Roughly a third of OpenAI's top leadership has quit since Nov (when the once-fired Sam Altman returned.)



https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-chief-technology-officer-resigns-7a8b4639

From WSJ

OpenAI’s Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati has resigned, the latest in a string of departures this year among top executives at the company behind ChatGPT.

Updates to follow as news develops.

Ok. So what?

Don’t know yet.

Altman has always been a smug and dishonest person.
The board fired him for it.

He came back and now there is a wave of departures.

Story is developing

Other departures since Altman’s return include
(source MS CoPilot)
John Schulman: Co-founder and Head of Research, left to join Anthropic, a rival AI company
Greg Brockman: President and Co-founder, is on an extended sabbatical until the end of the year.
Peter Deng: Product Leader, also left the company.
Ilya Sutskever: Another co-founder, departed earlier this year.
Jan Leike: Left the company around the same time as Ilya Sutskever.
Andrej Karpathy: Departed in February.
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.
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Perhaps mass departures at a new and rapidly-growing enterprise is normal?
I don’t think so.

Were there mass departures in the early days of Ford? or Apple? or Microsoft? or Nvdia?
Hmm, looks like something unusual happening that people are trying to get away from.

For reference, MS CoPilot listed six other companies where one-third of the top leaders left in a short period.

  • One of them is Uber (which was undergoing a major strategic change which was well-announced and transparent at the time.)

  • The other five were going bankrupt and/or under criminal investigation: 1.) Enron, 2.) Global Crossing, 3.) Lehman Brothers, 4.) Theranos, and 5.) WeWork

It’s typical in tech. Startup work is a grind and people burn out quickly.

That’s plausible, but so many all in a short period?
If that’s all there is too it then it would be easier to find other examples/

Hypothetically: “Mass exoduses at Nvdia, Apple, Google, IBM, Cisco, Ford, Wang etc. etc… One-third of top leaders depart in a single 9-month period all the time. Nothing new here.” And yet that does not seem to be the case.

  • Occam’s razor suggest that Sam Altman is insufferable and the folks who wanted him out are leaving.

  • And yet his famous dishonesty (“lack of candor” was the phrase chosen by those who fired him) makes me think there is something deeper going on and reminds me it happened at Enron, Global Crossing, Lehmann Brothers etc… It may be a sign of deeper problems.

Popped up in my x feed.
It’s amazing what AI can do with old photographs LOL


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Is this the other shoe?

(Wow. I feel like I should change the thread title:

image

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-09-25/openai-cto-mira-murati-says-she-will-leave-the-company
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,
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With heads of OpenAI scattering like the heads of Lehman and Enron did just before collapse, OpenAi is now discussing changing itself form a non-profit to a for-profit entity and giving Sam Altman, whom it recently fired $10b worth of shares.

Wow!
From fired to "Your opponents have quit, and here is a check for $10b " in only 9 months. What’s the deal? Has he got them all on video at P Diddy’s house or something?

See also (Link at image)
image

and

Sad but true reality of creating your own demise and the end of everybody. Mediocrity becomes digital froth, regurgitation.

Poor Yezhov.

He had a bad time.