On Friday, OpenAI founder Sam Altman was fired from OpenAI, due to his “not being consistently candid” with the board.

I guess one could also say that Bernie Madoff was not being “consistently candid”.  What does that even mean?  Why not just say what you mean: lying.

What these lies were, no one has said.  But this has touched off a wild chain of events:

• OpenAI also demoted co-founder Greg Brockman, causing him to quit.
• OpenAI said that Twitch CEO Emmett Shear is joining as their new CEO.  Shear is a bright guy with a history of entrepreneurial success, but is not the wunderkind that Altman is.
• This was after Mira Murati had been named as interim CEO.  For what, 12 hours?
• Microsoft then hired Altmam and Brockman to join its own AI program.  Microsoft owns 49% of OpenAI.
• But then OpenAI tried to hire Altman and Brockman back.  Seriously.  Same weekend.
• But then Shear said no, Altman isn’t coming back.

And now 600 of OpenAI’s 750-ish employees have signed a letter saying they’ll walk unless Altman come back.  One of these signatories is chief scientist Ilya Sutskever…who was on the board that fired Altman.

This is like an unstable banana republic mixed with 6th grade drama.

Strangely, while it seems like Microsoft wins either way, they probably don’t want OpenAI to go down in flames.  They sunk $10bn into the project, and while nabbing Altman and Brockman brings some of the genius under their own tent, if OpenAI blows up, they’re possibly out a lot of money.  Or maybe that’s just sunk R&D cost from their persepctive.

Stay tuned!

raindog308

Raindog308 is a longtime LowEndTalk community administrator, technical writer, and self-described techno polymath. With deep roots in the *nix world, he has a passion for systems both modern and vintage, ranging from Unix, Perl, Python, and Golang to shell scripting and mainframe-era operating systems like MVS. He’s equally comfortable with relational database systems, having spent years working with Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.

As an avid user of LowEndBox providers, Raindog runs an empire of LEBs, from tiny boxes for VPNs, to mid-sized instances for application hosting, and heavyweight servers for data storage and complex databases. He brings both technical rigor and real-world experience to every piece he writes.

Beyond the command line, Raindog is a lover of German Shepherds, high-quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop RPGs, and hiking in deep, quiet forests.

His goal with every article is to help users, from beginners to seasoned sysadmins, get more value, performance, and enjoyment out of their infrastructure.

You can find him daily in the forums at LowEndTalk under the handle @raindog308.