What's the legality of a script like this? Could this be construed as a violation of the CFAA if you were a motivated/evil enough lawyer?
I recall some surprising legal outcomes in recent years, for example jail for posting fake Yelp reviews. Anyone know of any case law for this sort of scripting?
A lot of people here bending over backwards to try to interpret this maximally negatively.
Probably because the "Sam Altman is an amoral, power hungry mastermind who was run out of all his previous gigs" is a more interesting narrative than whatever is actually happening.
What you call "maximal negativity" is what I would call skepticism about spin. Giving Sam an ultimatum, forcing him to choose one or the other, is a very forceful move. PG is not universally opposed to people running multiple organizations. He's fine with Musk being in charge of Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink and Starlink. I don't think pg was unhappy about Dorsey running both Square and Twitter[1]. OpenAI leadership was fine with Sam in both roles. But Sam had to either quit OpenAI or quit YC, and would get fired from YC if he refused to choose.
Fired means or at least connotes a specific thing, I.e., is against the will of the departing employee. Leaving the organisation by mutual agreement after an adult conversation to focus on exciting new project is a very different thing to fired.
The adult conversation in question being, in a nutshell: "We've decided it's time for you to move on. Would you like the public perception of this event to be that it was a mutual decision, or would you prefer to burn some bridges on your way out?" Sure, in some sense the departing individual chooses to go one way rather than the other.
Or the adult conversation was: you need to pick one thing to focus on, we’d prefer it was YC but obviously we can’t force you to choose YC.
PG’s telling if it, and Occam’s Razer, support that version.
Many people here want to imagine that it was vastly more dramatic than this, or need to reinterpret the word “fired” to support the narrative that Sam is bad. I understand it can be fun to think that way.
For the record I’m no great fan of OpenAI and I think people who are convinced they are about to achieve AGI are, er, mistaken. I mostly just care about correct definitions of words and avoiding sensationalism.
My point is mainly that PG's telling isn't trustworthy, because that's what you agree to say when the person you're "firing" chooses to go quietly. Obviously I have no specific insight into the situation, but given what I have observed about how career changes happen for people who've reached a certain level of power, I have no faith that the people involved have any interest in accurately describing the situation to the public.
All you have to do is look at the fact that PG has been consistently effusive about Sam in his public comments and essays since the mid 00s through till the present day, for it to be clear that Sam wasn’t simply fired.
Of course these situations are always complex behind the scenes, with many factors and considerations at play.
But the no he must really just have been fired against his will claim just doesn’t pass the sniff test to anyone paying attention.
I wonder how much of the impulse to believe (in the face of the evidence) that Altman parted ways with YC/PG on bad terms is really rooted in an impulse to believe that YC/PG couldn't be complicit in enabling the kind of person that it now increasingly appears that Altman is.
If Altman truly is as bad a person as it appears that he might be, that doesn't reflect well on the people who have praised him through the last few decades. If you like those people, then cognitive dissonance forces you to either believe that Altman is being unduly villainized or to believe that the people that you like secretly hate him but just can't say so openly.
Virtually all info that reaches outsiders has a strong PR component, and often is entirely PR. We're left to "read the tea leaves" from our own experience with such statements.
You're not just saying that PG isn't trustworthy. You're making a claim beyond that:
The adult conversation in question being, in a nutshell: "We've decided it's time for you to move on. Would you like the public perception of this event to be that it was a mutual decision, or would you prefer to burn some bridges on your way out?"
I think you're falling into the classic reasoning trap:
1. I have realized someone has an incentive to portray the truth in a specific way.
2. They are portraying it to me in that way.
3. Therefore, they are lying.
But 3 isn't necessarily the case! All you can say is "3. Therefore, I can't tell what the truth is." I think that's what people are reacting to in terms of negativity. You actually don't know that PG is lying. You just know that, if Sam was actually fired, PG would have an incentive to portray it as mutually amicable. You really don't have evidence whether or not it happened.
Except that isn't at all what Paul is claiming here—he says YC offered him the choice between running YC and running OpenAI but not both at once. Altman chose OpenAI. That might have been the obvious choice in the circumstances (it certainly appears so in retrospect), but that doesn't turn the conversation into the kind you're claiming.
History being different than it has been. Like the statements Paul has made to date have been in agreement with the common perception of it being a firing, not very consistent with this newer counter narrative. Obviously just imo and ymmv.
This is Sam being given an ultimatum and making a choice before being fired. Is it effectively the same thing? Yes. But technically, he left to pursue OpenAI. YC never said “You’rrrrrrrrrrrre Firedddd!!!” (In my best Spacely Sprockets voice); it just politely asked him to leave if he couldn’t give 100%.
Someone doing something bad, like financial fraud or significant lying to the company is much different than a situation where someone is working 2 jobs and is asked to focus on one.
To describe the 2nd situation as being "fired" is dishonest. As it attempt to imply that there is some crazy hidden drama going on.
Admit that those 2 situations are significantly different.
> Why would you assume that "fired" likely means some form of gross misconduct
Since you seem to have not been following this story, it is because that is the accusation that lots of people are making against Sam Altman.
The rumor, for years, was that he was fired for some sort of significant dishonestly or misconduct.
Furthermore, there is other context in which Sam Altman was temporarily removed as CEO from OpenAI, for the stated/claimed reason of not being consistently candid with the board.
The obvious comparison that everyone is making would go something like "Well, there is this rumor that Sam got fired for dishonestly in the past, therefore it makes sense why he got fired again at OpenAI for dishonesty".
Paul G's tweet is a refutation of and in response to this context that is clear and obvious to anyone who has been following this story.
It doesn't matter what the reason was. The rumor could have been that he was "fired" for no fault of his own; it would still be false. When you are asked to stay on and concentrate full time on being the CEO of YC, you are not being fired as the CEO of YC.
The thing here is, a lot of people have (for reasons I cannot really fathom) invested some of their identities in the idea that they have worked out the bones of the whole Sam Altman story, and the First Commandment of Message Boards is "I'm not wrong".
> The thing here is, a lot of people have (for reasons I cannot really fathom)
Is it that hard to fathom? The internet likes to play teams with these personalities, it does it with Musk and Lisa Su and it did it with Marissa Meyer, etc. It's just waves of hating / hyping.
Giving Sam an ultimatum, forcing him to choose one or the other, is a very forceful move.
Sure, but is that what happened? Or, did they sit down and have a chat and mutually agree that on what was best? I guess we will never know with certainty (and I frankly don't care).
I don't know what happened either and I wouldn't even be surprised if the parties have internalized it in ways that aren't 100% consistent. I do know that situations arise where it becomes mutually apparent that a parting of the ways is best for everyone concerned even if not explicitly stated. And, in those circumstances, there's a public story that is often not untrue but isn't the whole backstory either because it's simpler for everyone involved that way.
"Secret reason" = Paul knows it looks bad for him to fire the guy. So he comes up with justifications why it's not really firing. Maybe he even believes them.
You seem to have an axe to grind with @sama. This deep-rooted bias does not make for an honest discourse; as you are just expressing your opinions. If you have some facts to back up your claims, please put them out.
Otherwise, I would urge just stepping away and taking a few deep breaths.
Agree, people need to chill. The thread says they would have been happy if Sam stayed, they just wanted him to choose one or the other which he agreed with. It seems like a very amicable parting of ways when the parties involved were being pulled in different directions.
"The thread says they would have been happy if Sam stayed"
No, he said they would have been fine with it. That has a different quality and honestly, I am quite sure they knew sama was so invested in OpenAI that he would not have choosen to step away from it.
So everybody could save face and no one was "fired".
I see. That is, now I do - without an X account, I could just see the single top post. (Which uses a bitmap for text, so people can read the whole statement. This whole thing represents everything I cannot stand about Twitter)
Have you ever seen Sam Altman with his palms pointing at the camera? You can clearly see from the intersection of his life and fate lines that he is a supervillain in the making.
No, what you are seeing is people refusing to be spun up into rumor-mongering, which is good because you don't want all the air going to spurious claims and counterclaims when there are factual and uncontroversial observations to be angry about instead
I should’ve phrased it better. It seems like many people think those in power are entitled to some moral leniency when they should face higher scrutiny.
Does he forget that it is known that Sam posted to YC's site that he was now Chairman in the day or so prior to him leaving? So... what... they asked him to choose, he decided to promote himself and make a post about it, and then they hurriedly deleted that post and then Same "chose" to leave YC?
> Graham said it was his wife’s doing. “If anyone ‘fired’ Sam, it was Jessica, not me”, he said. “But it would be wrong to use the word ‘fired’ because he agreed immediately.” Jessica Livingston said her husband was correct.…To smooth his exit, Altman proposed he move from president to chairman. He pre-emptively published a blog post on the firm’s website announcing the change. But the firm’s partnership had never agreed, and the announcement was later (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38384090) scrubbed from the post…For years, even some of Altman’s closest associates—including Peter Thiel, Altman’s first backer for Hydrazine—didn’t know the circumstances behind Altman’s departure.
No whoopsie there, Sam figured he could do whatever he wanted.
> Probably because the "Sam Altman is an amoral, power hungry mastermind who was run out of all his previous gigs" is a more interesting narrative than whatever is actually happening.
It's not either or. The above can be true and also the reason pg wanted him to run YC.
Between the weird exit agreements OpenAI had departing employees sign and the Scarlett Johansson voice incident, people are wondering if there's a pattern to Altman's behavior.
I mean, so what, this still has no bearing on what happened between pg and sama. I may think sama has done some sketchy things but why would that lead anyone to believe pg is lying? It's not like he had to make this statement or anything - it appears much more likely that it was just characterized in a way pg thought was not true.
Isn't it interesting that Altman cries for government regulation of "AI" sellers but not for requiring a permit to use "AI" for their potential customers?
I mean, if he were concerned about our safety he'd want restricted access, not universal...
Yeah, this is about the most positive and amiable way to solve the real problem of Sam Altman not having enough time to lead YC. It is a testament to Sam's own marketing skills that even banal stuff is driving mad speculation.
> It is a testament to Sam's own marketing skills that even banal stuff is driving mad speculation.
That’s beginning to enter “he’s playing 5D chess and making you think exactly what he wants” territory. Would you say that it’s a testament to tobacco companies’ marketing skills that everyone talks about cigarettes being cancerous?
The mad speculation is due to him being CEO of a highly talked about company but also the creator of dubious exploitative ventures[1][2] and rubbing a lot of people the wrong way, many of which talk in vague terms instead of being specific from the start.
I wish I could appraise someone’s skill at something without that being considered as a general endorsement but I guess not.
I don’t think Sam Altman is probably that great at most of what he would like ppl to think he is great at. But he must be alright at marketing and getting into the right places because we are talking about him.
> I wish I could appraise someone’s skill at something without that being considered as a general endorsement but I guess not.
Ironic[1] that that you’re lamenting a misunderstanding of your comment while misunderstanding mine. I don’t think you were generally endorsing him, my claim is that you’re giving him credit for a skill based on faulty assumptions.
> But he must be alright at marketing and getting into the right places because we are talking about him.
That’s what I disagree with. Would you say that Justine Sacco[2] was great at marketing too? For a while there everyone was talking about her, which she did not intend and didn’t end particularly well for her. Being talked about and being good at marketing don’t automatically correlate. Barbara Streisand knows that very well[3].
This is such a tired and wrong argument. People are allowed to disagree with, dislike, and distrust others without being jealous of them. Think of anyone you don’t like. Pick a specific politician you abhor. Now imagine someone saying you dislike them because you’re jealous. Does that make sense to you? If it does, you have a very warped view of the world.
Getting fired usually implies they did something wrong. Sam was always going to have a lot going on in his life so it was a given there would be competing priorities when he joined YC.
It’s like not he was some random full time employee at YC and concealing his busy life.
So when a smaller AI project he started (with PGs involvement) rapidly turned into a monster overnight and started demanding the bulk of his attention, it’s not a big deal to ask him if he has enough time for both, and to make a decision early on before it becomes overwhelming (note: he still gave him the choice to decide).
Like a lot of entrepreneurs they take on a lot of responsibilities and think they can swing a lot more stuff than they really can, and PG’s whole thing is guiding entrepreneurs to make the best decisions.
> "Got fired" may be a tad ambiguous, but being told "stop working on that other thing or leave" is not too far off.
It's very different.
When employees begin working at my company, they're told a list of things they're not allowed to do. And, they're told if they do these things, they will be shown the door.
By your definition of "not too far off", we're basically firing people on day one. Absurd.
It is a published abstract from a conference, not a complete article. Journals don’t make it obvious but if you click on the link to view the issue you’ll see that the issue title refers to an annual meeting.
What is going on with the section numbering in that blog and infographic? Super interested in the content I can't focus when we start with section 7 then jump to 9 then 13 then back to 8.
That post was a reaction to the war and a lot of people trying to talk about it and getting banned for it. It was one of the major exodus triggers after which the site was practically empty of engagement for months. Here's a link to comments, the gist is a bunch of people are mad that admins are choosing the "no politics" route:
People who like to talk politics absolutely everywhere have ruined every single social network I know. "No politics" is probably the most intelligent way to go.
> I finally realized today why politics and religion yield such uniquely useless discussions.
> As a rule, any mention of religion on an online forum degenerates into a religious argument. Why? Why does this happen with religion and not with Javascript or baking or other topics people talk about on forums?
> What's different about religion is that people don't feel they need to have any particular expertise to have opinions about it. All they need is strongly held beliefs, and anyone can have those. No thread about Javascript will grow as fast as one about religion, because people feel they have to be over some threshold of expertise to post comments about that. But on religion everyone's an expert.
> Then it struck me: this is the problem with politics too. Politics, like religion, is a topic where there's no threshold of expertise for expressing an opinion. All you need is strong convictions.
The problem is that what is considered “politics” has vastly expanded over the past decade or so. Most controversial topics today wouldn’t have been considered “politics” in the past.
In context of habr, even asking "why'd my internet/corporate vpn stopped working?" or "why did I suddenly get summoned for a medical checkup to enlistment office?" are politics.
No politics is only feasible if your life or your existence isn't considered political in itself, or maybe if you can hide how you challenge the status quo without harming yourself.
Same here: lot of long haul. Know of all the rumors about bad 787 engineering. Still much prefer 787 over alternatives because I find it significantly more comfortable.
I recall some surprising legal outcomes in recent years, for example jail for posting fake Yelp reviews. Anyone know of any case law for this sort of scripting?