<story><title>OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO</title><url>https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/18/23967199/breaking-openai-board-in-discussions-with-sam-altman-to-return-as-ceo</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>adam_arthur</author><text>Pretty incredible incompetence all around if true.&lt;p&gt;From the board for not anticipating a backlash and caving immediately... from Microsoft for investing into an endeavor that is purportedly chartered as non-profit and governed by nobodies who can sink it on a whim. And having 0 hard influence on the direction despite a large ownership stake&lt;p&gt;Why bother with a non-profit model that is surreptitiously for profit? The whole structure of OpenAI is largely a facade at this point.&lt;p&gt;Just form a new for profit company and be done with it. Altman&amp;#x27;s direction for profit is fine, but shouldn&amp;#x27;t have been pursued under the loose premise of a non profit.&lt;p&gt;While OpenAI leads currently, there are so many competitors that are within striking distance without the drama. Why keep the baggage?&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s pretty clear that the best engineering will decide the winners, not the popularity of the CEO. OpenAI has first mover advantage, and perhaps better talent, but not by an order of magnitude. There is no special sauce here.&lt;p&gt;Altman may be charismatic and well connected, but the hero worship put forward on here is really sad and misplaced.</text></item><item><author>meetpateltech</author><text>Update on the OpenAI drama: Altman and the board had till 5pm to reach a truce where the board would resign and he and Brockman would return. The deadline has passed and mass resignations expected if a deal isn’t reached ASAP&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;alexeheath&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1726055095341875545&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;alexeheath&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1726055095341875545&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jstummbillig</author><text>&amp;gt; While OpenAI leads currently, there are so many competitors that are within striking distance without the drama.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s hard to put into words, that do not seem contradictory: GPT-4 is &lt;i&gt;barely&lt;/i&gt; good enough to provide tremendous value. For what I need, no other model is passing that bar, which makes them not slightly worse but entirely unusable. But again, it&amp;#x27;s not that GPT-4 is great, and I would most certainly go to whatever is better at the current price metrics in a heartbeat.</text></comment>
<story><title>OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO</title><url>https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/18/23967199/breaking-openai-board-in-discussions-with-sam-altman-to-return-as-ceo</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>adam_arthur</author><text>Pretty incredible incompetence all around if true.&lt;p&gt;From the board for not anticipating a backlash and caving immediately... from Microsoft for investing into an endeavor that is purportedly chartered as non-profit and governed by nobodies who can sink it on a whim. And having 0 hard influence on the direction despite a large ownership stake&lt;p&gt;Why bother with a non-profit model that is surreptitiously for profit? The whole structure of OpenAI is largely a facade at this point.&lt;p&gt;Just form a new for profit company and be done with it. Altman&amp;#x27;s direction for profit is fine, but shouldn&amp;#x27;t have been pursued under the loose premise of a non profit.&lt;p&gt;While OpenAI leads currently, there are so many competitors that are within striking distance without the drama. Why keep the baggage?&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s pretty clear that the best engineering will decide the winners, not the popularity of the CEO. OpenAI has first mover advantage, and perhaps better talent, but not by an order of magnitude. There is no special sauce here.&lt;p&gt;Altman may be charismatic and well connected, but the hero worship put forward on here is really sad and misplaced.</text></item><item><author>meetpateltech</author><text>Update on the OpenAI drama: Altman and the board had till 5pm to reach a truce where the board would resign and he and Brockman would return. The deadline has passed and mass resignations expected if a deal isn’t reached ASAP&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;alexeheath&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1726055095341875545&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;alexeheath&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1726055095341875545&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rurban</author><text>&amp;gt; It&amp;#x27;s pretty clear that the best engineering will decide the winners, not the popularity of the CEO.&lt;p&gt;This is ML, not Software engineering. Money wins, not engineering. Same as it with Google, which won because they invested massively into edge nodes, winning the ping race (fastest results), not the best results.&lt;p&gt;Ilja can follow Google&amp;#x27;s Bard by holding it back until they have countermodels trained to remove conflicts (&amp;quot;safety&amp;quot;), but this will not win them any compute contracts, nor keep them the existing GPU hours. It&amp;#x27;s only mass, not smarts. Ilja lost this one.</text></comment>