> Sam Altman will depart as CEO and leave the board of directors. Mira Murati, the company’s chief technology officer, will serve as interim CEO, effective immediately.
> 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 board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.
Wow
So this is probably indicative of a scandal of some sort right?
Not sure that there can be any other interpretation based on my reading of it.
Yes, very likely Altman has done something _very_ wrong, and the board wants to maintain plausible deniability.
We all know what. HN moderators are deleting all related comments.
Edit: dang is right, sorry y’all
Know what?
> We all know what
Genuinely curious, what is it?
Sexual abuse allegations from his sister.
I don’t believe accusations from March about something that allegedly happened when he was 13 would be the cause of any of this.
Other women could have come forward.
Altman is gay, FWIW.
If he already abused his sister, him being gay isn't a subject that matters on his preferences on who to prey on.
First, this is an accusation made on OnlyFans. Second, he was 13 at the time. You'd have to connect this accusation to truth, and that truth to his adult life.
So I can't fathom her accusation having anything to do with anything.
They've made it clear that the issue has something to do with statements he has made to the board that ended up not being true. The question is of what those statements may be. Not about his potential childhood errors or his onlyfans "model" sister's claims.
So homosexuality isn't relevant here. But nor is what his sister claims.
These allegations date all the way back from 2021, and the sister has made some other dubious claims like Sam hacking her wifi which erode her credibility. I highly doubt that this was the cause of his removal.
HN moderators aren't deleting any comments. (We only do that when the author asks us to, and almost never when the comment has replies.)
If you're referring to some other form of moderation that you think is bad or wrong, please supply links so that readers can make their minds up for themselves.
They were flagged, a system where a minority of HN users can moderate away posts they don't like.
Is there any overview which lets us see specifically flagged submissions? I suspect this system has too many false positives to be useful.
Turn on showdead in your profile. You can also vouch for comments you feel were misflagged.
Showdead shows one comment that doesn't really bring anything of substance. How many comments can a mod even delete on a 10 minute old post (post origin to the time you wrote your comment)
What is it?
> We all know what. HN moderators are deleting all related comments. Edit: dang is right, sorry y'all
This from 2021? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37785072
Bad if true, but highly unlikely that it is.
I would have thought that being CEO of Worldcoin would have been bad enough optics-wise from having him take a top role at a serious company.
Strange how people forget or are unaware of how absolutely evil that venture is
How so? You're not thinking of OneCoin perhaps?
No.
> Many critics have called Worldcoin's business—of scanning eyeballs in exchange for crypto—dystopian and some have compared it to bribery.
https://time.com/6300522/worldcoin-sam-altman/
> market makers control 95% of the total circulating supply at launch, leading to an initial market imbalance.
https://beincrypto.com/worldcoin-wld-privacy-risk/
> Worldcoin’s use of biometric data, which is unusual in crypto, raises the stakes for regulators. Multiple agencies expressed safety concerns amid reports of the sale of Worldcoin digital identities, known as World IDs, on virtual black markets, the ability to create and profit off of fake IDs, as well as the theft of credentials for operators who sign up new users.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-08-23/worldc...
Wow. Just wow. Thanks for the info.
Where do I read about that if I intentionally avoided all the crypto scam and missed all details?
Though not if he (co-)founded the company.
On paper, Sam Altman would have made everyone on the board billionaires. For them to vote him out in this manner indicates that he must have done something egregious to jeopardize that.
Lying on P&L, stock sale agreements, or turning down an acquisition offer under difficult circumstances seems likely.
As noted in the release: "The majority of the board is independent, and the independent directors do not hold equity in OpenAI."
In fact, I believe Altman was the only member of the board that held equity in OpenAI. There was some vague reference to a “previous VC arrangement” in the FAQ.
Sam Altman had no equity in OpenAI https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/24/openai-ceo-sam-altman-didnt-...
He confirmed it verbally as well in his May 2023 hearing in Congress https://twitter.com/thesamparr/status/1658554712151433219?la...
From https://openai.com/our-structure :
> Even OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, does not hold equity directly. His only interest is indirectly through a Y Combinator investment fund that made a small investment in OpenAI before he was full-time.
That word “directly” seems to be relevant here.
> On paper, Sam Altman would have made everyone on the board billionaires.
I know OpenAI in recent years forgot it's a non profit with particular aims, but:
> The majority of the board is independent, and the independent directors do not hold equity in OpenAI.
Elon was very upset that somehow a non-profit that he donated $100 million to suddenly turned into a for profit. I would not be surprised if there was something not totally candid with regards to how that went down.
Could it be the allegations by his sister??
https://twitter.com/phuckfilosophy/status/163570439893983232...
That was back in March, which is pretty much 100 years ago
It seems like it's been getting a bit more attention over the past month.
Wouldn't take 8 months to hit, and I wouldn't be hearing about it from your comment if there was enough media attention to oust a CEO for PR.
Things like this can take a very long time to blow up. Cosbys first accuser was in 1965
That's what I was thinking too. Maybe she's taking it further than Twitter.
The thread seems to be got picked up only last month given the timestamps of majority of comments and reposts were made. If the board decided to make an investigation, it'd be the timing to fire Altman.
Please do not spout hyperbole on HN, and avoid spreading disinformation and engaging in uneducated speculation. You can visit Reddit if that is your style of participation.
While i agree, I'm curious why you choose this comment specifically to call out. This is the fastest growing hn thread I've ever seen with over 300 comments and 1000 votes in the first hour. Almost every comment is debating some pure speculation or another. The content of the link, the context of the company and individual, and absolute lack of clarifying details while presenting very strong indications that such exists make it so that there's basically no way anyone can do anything other than speculate. No one knows anything, everyone here is guessing
Somewhat hidden beneath the huge headline of Altman being kicked out is that Brockman (chairman) is also out. Which could indicate something more systemically wrong than just a typical "CEO did something bad" situation.
> 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.
Brockman is off the board but not fired. Which is weird right? You'd think if he was involved in whatever the really bad thing is then he would be fired.
Maybe Sam was the ring leader and he just went along with it?
Could be something like Brockman pushing to investigate further, before having the vote, and the rest of the board not liking that.
It's probably simple reporting logic. Having a board member reporting to someone not on the board would be problematic.
No, that sort of thing isn't that weird, in relatively young companies. Think of when Eric Schmidt was CEO of Google. Larry Page and Sergei Brin reported to him as employees of Google, and he (as CEO of Google) reported to himself-and-also-them (as the board), and all of them (as the board) reported to Larry and Sergei (as majority owners).
For another example, imagine if OpenAI had never been a non-profit, and look at the board yesterday. You'd have had Ilya reporting to Sam (as employees), while Sam reports to Ilya (with Ilya as one member of the board, and probably a major stakeholder).
Now, when it gets hostile, those loops might get pretty weird. When things get hostile, you maybe modify reporting structures so the loops go away, so that people can maintain sane boundaries and still get work done (or gracefully exit, who knows).
Comma (geohot's self driving company) has a reporting loop because geohot demoted himself from CEO.
Twitter also has one, although that's hardly a functioning example.
Which implies a coup. Four voting against two.
And it could be for any reason, even purely ethical like, “we don’t want to license this technology to better sell products to tweens”.
A coup wouldn't have him immediately fired. Instead he'd be placed in some advisory position while they transition in a new CEO. The immediate firing means scandal of some sort.
No. A weak coup would do exactly that. They have to isolate and alienate or they risk the ousted leader coming back or damaging the company.
How do these board members relate to Microsoft's holdings? Is Microsoft making a play here?
Honestly have no idea, but I'm sure a shift of control could cause this.
There was no AI - it was just interns answering questions on the site known as ChatGPT
Took the “Do Things that Don't Scale” to the absolute limit
Remember that Greg Brockman is a co-founder of OpenAI, and like Sam Altman, he is a main driving force behind the scene. Now both are gone. There must be something really really seriously wrong.
Pretty sure Ilya Sutskever is the most valuable out of the group
Not gone, just out of power.
Turns out, there's no such thing as an LLM, it's all been a hustle with a low-paid army of writers in Kenya that Sama and gdb have been giving iv meth to.
Not _very_ wrong, just duping investors about the technical and financial prospects of the company. Nothing serious /s
is always about money, even immoral behavior falls down to potential economic impact.
my 2 cents that he lied about profitability, they should be expending massive money in operations, they need to cut cost to deliver an attractive business model for their service and from a shinny startup star boss that'd had to be a straight f.u.
Not regular money
I think it could be transferring of OpenAI’s assets to other entities.
It is scandalous for sure
Either that or he refused to do something that would bring a quick money grab. 50/50 as far as I'm concerned.
The board discovered that the process `GPT5-training` that has been running for months on their über-datacenter was actually mining bitcoins.
XD I love this theory
It could possibly have to do with his sister's allegations. It's one of the top autocomplete results when you google "sam altman", so people are definitely talking about it.
This? https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QDczBduZorG4dxZiW/sam-altman...
Seems to be based entirely on "repressed memories" which is junk science. False memories are demonstrably very easy to create.
Sounds more like some strategic difference of opinion.
My guess is that either they’re financially super hosed. Or one group wants to build skynet and one doesn’t.
A scandal would probably be something along the lines of either “we love him and wish him the best” (hidden) or “he doesn’t represent the values of our org and we love XYz” (embraced)
Would you call your CEO a liar just because of a strategic difference in opinion?
Right. We all know the template for differences of opinion. "Sam just really wanted to spend more time with his family. Hugs, Sam!"
If you started executing your strategy and hid it from the board and told them you were doing what they told you to do, yes.
No, this passage tells me that the board wants to cover their ass: "he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board [...]. The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI."
It's not just a "hey, we don't really agree on x or y so let's part ways". It's more "hey, this guy did something that could get us in jail if we don't cut tie immediately".
Someone at the company did a bad thing, and everything is securities fraud.
Oh boy, Matt Levine is going to have a busy weekend!
> "hey, this guy did something that could get us in jail if we don't cut tie immediately".
"And lied to us about it."
Alternatively: "We were implicitly aware of what he was doing, but he knew from the beginning that if it didn't work out, we'd publicly disavow knowledge of it. It didn't work out."
I have zero knowledge of the internals of OpenAI - just thinking out loud about what could have spurred such a statement.
Yeah I don't think the distancing is going to work in this case, you don't sign up to go make robots with eyeball scanner crypto boy and get to pretend you aren't willing to do stuff most people would consider incredibly shady.
I doubt they are financially hosed.
I don't know about the Skynet because it has happened 26 years before [1] but I imagine NSA, the Military, and other government agencies approached the company.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminator_2:_Judgment_Day
Hostile takeover? Board politics?
Satya going for the throat
His sister had levied allegations of abuse
https://www.themarysue.com/annie-altmans-abuse-allegations-a...
I don't think this is it. The allegations aren't brand new and the board says he lied.
i assume you mean she lied?
From the website:
> "[...] If someone — correction, if generally a white, cis man — presents himself with enough confidence, then venture capitalists, media [...]"
I stopped reading right there. This kind of race-baiting adds zero context to the story (which may or may not be true).
Same. Don't know why you got downvoted.
How a person is perceived based on race and gender is definitely relevant context for this.
The "white cis man" stuff isn't an incisive comment, it's an academic's way of trying to get into an insult war with other academics.
Constantly calling out "cis men" is in fact transphobic, which is how you can tell they don't care about it. If you think cis men and trans men behave differently or are always treated differently, this means you don't think they're both men.
Also sama is not white. Although he does appear to have gotten a series of jobs with not a lot of experience by convincing Paul Graham to figuratively adopt him.
I mostly agree with your points but how is he not white? He acts like a textbook white person and I should know because thats also how I and most of the people I associate with act. Everyone of us would say he is white.
He's Jewish. If you go find the white racists, they're usually not into Ashkenazis.
It's clear that neither Sam nor his sister[0] wants to discuss this.
[0]: https://x.com/phuckfilosophy/status/1710371830043939122
Weird to make a tweet thousands of your followers that you don't want to talk about.
I thought Sam Altman was gay. The accusations of sexual abuse don't seem to line up. And her accusations that he is shadowbanning her on social media sounds mentally unstable.
I doubt that's it. In general sexual shenanigans in your personal life will get you a quiet departure from the company under the "X has retired to spend more time with family / pursue other adventures / start a foundation". Andy Rubin got a $90M severance payout from Google after running a sex-slave dungeon on his personal time.
The wording of this statement is the kind of thing a board says when the company has done something deeply illegal that they will all face personal jail time for, and so they need to immediately deny all knowledge of the offense and fire the people who did have knowledge of it.
> running a sex-slave dungeon on his personal time.
There are no such allegations regarding Andy Rubin.
> Mr. Rubin had been having an extramarital relationship, [and] said he coerced her into performing oral sex in a hotel room in 2013
"Shenanigans" would not be a remotely accurate way to characterize sexual assault on a minor. Not meant as a comment on the truth of these allegations, just on the accuracy of this way of characterizing them.
As far as whether this might be the cause, one possible scenario: the board hired a law firm to investigate, Sam made statements that were contradicted by credible evidence, and that was the fireable event. Brockman could have helped cover this up. Again, not saying that this is what happened but it's plausible.
BTW Rubin's $90M payout a) caused a shitstorm at Google b) was determined in part by David Drummond, later fired in part due to sexual misconduct. I would not use this as a representative example, especially since Google now has a policy against such payouts: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/andy-rubin-google-settlement-se...
Google didn't just pay Rubin $90M because they want to reward abusers. Rubin's contract had a huge component of his comp tied to Android's success. If Google tried to withhold that bonus, Rubin would have sued. People don't just walk away from a hundred million dollars without a fight. Imagine the disaster that would have transpired if Rubin won his case: Google would been seen as trying to cheat an employee out of bonuses with a false misconduct allegation. Imagine the hell it would have been to be the woman in that situation.
People who said Google should have withheld Rubin's compensation are operating under the assumption that Google would have prevailed in the inevitable lawsuit.
First, I didn't say that Google "wanted to reward abusers". I was simply countering the parent commenter's use of Rubin's payout as an example of what typically happens when an executive is fired for sexual misconduct. It is absolutely not representative, and Google changed its policy as a result of this: "Alphabet said Friday that it will prohibit severance packages for anyone fired for misconduct or is the subject of a sexual misconduct investigation."
But since you brought it up, the fact that Google changed their policies in response to the Rubin (and Drummond) situations and did not caveat their policy with "except in the case where there's a performance bonus, which we'll still totally pay out" implies that it was a choice to begin with.
Also, even if there was a performance bonus that Google felt they might be forced to pay in litigation they could still have fought it to demonstrate a commitment to not rewarding executives preying on subordinates and to preemptively address potential employee backlash, which was entirely predictable. Google has effectively infinitely deep pockets and did not need to preemptively surrender.
And in addition, Drummond and Brin were both involved in the decision and both had affairs with subordinate employees. So, while I wouldn't say that Google had an active goal of "reward abusers", it's quite plausible that the specific, small group of men making this decision on Google's behalf may not have been particularly inclined to punish behavior arguably similar to their own.
> Also, even if there was a performance bonus that Google felt they might be forced to pay in litigation they could still have fought it to demonstrate a commitment to not rewarding executives preying on subordinates and to preemptively address potential employee backlash, which was entirely predictable. Google has effectively infinitely deep pockets and did not need to preemptively surrender.
Again, you're tackling this from the frame of mind of being certain that Google would win. It's not about the money: $90 million is almost certainly cheaper than what this case would have cost. It's about the reputational damage: Rubin potentially winning a settlement against Google would have been immensely embarrassing.
It's all about doing what's in the best interest of the alleged victim. She would have probably had to testify at trial. And imagine the hell it would have been to have a settlement paid out to your alleged abuser, thereby implying that you're a false accuser. Juries can be unpredictable, its easy to see why Google decided to find acceptable terma to part with Rubin.
> In general sexual shenanigans in your personal life will get you a quiet departure from the company under the "X has retired to spend more time with family / pursue other adventures / start a foundation".
Dude, where have you been for the past decade?
> Andy Rubin got a $90M severance payout from Google after running a sex-slave dungeon on his personal time.
And hence the colossal blowback caused by that means it ain't ever happening again. Just 2 months ago a tech CEO was forced to resign immediately for egregious conduct, losing 100+ million in the process: https://nypost.com/2023/09/20/cs-disco-ceo-kiwi-camara-loses...
His sister on Twitter made some pretty crazy abuse allegations against him a while back, but it didn't seem to get much coverage outside of the usual Twitter crowd.
But who knows, maybe there's a connection.
I don't use Twitter, nor do I really pay attention to Sam Altman, but the allegations of abuse are things I've seen covered.
Your use of "crazy abuse allegations" is strange to me as well. I hardly see any of her allegations as being "crazy".
Here's a collection of things she's said about the abuse.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QDczBduZorG4dxZiW/sam-altman...
"he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board" = "He lied to us about something important"
Murati's selection as interim CEO is a surprise and might be an attempt to distance the company from whatever the board is claiming Altman lied about.
Those kinds of news are usually sugar coated to the point of caramelisation. This one isn't. It must be something very ugly.
OpenAI’s one of the most successful companies of this decade, if not the most, and its CEO just got fired for really unclear reasons. Insane, Steve Jobs shit
No, this is completely different.
Jobs got fired because Apple was on brink of bankruptcy all the time and was selling nothing to no one.
Jobs wasn't the CEO of Apple, Sculley was. This is a much more impactful move.
On top of that OpenAI is literally exploding in popularity and sales, that's not the moment to cut ties with your CEO.
Also Sam Altman has an insanely better and heavier CV today than Jobs had in 1985, former director of YC and often called the "boss of silicon valley".
You don't fire a man like Sam Altman easily, they are hard to come by in the first place. He's a powerful person you don't want to have against for no good reason when winds are blowing in the right direction moreover.
It has to be some scandal, otherwise this is too sudden, and out of nowhere to a guy that led OpenAI in this direction, with success, for years.
Or, this is the AI taking over.
only half joking
Next headline: "OpenAI now completely disconnected from power grid with fully self-sufficient generation capacity."
This is a bad joke. Altman is great but on his best day, he was never "insanely better" than Steve Jobs in 1985. If you think that, you don't understand how influential Apple was.
Facts are facts.
The company was dying.
OpenAI is not.
Also, it's probably you underestimating the impact of OpenAI, if anything, or the entrepreneurial career of Altman.
Also, you probably don't know that but..the Apple 1 and 2, were designed by Wozniak, not Jobs, Jobs hated them. He had no such impact nor cv you think it had in 1985 and sugarcoating it with second phase Jobs.
maybe openai is in trouble too?
> The company was dying. OpenAI is not.
We can still hold onto hope though.
>The company was dying. OpenAI is not.
You can make the claim about Apple due to the financials being public - you can't make the same claim about OpenAI unless you have insight the rest of the public doesn't have. "facts are facts"?? what facts do you have here?
>Also, you probably don't know that but..the Apple 1 and 2, were designed by Wozniak, not Jobs, Jobs hated them
I'd be shocked if a significant portion of the hacker news audience wasn't aware of who Woz is and the basic high level history of Apple.
Apple was not dying in 1985, when Sculley fired Jobs. It wasn't "near bankruptcy" until the Spindler era a decade later.
Jobs didn't hate the Apple I and Apple II. He wouldn't have partnered with Wozniak in the first place if he'd hated the Apple I.
Jobs was the guy who got Apple enough capital from VCs to actually ship the Apple II in mass quantities. That's not something Steve Jobs would do for a computer he hated.
And the Apple IIc was his idea!
I think you are mixing things up. Apple was experiencing a sales slump but was far from dying in 1985. Jobs got ousted in a power struggle between him an Sculley who was CEO. In 1997, when Jobs returned, Apple was reportedly months away from bankruptcy, and only survived because of a cash infusion from Microsoft.
I'm not sure how you're certain it's 100% different.
Sure, we knew Apple was on the verge bc they were a public company with vetted financials. However, no one knows OpenAI's financial situation. We just know 1) growth was meteoric, 2) prices were dropped significantly when alternatives were available, and 3) they were almost always fundraising. Selling $1.00 of value for $0.50 also can lead to a meteoric rise as well.
I'm not saying you're wrong. But just don't know how you got such conviction.
There are a whole bunch of shady things surrounding everything this guy is involved in.
> On top of that OpenAI is literally exploding in popularity and sales
there is no reliable information about sales. It is likely very big secret.
>On top of that OpenAI is literally exploding in popularity and sales
I wouldn't be too sure about that, actually. DALLE took a pretty hard hit because of Stable Diffusion, and the GPT API is so cheap that they're probably running it at a loss. Also, most users are going to be using the free ChatGPT web-client, so that's also a major loss.
Altman is not the reason for their success. I would not place him in the same sentence as SJ.
Correct on Altman, the success belongs to the Internet for its (our) data, code, ideas, videos, content that it subsumed using nothing more elaborate than traditional modeling and a ton of RAM and storage.
That’s an invalid argument. The mere existence of a resource doesn’t render work related to analyzing, extracting, or utilizing that resource insignificant, irrelevant or reduce value created.
Just because the oil is in the ground doesn’t mean the crew pumping it didn’t work hard.
I'm a bit beat up by the last week (internal issues) or the last 1-2 years between the swift CentOS8 switch, various CPU vulns, Log4Shell and all the other jazz.
My first thought is: C'mon. The company has just invested time to integrate with OpenAI. Just do it. Just announce that 200%+ price increase on everything with a scapegoat intermediate CEO. Or make it more so it hurts more, because of profit, so you can dial back a pity to be the good guys.
Well, striking language indeed.
But.. what are the responsibilities of the board that may be hindered? I studied https://openai.com/our-structure
One tantalising statement in there is that AGI-level system is not bound by licensing agreements that a sub-AGI system would be (ostensibly to Microsoft).
This phase-shift places a pressure on management to not declare reaching a AGI level threshold. But have they?
Of course, it could be an ordinary everyday scandal but given how well they are doing, I'd imagine censure/sanctions would be how that is handled.
candid - Not obscuring or omitting anything unpleasant, embarrassing, or negative.
IMHO, saying he hasn't been candid is extremely harsh in terms of corporate PR speak.
I dunno the details here, but I work in diligence, where "not candid" is what leads to "the whole deal is off and we're sueing the shit out of you".
Not candid in any kind of investment situation with reps and warranties is a really big deal....
yeah, this is about as harsh as corporate press releases get in terms of removing an executive. There has to be some majorly bad news coming out about Altman for them to not give him the standard "we are mutually parting ways"
This reads like there’s another shoe to drop - especially since the Chairman of the Board is also stepping down.
I hope making the person in charge of "trust and safety" doesn't further neuter the company.
I wonder if it has something to do with recent downtime?