Wes Roth

A story in WSJ (based on a soon to be released book) drops some bombshells about Sam Altman's firing from OpenAI.

For example, Peter Thiel basically *repeatedly* warned Altman that this was coming.

🧵: 

Apparently Peter Thiel was funding Eliezer Yudkowsky while also mentoring Sam Altman.

In November 2023 (same month as the OpenAI 'coup') Thiel warned Altman that OpenAI was taken over by "the EAs" and that they would "destroy" OpenAI. 

Shortly after, the board fired Sam Altman.

Mira Murati agreed to be the interim CEO, but was growing more concerned by the board's behavior.

"the board was putting OpenAI at risk by not better preparing for the repercussions of Altman's firing" 

There were no plans to notify Microsoft, no specific examples were provided of Altman's misbehavior (at the time, at least).

Mira provided some of the most specific evidence against Sam Altman, but the board could not divulge that.

After the news broke, everyone was extremely confused about why Altman got fired.

Mira was supposed to keep employees calm while the board found a new CEO.

Instead "she (Murati) was leading her colleagues in a revolt against the board."

Narratives started appearing amidst the employees, mostly pointing to Sutskever and Helen Toner doing this for their own personal reasons.

By Monday most employees signed a letter saying they quit unless Altman comes back.

(Notice Ilya and Mira signed the letter as well) 

there's a lot of details I didn't cover, see my video for a full deep dive:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4LpInHa1Eg

It's really hard to know what really happened here.

For example, the WSJ says that Altman was caught in a "particularly egregious lie"

here's that paragraph: 

So...

Ilya said that Altman told him that McCauley said "we should fire Toner", but McCauley said that, no, she did not say that.

As far as Mira and the "evidence" she had against Sam Altman, Mira came out and said 

"It has been disheartening to witness the previous board’s efforts to scapegoat me with anonymous and misleading claims in a last-ditch effort to save face in the media." 

what was news to me is that Peter Thiel seemed to have been 5 steps ahead of everyone here.

it seems like he has one of those crystal balls from Tolkien, what are they called.... Palantir? 👀

here's the WSJ article (paywall):
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/the-real-story-behind-sam-altman-firing-from-openai-efd51a5d

what do you think actually happened here?