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Hundreds of OpenAI employees threaten to resign and join Microsoft (www.theverge.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hundreds of OpenAI employees threaten to resign and join Microsoft::OpenAI employees signed a letter threatening to resign and join Microsoft if the board doesn’t quit and reinstate Sam Altman. It could be a precursor to a mass exodus.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

This is such a confusing and messy situation. There is definitely more going on that we dont know about. heres what I think could be going on: tinfoil hat on Some Microsoft bigwigs read the OpenAI foundation contract again and realise that they gave them a bunch of money but didnt get the nonprofit, and that they are now fully dependant on them, and that Altman is an experienced shark that knows this. They cant just buy the non-profit, the board would never agree. So they hatch a plan. They get the lead researcher and a bunch of board members riled up against Altman, with a bunch of dirt they have on him. They tell them hes going to run off with the money and show some proof. The board decides to fire Altman. In the same breath but in another room microsoft hires altman, and promise all openAI employees employment at their new openAI bootleg. They then tell the board through the official channels, that they fucked up and need to resign.

Now, the situation is like this:

Either the board resigns, and microsoft gets to put some puppets in their place and complete buying openAI
The board doesnt resign, microsoft gets all their employees and the company in anything but name and openAI slowly fades in relevancy until Microsoft makes a generous offer of 150% above what they are worth(half of their price right now)

either way, microsoft wins.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Cool story, my own tinfoil hat idea is that it was a deliberate move by the board including Altman to kill the company but largely saving their own faces.

They have said before destroying the company would be in line with their goal, to create safe ago to benefit all of humanity.

Its not unthinkable they discovered something new and decided it needed to slow down really fast to make it safe. They cant just publicly trow in the towel so Ilya known for rather eccentric behaviors takes the main blame, knowing full well that as long as Altman has a job, so will he.

The results is Altman and his openai team shift to producing ai chips with microsoft and the remainder of openai evolves into some kind of app store for gpt4 powered apps

Training of gpt5 will fail, as in the board already pulled the plug but cant say that to the new CEO, in the mean time the stuff they learned has been collected and written down for the nearfuture.