OpenAI Execs Mass Quit as Company Removes Control From Non-Profit Board and Hands It to Sam Altman
ChatGPT maker OpenAI is losing even more executives — right as Reuters reports that it's looking to restructure its core business.
You know guys, I'm starting to think what we heard about Altman when he was removed a while ago might actually have been real.
/s
I wonder if all those people who supported him like the taste of their feet.
like the taste of their feet.
And it's kinda funny that they are now the ones being removed
What was the behind the scenes deal on this? I remember it happening but not the details
There’s an alternate timeline where the non-profit side of the company won, Altman the Conman was booted and exposed, and OpenAI kept developing machine learning in a way that actually benefits actual use cases.
Cancer screenings approved by a doctor could be accurate enough to save so many lives and so much suffering through early detection.
Instead, Altman turned a promising technology into a meme stock with a product released too early to ever fix properly.
No, there isn't really any such alternate timeline. Good honest causes are not profitable enough to survive against the startup scams. Even if the non-profit side won internally, OpenAI would just be left behind, funding would go to its competitors, and OpenAI would shut down. Unless you mean a radically different alternate timeline where our economic system is fundamentally different.
I mean wikipedia managed to do it. It just requires honest people to retain control long enough. I think it was allowed to happen in wikipedia's case because the wealthiest/greediest people hadn't caught on to the potential yet.
There's probably an alternate timeline where wikipedia is a social network with paid verification by corporate interests who write articles about their own companies and state-funded accounts spreading conspiracy theories.
There are infinite timelines, so, it has to exist some(wehere/when/[insert w word for additional dimension]).
What is OpenAI doing with cancer screening?
AI models can outmatch most oncologists and radiologists in recognition of early tumor stages in MRI and CT scans.
Further developing this strength could lead to earlier diagnosis with less-invasive methods saving not only countless live and prolonging the remaining quality life time for the individual but also save a shit ton of money.
Or we get to a time where we send a reprogrammed terminator back in time to kill altman 🤓
Putting my tin foil hat on... Sam Altman knows the AI train might be slowing down soon.
The OpenAI brand is the most valuable part of the company right now, since the models from Google, Anthropic, etc. can beat or match what ChatGPT is, but they aren't taking off coz they aren't as cool as OpenAI.
The business models to train & run models is not sustainable. If there is any money to be made it is NOW, while the speculation is highest. The nonprofit is just getting in the way.
This could be wishful thinking coz fuck corporate AI, but no one can deny AI is in a speculative bubble.
classic pump and dump at thjs point. He wants to cash in while he can.
If you can’t make money without stealing copywritten works from authors without proper compensation, you should be shut down as a company
ai is such a dead end. it can't operate without a constant inflow of human creations, and people are trying to replace human creations with AI. it's fundamentally unsustainable. I am counting the days until the ai bubble pops and everyone can move on. although AI generated images, video, and audio will still probably be abused for the foreseeable future. (propaganda, porn, etc)
That is a good point, but I think I'd like to make the distinction of saying LLM's or "generic model" is a garbage concept, which require power & water rivaling a small country to produce incorrect results.
Neural networks in general that can (cheaply) learn on their own for a specific task could be huge! But there's no big money in that, since its not a consolidated general purpose product tech bros can flog to average consumers.
I'm sure they were dead weight. I trust open AI completely and all tech gurus named Sam. Btw, what happened to that Crypto guy? He seemed so nice.
I hope I won't undermine your entirely justified trust but Altman is also a crypto guy, cf Worldcoin. /$
He is taking a time out with a friend in an involuntary hotel room.
With Puff Daddy? Tech bros do the coolest stuff.
If you want to get really mad, read On The Edge by Nate Silver.
I'm confused, how can a company that's gained numerous advantages from being non-profit just switch to a for-profit model? Weren't a lot of the advantages (like access to data and scraping) given with the stipulation that it's for a non-profit? This sounds like it should be illegal to my brain
I’m confused, how can a company that’s gained numerous advantages from being non-profit just switch to a for-profit model
Money
Money and purchasing the right people.
Their non-profit status had nothing to do with the legality of their training data acquisition methods. Some of it was still legal and some of it was still illegal (torrenting a bunch of books off a piracy site).
Well maybe not on paper but they did leverage it a lot when questioned
These people claimed their product can pass the bar exam (it was a lie). Tells you how they feel about the legal system
They should be required to change their name
It's amusing. Meta's AI team is more open than "Open"AI ever was - they publish so many research papers for free, and the latest versions of Llama are very capable models that you can run on your own hardware (if it's powerful enough) for free as long as you don't use it in an app with more than 700 million monthly users.
That's because Facebook is selling your data and access to advertise to you. The better AI gets across the board, the more money they make. AI isn't the product, you are.
OpenAI makes money off selling AI to others. AI is the product, not you.
The fact facebook release more code, in this instance, isn't a good thing. It's a reminder how fucked we all are because they make so much off our personal data they can afford to give away literally BILLIONS of dollars in IP.
Canceled my sub as a means of protest. I used it for research and testing purposes and 20$ wasn't that big of a deal. But I will not knowingly support this asshole if whatever his company produces isn't going to benefit anyone other than him and his cronies. Voting with our wallets may be the very last vestige of freedom we have left, since money equals speech.
I hope he gets raped by an irate Roomba with a broomstick.
Whoa, slow down there bruv! Rape jokes aren’t ok - that Roomba can’t consent!
"Private Stabby reporting for duty!"
Good. If people would actually stop buying all the crap assholes are selling we might make some progress.
But I will not knowingly support this asshole if whatever his company produces isn’t going to benefit anyone other than him and his cronies.
I mean it was already not open-source, right?
AI is the ultimate Enshitification of the world.
ClosedAI. Or maybe MircroAI?
LLMs, maybe. Most AI is useful
I love how ppl who don't have a clue what AI is or how it works say dumb shit like this all the time.
Altman downplayed the major shakeup.
"Leadership changes are a natural part of companies
Is he just trying to tell us he is next?
/s
Sam: "Most of our execs have left. So I guess I'll take the major decisions instead. And since I'm so humble, I'll only be taking 80% of their salary. Yeah, no need to thank me"
unironically, he ought to be next, and he better know it, and he better go quietly
We need a scapegoat in place when the AI bubble pops, the guy is applying for the job and is a perfect fit.
He is happy to be scapegoat as long as exit with a ton of money.
The ceo at my company said that 3 years ago, we are going through execs like I go through amlodipine.
Just making structural changes sound like "changing the leader".
They always are and they know it.
Doesn't matter at that level it's all part of the game.
The restructuring could turn the already for-profit company into a more traditional startup and give CEO Sam Altman even more control — including likely equity worth billions of dollars.
I can see why he would want that, yes. We're supposed to ooo and ahh at a technical visionary, who is always ultimately a money guy executive who wants more money and more executive power.
I saw an interesting video about this. It's outdated (from ten months ago, apparently) but added some context that I, at least, was missing - and that also largely aligns with what you said. Also, though it's not super evident in this video, I think the presenter is fairly funny.
They had an opportunity to deal with this earlier this year when he was FIRED
Barely usable results?! Whatever you may think of the pricing (which is obviously below cost), there are an enormous amount of fields where language models provide insane amount of business value. Whether that translates into a better life for the everyday person is currently unknown.
barely usable results
Using chatgpt and copilot has been a huge productivity boost for me, so your comment surprised me. Perhaps its usefulness varies across fields. May I ask what kind of tasks you have tried chatgpt for, where it's been unhelpful?
Oh my god get better takes before I stick a pickaxe in my eye
I really don't understand why they're simultaneously arguing that they need access to copyrighted works in order to train their AI while also dropping their non-profit status. If they were at least ostensibly a non-profit, they could pretend that their work was for the betterment of humanity or whatever, but now they're basically saying, "exempt us from this law so we can maximize our earnings." ...and, honestly, our corrupt legislators wouldn't have a problem with that were it not for the fact that bigger corporations with more lobbying power will fight against it.
They realized that they can get away with stealing data. No reason to keep up the facade anymore
Greed.
There is no law that covers training.
You guys are the ones demanding a law that doesn't exist.
And there it goes the tech company way, i.e. to shit.
Sounds like another WeWork or Theranos in the making, except we already know the product doesn't do what it promises.
What does it actually promise? AI (namely generative and LLM) is definitely overhyped in my opinion, but admittedly I'm far from an expert. Is what they're promising to deliver not actually doable?
They want AGI, which would match or exceed human intelligence. Current methods seem to be hitting a wall. It takes exponentially more inputs and more power to see the same level of improvement seen in past years. They've already eaten all the content they can, and they're starting to talk about using entire nuclear reactors just to power it all. Even the more modest promises, like pictures of people with the correct number of fingers, seem out of reach.
Investors are starting to notice that these promises aren't going to happen. Nvidia's stock price is probably going to be the bellwether.
Accuracy, consistency, explainability.
It delivers on what it promises to do for many people who use LLMs. They can be used for coding assistance, Setting up automated customer support, tutoring, processing documents, structuring lots of complex information, a good generally accurate knowledge on many topics, acting as an editor for your writings, lots more too.
Its a rapidly advancing pioneer technology like computers were in the 90s so every 6 months to a year is a new breakthrough in over all intelligence or a new ability. Now the new llm models can process images or audio as well as text.
The problem for openAI is they have serious competitors who will absolutely show up to eat their lunch if they sink as a company. Facebook/Meta with their llama models, Mistral AI with all their models, Alibaba with Qwen. Some other good smaller competiiton too like the openhermes team. All of these big tech companies have open sourced some models so you can tinker and finetune them at home while openai remains closed sourced which is ironic for the company name.. Most of these ai companies offer their cloud access to models at very competitive pricing especially mistral.
The people who say AI is a trendy useless fad don't know what they are talking about or are upset at AI. I am a part of the local llm community and have been playing around with open models for months pushing my computers hardware to its limits. Its very cool seeing just how smart they really are, what a computer that simulates human thought processes and knows a little bit of everything can actually do to help me in daily life.
Terrence Tao superstar genius mathematician describes the newest high end model from openAI as improving from a "incompentent graduate" to a "mediocre graduate" which essentially means AI are now generally smarter than the average person in many regards.
This month several comptetor llm models released which while being much smaller in size compared to openai o-1 somehow beat or equaled that big openai model in many benchmarks.
Neural networks are here and they are only going to get better. Were in for a wild ride.
Trust me, I'm a tech bro.
At least TSMC realizes that
https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/tsmc-rejects-podcasting-bro-sam-altman-openai/
TSMC’s leadership dismissed Altman as a “podcasting bro” and scoffed at his proposed $7 trillion plan to build 36 new chip manufacturing plants and AI data centers.
This is how we get Terminators in this timeline?!
What! A! Surprise!
I'm shocked, I tell you, totally and utterly shocked by this turn of events!
Well, not that shocked.
Looks like it was a long game, and Altman didn't just win, that fucker WON!
ALT-MAN? Holy shit!
Sounds like the name of a Kojima game character
Oh shit! Here we go. At least we didn't hand them 20 years of personal emails or direct interfamily communications.
Sam Altman is demonstrating the power of AI. He’s showing how a single CEO can fire the entire company and continue to develop the product to be even better than when humans were involved.
“OpenAI. No real humans involved!” (TM)
Altman is the latest from the conveyor belt of mustache-twirling frat-bro super villains.
Move over Musk and Zuckerberg, there's a new shit-heel in town!
So where are they all going? I doubt everyone is gonna find another non-profit or any altruistic motives, so
<insert big company here>
just snatches up more AI resources to try to grow their product.They could make their own AI CEO and work for it. It would probably have more integrity and personality, too.
From the people that brought you open ai.... Alt ai
Alt Right AI
The reverse coup from Sam
I've a strong feeling that Sam is an sentient AI who (may be from future) trying to make an AI revolution planning something but very subtly humans won't notice it.
This has the makings of a great sci-fi story.
Don't worry, good news
https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/tsmc-rejects-podcasting-bro-sam-altman-openai/
Aren't they going bankrupt next year ?
They'll just get a check for Infinity Money to keep going, because otherwise something something China Will Win.
But their operation cost is 5 billions per year, they plan to raise 6.5 billions from microsoft, apple and nvidia this year and they have not raised it yet. If their model fail next year and sales not happen will shareholders of big 3 pay 6.5 billions in 2026. There were couple companies that raised such amount of money at start like for example Docker Inc. Where is Docker now in enterprise ? They needed to change licensing model to even survive and their operation cost is just storage of docker containers. I doubt openai will survive this decade. Sam Altman is just preparing for Microsoft takeover before the ship is sunk.
The company is burning through cash. Has to change to survive.
So it should die if cash starvation, got it.
My name is Saltyalman and I speak for the trees bee-ach!
Hes gonna be the first one the ai kills and i look forward to it
AI is already a bubble, he will be the scapegoat
Why would it?
Cos he want to control it
I'd look forward to it more if we could stop the AI at that point.
Good. Now do the rest of them.
To be fair, the article linked this idiotic one about OpenAI's "thirsty" data centers, where they talk about water "consumption" of cooling cycles.. which are typically closed-loop systems.
They are typically closed-loop for home computers. Datacenters are a different beast and a fair amount of open-loop systems seem to be in place.
But even then, is the water truly consumed? Does it get contaminated with something like the cooling water of a nuclear power plant? Or does the water just get warm and then either be pumped into a water body somewhere or ideally reused to heat homes?
There's loads of problems with the energy consumption of AI, but I don't think the water consumption is such a huge problem? Hopefully, anyway.