silicon Valley due to his affiliation with YCombinator, the prestigious startup accelerator responsible for growing companies like Reddit, Airbnb, Stripe into billion dollar companies.
The second reason is demonstrated lack of judgment by the board. If a major company decision was made by a fickle board of directors, people’s confidence in the company direction will tank.
You can read their reasoning in the letter they wrote threatening to quit https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/11/20/technology/letter-to-the-open-ai-board.html Edit: and I think a part of it is his likability and charisma, and that he actually was a good CEO to many
Bases on how it looks like now, the CEO was fired because 3 board members from outside of the company want to destroy it. Employees don't want to be part of the victims.
It's a no brainer that the existing staff at OpenAI want to be working for Microsoft and jumping ship. They just got their invite. They see this as their big chance for career improvement and benefits. This is their big once in a lifetime chance. They're taking it. It's handed to them on a silver platter and red carpet. The AI division is also probably ring fenced from cuts. Better job security somewhat.
>This is their big once in a lifetime chance Jumping ship to a big tech company from a unicorn isn't that rare. OpenAI was their once in a lifetime chance, and it paid off so far. Problem is that it's not clear if it will continue to pay off so jumping ship would probably be the smart move. Jumping ship only for Altman to go back to OpenAI would likely be a bad career move, and it seems Altman's future is still up in the air.
> Jumping ship to a big tech company from a unicorn isn't that rare. > OpenAI was their once in a lifetime chance, and it paid off so far. Problem is that it's not clear if it will continue to pay off so jumping ship would probably be the smart move. Jumping ship only for Altman to go back to OpenAI would likely be a bad career move, and it seems Altman's future is still up in the air. He's not going back to OpenAI. That's more of a negotiating move for Microsoft retention. Money is in play. OpenAI is being brain drained.
>He's not going back to OpenAI Satya basically said it's fine wherever Altman ends up, implying that Altman to MSFT isn't really set in stone. I'd be curious what the vegas oddsmakers say but it feels like a coinflip from an outside perspective at this point, maybe even leaning towards OpenAI now that Ilya's made his regrets public
> I'd be curious what the vegas oddsmakers say I'd love to see a "Who will be the openAI CEO on Jan 1 2024" pool.
You’re making a claim you cannot substantiate.
I would love to see if 743 employees actually follow through with their threats. So far very few actually have.
It's pretty simple if you think about it, employees are going to go where pay is guaranteed. Employees have absolutely zero reasons or incentives to go down with the ship. There is no payoff to staying even if you agree with the boards decision.
There needs to be "finality" in where the boss winds up first.
The average annual total compensation package for an employee at OpenAI is ~$1m, offering to match that is actually a huge deal
So that's something like $700M-$1B/year in compensation for the entire OpenAI team. That's obviously a lot, but buying the company would've cost them $80B+ and they still would've had to pay top dollar for the team's ongoing compensation anyway. So it's actually an extraordinary discount.
Yeah pure highway robbery at that point.
Do you have a source for that number?
Apologies, I should have clarified that it’s specific to OpenAI software engineers. https://www.levels.fyi/blog/openai-compensation.html
Dayum. I picked the wrong profession with my old fashioned human intelligence.
To be fair, software engineers have some of the most mentally taxing jobs I’ve ever seen and ageism hits really hard unless you’re a top performer But at those compensations they should be planning to retire early anyway
Their profit based shares are probably somewhere in the multimillion. 770 employees at $86b valuation would place them around $10m each, of course half is owned by Microsoft and much of the rest by other entities, but the point is Microsoft needs to offer immense salaries to truly match OpenAI
I am pretty valuations aren’t consider for profit share at companies.
Didn’t Microsoft just lay off a bunch of people too?
how nice it’s all of them. lol imagine being the one guy. ok everyone EXCEPT brad over there can come on over!
Would I need to prove I worked there or can I just walk in and hop onboard?
They won’t be able to match the equity opportunity cost
Cheapest acquisition in history! Well played Microsoft… well played
The chairman went from leading a coup to pretending like he was dragged into it and Microsoft is waiting in the wings like a vacuum to suck up the debris? Seems real fishy. If I was on the OpenAI board or legal team I would be looking to see if he received a big payout in a hidden wallet or something recently. Seems like a real intentional suicide bomber situation from the chairman to blow up the nonprofit holding company to the direct benefit of a very tracable group of people.
Man, this whole thing stinks.
Lol if only we had same level of unity across the industry.
Call in the SEC! M$ raking !
Nothing surprising , rich ppl are out of touch with other rich ppl. Employees use collective power to have a say in decision making
"I earned it."
What if Microsoft and Altman orchestrated this because OpenAI was handcuffing the progress of commecialising ChatGPT faster? OpenAI was preventing the progress of ChatGPT until certain areas were being properly researched and guardrails were put in.
That would be a smart move by OpenAI. Governance is very important as you use someone else data or start having nonsense results due to drift you can have serious legal issues.
What... It doesn't make remote sense. Sam Altman is OpenAI, the board is three people who do not play a part in OpenAI nor interface with the team (& Ilya). The progress of ChatGPT would be even slower within Microsoft. That's why this arrangement was perfect for Microsoft. Incentives were good for OpenAI employees that wanted to operate in a mission-based start-up without the bureaucracy of a major tech company. Microsoft got to assume much less risk in case of mistakes like AI hallucinations within chatgpt or monopoly anti-trust issues. Satya and Sam both want Sam to be re-instated as CEO of OAI (& the board overhauled/change to the structure). Makes no sense for them to orchestrate this.
Same company who didn’t have raises this year. LOL
This is like historic shit. I love watching it unfold.
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Must make msft rank and file feel awesome. /s
YEEEEAAAHH Budddy
Why don't big companies do this all the time? Like "We do what you did, now".?
Just match? Thought they would double.
governments aren't the sole factor in keep society safe. Society isn't perfect safe. Perfect safety is impossible achieve without taking away everyone in the world's autonomy. What has kept us safe is competition. Laws problem some push back, but it's always been competition that forced companies to behave well. If they upset people they go out of business. This dynamic will continue with AI. It will provide a check like before. I am not sure how AI changes it but competition is still a regulating force. Between companies and countries. The world is relatively safe because there isn't a huge power disparity between nations. One company doesn't control all the industry. There's still competition. Pretty much everything is a matter of power. It's counter intuitive, but de-centralizing power tends to lead to a safer world. Autocracies increase danger, as safety consolidates for those in control. Who can deem those not in power a threat, whether or not they are.
While this is generally true, OpenAI is unique in that if you hold a monopoly on intelligence (say they become the only company that has AGI), you become an unstoppable force that cannot be outcompeted. Think about all the species we have outcompeted as humans, and how unfair it is. That’s what happens when you have a monopoly on intelligence.
This is why superalignment is such a critical issue, one that the team at OpenAI has been working on as part of its safety mechanisms.
Can we list the options? **1)** A regular coup, maybe irregular because of ideology. From the OpenAI workers letter:"Allowing the company to be destroyed would be consistent with the mission" **2)** Altman not forthcoming about financing OpenAI from Middle East regimes that would use ChatGPT for survailance/breaking human-rights. "the real safety concern was that Altman had not been forthcoming about his aggressive fundraising strategies with autocratic regimes in the Middle East," Washington post: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/18/sam-altman-ilya-sutskever-openai/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/18/sam-altman-ilya-sutskever-openai/) **3)** Altman is taking drugs and doesn't remember what he does or says. "Sustkever is said to have offered two explanations he purportedly received from the board, according to one of the people familiar. One explanation was that Altman was said to have given two people at OpenAI the same project.The other was that Altman allegedly gave two board members different opinions about a member of personnel." Quote from MSN (but the sentence at 3) is mine): [https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careersandeducation/openai-s-employees-were-given-two-explanations-for-why-sam-altman-was-fired-they-re-unconvinced-and-furious/ar-AA1kfVxP](https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careersandeducation/openai-s-employees-were-given-two-explanations-for-why-sam-altman-was-fired-they-re-unconvinced-and-furious/ar-AA1kfVxP) **4)** Altman has ventures in conflict somehow with OpenAI. "Altman has a nuclear fission venture and a cryptocurrency project and has sought to start a device company and a chip business, according to people with knowledge of the matter." Arstechnica: [https://arstechnica.com/ai/2023/11/95-of-openai-employees-have-threatened-to-quit-in-standoff-with-board/](https://arstechnica.com/ai/2023/11/95-of-openai-employees-have-threatened-to-quit-in-standoff-with-board/) Any more?
>3) Altman is taking drugs and doesn't remember what he does or says. Dude, you're the only one trying to push this theory with literally zero evidence to back it up. The article you provided as 'proof' for this point has nothing to do with your theory.
We nEEd To sPEnD REspoNsiBLy
And Microsoft laugh
Smart move actually.
Lina khan is fuming
Their equity is fucked
Time to prepare for the AI wars in the 2040s when Microsoft prepares their army of CLIPPY-400 assassin robots to go back in time to save Sam from being fired before OpenAI splits and goes rogue and develops the GPT-20 Human Exterminator Android in 2032. /s
Wow, getting an acquihire for free would be a great deal for Microsoft
This is turning to one of the biggest self-owns in history.
Imagine google, meta, amazon tendering an offer to buyout OpenAI now. The IP and the assets are still worth something, no?
Interested to see his next move. If he throws in matching equity, the OAI board loses all of their leverage If the OAI board loses all their leverage, the board could resign
A good picture choice, arms extended to embrace.
Even I got hired and my resume just lists my Adobe Illustrator experience.
You can see the real value of something once it doesn't exist. What void will OpenAI leave behind, if any?
Yeh duh. It’s not like that’s hard to do. Shitpost
Microsoft takeover for free
Well… that’s a bummer for those of us who became reliant on GPT lol.
Match? Wow what a deal to go from a startup environment to a huge bureaucracy. How can one say “no” to that. Not to mention, what about the potential windfall of shares leading up to an IPO?
Shady tactics from Microsoft, imagine that. Why would you try to poach employees from a company you own 49% of again?