Technology

57435 readers

3218 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

534

Sam Altman fired as CEO of OpenAI (www.theverge.com)

submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

94 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Sam Altman has been fired as CEO of OpenAI, the company announced on Friday.

“Mr. Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities,” the company said in its blog post.

EDITED TO ADD direct link to OpenAI board announcement:
https://openai.com/blog/openai-announces-leadership-transition

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 53 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

No idea, but given how sudden and out-of-the-blue this is, and the fact that he was co-founder of OpenAI (meaning that to some degree the board is pushing him out of his own company) you can make an educated guess that's it's huge.

~~My guess, personally, is financial malfeasance,~~ if only because personal misbehavior usually involves some hemming and hawing before a company concludes that the ejectee "is no longer a good fit and does not represent the values held by our organization." This was very sudden, no one saw it coming, and that's not too usual.

I guess we'll see, lol.

EDITED TO ADD I've changed my mind after a closer look at the wording of the board announcement. Given the language (Altman lied to them) and the chairman stepping down (but remaining in the C-suite) I’m starting to think that maybe Altman was trying to take something in an unapproved direction and present it as a fait accompli but got found out before he was ready to reveal it:

Mr. Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities. (paragraph 3)

As a part of this transition, Greg Brockman will be stepping down as chairman of the board and will remain in his role at the company, reporting to the CEO. (paragraph 6)

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago

It's worth keeping in mind the explicit mention of their key responsibility at the end, which was the original non-profit charter of "ensuring that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity."