> Alongside rifts over strategy, board members also contended with Altman’s entrepreneurial ambitions. Altman has been looking to raise tens of billions of dollars from Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds to create an AI chip startup to compete with processors made by Nvidia Corp., according to a person with knowledge of the investment proposal. Altman was courting SoftBank Group Corp. chairman Masayoshi Son for a multibillion-dollar investment in a new company to make AI-oriented hardware in partnership with former Apple designer Jony Ive.
Sutskever and his allies on the OpenAI board chafed at Altman’s efforts to raise funds off of OpenAI’s name, and they harbored concerns that the new businesses might not share the same governance model as OpenAI, the person said.
So he was looking to build his own AI chips with a company he owned and supply them to OpenAI? And enlist SoftBank for funding? Isn’t this very similar to Adam Neumans tactics?
With an important distinction. No previous generation (obviously) tried to decide that we're done and it's the apes' turn now. I don't know if AGI is a near possibility or not, but if it is then it won't be our children who stand on the shoulders of giants anymore, will it ?
As far as I can tell his tenure was marked by interpersonal conflict with most of the key players, after which he was suddenly fired amid allegations he was using his role as head of a non profit to advance his own personal interests.
This is inside baseball. Nobody other than us care about the inner workings.
At the end of the day he is responsible for building a $100b business, with a product users love, that has attracted developers in droves and built a highly successful partnership with Microsoft.
And pretty sure the direction of the company is what the issue was. Not any side projects.
It’s not a company it’s a non-profit organization with a defined mission.
Pretty sure that’s the crux of the problem here.
The sort of interesting part of all these comment threads is the unstated assumption that a very fast growing multi billion dollar for profit tech company is an unmitigated “good thing” and anyone getting in the way of that is wrong.
He didn't built OpenAI, which he wasn't a founder of either. By the time he came on as CEO in 2019, they had already built GPT-2, and GPT-3 was likely already well on its way, as it would be released only around a year later.
The ideas that led to OpenAI’s technologies were not plentiful. They were the product of a handful of brilliant researchers, who correctly structured OpenAI to prevent them from being co-opted by people who are incapable of ever having them.
Maybe if Altman bought every datacenter and then nudged OpenAI toward renting them out, or if Altman bought the "Open" trademark and licensed it to OpenAI for a million dollars or whatever.
> This seems way, way more reasonable than WeWork.
Really? Altman advertised and marketed himself as someone with no vested financial interest in OpenAI, but then he's going around creating companies with foreign states and companies that will then sell to the non-profit he's CEO of?
No one is saying that. If the chip making subsidiary was owned by OpenAI it could have very well allowed economies of scale and enable reducing dependency on Microsoft. Perfectly aligned with OpenAI goals.
I don’t think it’s fair to jump to that conclusion, since he apparently never raised the money, founded the company, or developed the chips. The worst we can say is that his attention was divided and his goals may not have been aligned with OpenAI’s. And of course, I say this assuming the anonymous source is correct, which may not be the case.
Attentions divided seems to be the thing these days.
Have you really made it as a SV CEO if you're not at least a 3-ring Tres Commas Club member?
Popular picks seem to be any 3 of ad scaffolds, money processing, rent/gig vigs, energy, digital ledgers, big statistics, profit|altruism mashups, and, of course, the final frontier.
this is why I never bought the "he has no equity in OpenAI, he's got no incentive to go against their charter". There were always plenty of ways for him to make a lot of money without direct equity, Microsoft could have gifted him some shares as part of their agreement to the OpenAI partnership. And now you have stuff like this. Wouldn't be surprised if he wanted to get fired so he could start his own thing and poach OpenAI talent while looking like the good guy
Hmm, is this why the press keep saying that microsoft was "blindsided" by the announcement? was it an attempt to cover this eventuality - because of conflict of interests? They also announced wanting to build their own AI chip lol
I wonder if anyone at Microsoft disclosed details to Altman about the chips? Also wonder when the lawsuits over stuff will start flying. Not sure what about, but with this many hurt feelings and potential betrayals, I'm sure someone will.
“Icarus ignored Daedalus’s instructions not to fly too close to the sun, causing the beeswax in his wings to melt. Icarus fell from the sky, plunged into the sea, and drowned.” Strikingly fit metaphor for Altman.
Venture capitalists and entrepreneurs will sell this country and our freedom for a dollar, ego, and power. It's already happened and is happening at increasing rates.
The cynic in me is reminded of this over and over again, to a point where I now think: what could be more American then putting profit over everything?
That's a really good question, and I'm personally not sure of the answer to it. I am not an expert of their presidencies and policies, but I've always been under the impression, from the little I have read, that the presidencies of the two Roosevelts and Taft kept capitalism in the U.S. reasonable. If someone has more information on whether this is an accurate impression or not, it would be good to know.
When you are ahead of the curve...OpenAI was only a job or a hop for him, to move on to his next venture...One day that was eventually going to happen, either under OpenAI if the board approved or if he only wanted the fruits of success for himself less the baggage.
I don't really get the sentiment in this thread. There is an enormous chip shortage and we are just about getting started with useful AI. The chips are not optional and his or rather OpenAIs current mission hinges on their availability.
If Sama feels the current players are not doing enough, it seems entirely in line with his publicly stated and often repeated goal of advancing AI, that he would try and move things along. That's just extremely consequential execution.
The supply of chips is limited by foundry capacity, starting a new fabless chip designer would do nothing to fix that bottleneck. A new chip designer would also not be releasing a competitive product for at least 5 years, even if done by the most talented and experienced engineering team of the generation (rather than by a career bullshitter like Altman).
This would most likely have been a pure grift play, finding some stupid money and using his position at OpenAI to convince them to invest in a doomed proposition.
Sure, but there must be dozens of credible AI chip startups in various parts of their lifecycle started in the last decade. If the goal really was, as originally proposed, to solve the chip bottleneck for OpenAI you'd be better of backing one of those. And if literally all of these startups are on the wrong path and OpenAI beliefs a different kind of design philosophy would work better, I'm sure most if not all of those startups would be delighted to know about it, and quickly change their plans.
Starting from scratch would make sense if Altman personally were some kind of chip design savant with unique insight to the problem domain, and he definitely isn't that. Alternatively it makes sense if had nothing to do with saving OpenAI from the compute bottleneck, and was another one of Altman's Worldcoin-like grifter schemes.
Anyone with a passing interest in designing an AI Chip should listen to the last Latent Space pod with Dylan Patel of SemiAnalysis.
You either assume transformers are here to stay and somehow get an edge over Nvidia and others trying to do the same or you make a huge variety of bets on whats next.
He is not the only AI related entity doing business in the Middle East. Look at G42’s and King Abdullah University’s partnership with Cerebras Systems.
I was not aware that the Arab states were such a Mecca (pun very much intended) for AI, but there must be something there… why pass over any number of American partnerships?
Because the Middle East has oil money, and they know that the age of oil is coming to a close (or that there is some risk that it is coming to a close, same same, see also option pricing) and they want to mitigate the loss of income by investing in stuff.
The same reason superstar athletes and athletic events are all flocking to the Middle East. Some of the richest fortunes on the planet are associated there, but they’ve been amassed almost exclusively on oil and in nations that are generally considered highly conservative and insular and in an area of the world likely to be most severely impacted by climate change. They are throwing hundreds of billions of dollars to try and get the rest of the world invested in them before the need for oil disappears and they are left to wither and die. Hence tourist cities like Dubai exploding practically overnight. There’s also been enormous spending in the Middle East on sporting events like the FIFA World Cup, golf, soccer and basketball stars, F1, boxing and MMA, and even eSports. Look at how valuable the fab industry has made Taiwan to the world. Something similar in the Middle East is something many oligarchs there would be more than happy to throw money at.
So they shouldn't be interested anymore because the last time they were was a long time ago?
Would you say something similar about Italy if they were to be interested about AI (no tech, no space, no chip industries), but couldn't because the last time they were interested in mathematics was during the Renaissance period?
The Islamic world's golden age of science reached its short peak over a thousand years ago. Hardly a relevant example. It's like using Euclid and Archimedes as examples of how the Greeks have a passion for math.
My take too. Honestly, I don't feel like Sam Altman is a trustworthy character at all. But that's just a feeling based on my observations, I don't know him.
100% sure he was fired because he started some side hustle to get a bigger chunk of the ai cake. In a few we will have some launch of a new venture and a bunch of openai peeps will flip over to the new co.
I understand that we easily get confused when dealing with fantasy money numbers, but the higher the number, the more the exact number of zeroes actually matters.
This article appears to be their source: https://archive.ph/wQOhC
> Alongside rifts over strategy, board members also contended with Altman’s entrepreneurial ambitions. Altman has been looking to raise tens of billions of dollars from Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds to create an AI chip startup to compete with processors made by Nvidia Corp., according to a person with knowledge of the investment proposal. Altman was courting SoftBank Group Corp. chairman Masayoshi Son for a multibillion-dollar investment in a new company to make AI-oriented hardware in partnership with former Apple designer Jony Ive. Sutskever and his allies on the OpenAI board chafed at Altman’s efforts to raise funds off of OpenAI’s name, and they harbored concerns that the new businesses might not share the same governance model as OpenAI, the person said.
So he was looking to build his own AI chips with a company he owned and supply them to OpenAI? And enlist SoftBank for funding? Isn’t this very similar to Adam Neumans tactics?
Other peoples Ideas and other peoples money, pretty on topic.
Isnt that how most ai is built anyway? Taking what’s not theirs and selling it for profit?
Something something greater good
Isn't that exactly how humans have been able to progress so far? By standing on the shoulders of others to reach higher and higher lofts?
If you don't want your knowledge to be used by machines or man, then you should bottle them up and hide them from both.
With an important distinction. No previous generation (obviously) tried to decide that we're done and it's the apes' turn now. I don't know if AGI is a near possibility or not, but if it is then it won't be our children who stand on the shoulders of giants anymore, will it ?
Not really, no. Humans progressed by building societies and rules. No society built on theft ever thrived.
Ideas and money are cheap and plentiful. Execution is everything and from what little I know about Altman that seems to be his strength.
What ventures has he executed successfully?
OpenAI obviously.
You can't argue that the company has not been impressively run and not just because of the quality of the models.
As far as I can tell his tenure was marked by interpersonal conflict with most of the key players, after which he was suddenly fired amid allegations he was using his role as head of a non profit to advance his own personal interests.
This is inside baseball. Nobody other than us care about the inner workings.
At the end of the day he is responsible for building a $100b business, with a product users love, that has attracted developers in droves and built a highly successful partnership with Microsoft.
And pretty sure the direction of the company is what the issue was. Not any side projects.
It’s not a company it’s a non-profit organization with a defined mission.
Pretty sure that’s the crux of the problem here.
The sort of interesting part of all these comment threads is the unstated assumption that a very fast growing multi billion dollar for profit tech company is an unmitigated “good thing” and anyone getting in the way of that is wrong.
Not everyone thinks that or has that as a goal.
He didn't built OpenAI, which he wasn't a founder of either. By the time he came on as CEO in 2019, they had already built GPT-2, and GPT-3 was likely already well on its way, as it would be released only around a year later.
He wasn't technically a founder but was there since day one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI
https://openai.com/blog/introducing-openai
The ideas that led to OpenAI’s technologies were not plentiful. They were the product of a handful of brilliant researchers, who correctly structured OpenAI to prevent them from being co-opted by people who are incapable of ever having them.
Got a citation for him DOING anything other than talking?
> Execution is everything and from what little I know about Altman that seems to be his strength.
when has he "executed"?
he seems to have had four jobs:
1. a failed startup founder 1. a YC person handing out other people's money 1. openai ceo 1. a horrific cryptocurrency grift
which do you feel he "executed" so impressively on?
This seems way, way more reasonable than WeWork.
Maybe if Altman bought every datacenter and then nudged OpenAI toward renting them out, or if Altman bought the "Open" trademark and licensed it to OpenAI for a million dollars or whatever.
> This seems way, way more reasonable than WeWork.
Really? Altman advertised and marketed himself as someone with no vested financial interest in OpenAI, but then he's going around creating companies with foreign states and companies that will then sell to the non-profit he's CEO of?
No one is saying that. If the chip making subsidiary was owned by OpenAI it could have very well allowed economies of scale and enable reducing dependency on Microsoft. Perfectly aligned with OpenAI goals.
But it wouldn't be owned by OpenAI - that's the other poster's point. You're making it for them.
To be clear, I don’t think that would be totally above board; it wouldn't seem ethical to my moral compass at least.
I just think it’s far short of the completely indefensible, totally unambiguous, and obviously fraudulent behavior of Neumann.
There are gradations of conflict and malfeasance.
That's a fair and good point.
I don’t think it’s fair to jump to that conclusion, since he apparently never raised the money, founded the company, or developed the chips. The worst we can say is that his attention was divided and his goals may not have been aligned with OpenAI’s. And of course, I say this assuming the anonymous source is correct, which may not be the case.
Attentions divided seems to be the thing these days.
Have you really made it as a SV CEO if you're not at least a 3-ring Tres Commas Club member?
Popular picks seem to be any 3 of ad scaffolds, money processing, rent/gig vigs, energy, digital ledgers, big statistics, profit|altruism mashups, and, of course, the final frontier.
> Adam Neumans tactics?
Neuman's still at it with Flow? In line with that, more impetus (not that he needs any) for Sam to go ahead and do it anyway.
this is why I never bought the "he has no equity in OpenAI, he's got no incentive to go against their charter". There were always plenty of ways for him to make a lot of money without direct equity, Microsoft could have gifted him some shares as part of their agreement to the OpenAI partnership. And now you have stuff like this. Wouldn't be surprised if he wanted to get fired so he could start his own thing and poach OpenAI talent while looking like the good guy
Hmm, is this why the press keep saying that microsoft was "blindsided" by the announcement? was it an attempt to cover this eventuality - because of conflict of interests? They also announced wanting to build their own AI chip lol
I wonder if anyone at Microsoft disclosed details to Altman about the chips? Also wonder when the lawsuits over stuff will start flying. Not sure what about, but with this many hurt feelings and potential betrayals, I'm sure someone will.
Hoarding tech and assets for his own ventures, expecting more to come from SAlty.
“Icarus ignored Daedalus’s instructions not to fly too close to the sun, causing the beeswax in his wings to melt. Icarus fell from the sky, plunged into the sea, and drowned.” Strikingly fit metaphor for Altman.
Venture capitalists and entrepreneurs will sell this country and our freedom for a dollar, ego, and power. It's already happened and is happening at increasing rates.
Good old built in the USA.
The cynic in me is reminded of this over and over again, to a point where I now think: what could be more American then putting profit over everything?
Was there any time when the US (or the rest of the world for that matter) practiced responsible capitalism?
That's a really good question, and I'm personally not sure of the answer to it. I am not an expert of their presidencies and policies, but I've always been under the impression, from the little I have read, that the presidencies of the two Roosevelts and Taft kept capitalism in the U.S. reasonable. If someone has more information on whether this is an accurate impression or not, it would be good to know.
When you are ahead of the curve...OpenAI was only a job or a hop for him, to move on to his next venture...One day that was eventually going to happen, either under OpenAI if the board approved or if he only wanted the fruits of success for himself less the baggage.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/openai-ceo-ouster-followed-de...
I don't really get the sentiment in this thread. There is an enormous chip shortage and we are just about getting started with useful AI. The chips are not optional and his or rather OpenAIs current mission hinges on their availability.
If Sama feels the current players are not doing enough, it seems entirely in line with his publicly stated and often repeated goal of advancing AI, that he would try and move things along. That's just extremely consequential execution.
Using OpenAI’s name to get funding for a startup that would profit by selling to OpenAI is not fair game
The supply of chips is limited by foundry capacity, starting a new fabless chip designer would do nothing to fix that bottleneck. A new chip designer would also not be releasing a competitive product for at least 5 years, even if done by the most talented and experienced engineering team of the generation (rather than by a career bullshitter like Altman).
This would most likely have been a pure grift play, finding some stupid money and using his position at OpenAI to convince them to invest in a doomed proposition.
> A new chip designer would also not be releasing a competitive product for at least 5 years
Best time to start was 10 years ago…
Sure, but there must be dozens of credible AI chip startups in various parts of their lifecycle started in the last decade. If the goal really was, as originally proposed, to solve the chip bottleneck for OpenAI you'd be better of backing one of those. And if literally all of these startups are on the wrong path and OpenAI beliefs a different kind of design philosophy would work better, I'm sure most if not all of those startups would be delighted to know about it, and quickly change their plans.
Starting from scratch would make sense if Altman personally were some kind of chip design savant with unique insight to the problem domain, and he definitely isn't that. Alternatively it makes sense if had nothing to do with saving OpenAI from the compute bottleneck, and was another one of Altman's Worldcoin-like grifter schemes.
Anyone with a passing interest in designing an AI Chip should listen to the last Latent Space pod with Dylan Patel of SemiAnalysis.
You either assume transformers are here to stay and somehow get an edge over Nvidia and others trying to do the same or you make a huge variety of bets on whats next.
https://www.latent.space/p/semianalysis#details
He is not the only AI related entity doing business in the Middle East. Look at G42’s and King Abdullah University’s partnership with Cerebras Systems.
I was not aware that the Arab states were such a Mecca (pun very much intended) for AI, but there must be something there… why pass over any number of American partnerships?
Especially in today’s geopolitical climate.
Gulf states and their sovereign wealth funds are great source of dumb money.
Because the Middle East has oil money, and they know that the age of oil is coming to a close (or that there is some risk that it is coming to a close, same same, see also option pricing) and they want to mitigate the loss of income by investing in stuff.
Money is one thing, geopolitical risk is another much more turbulent force than the markets.
I mean, I'll state the obvious: Money.
That, and despite a lot of really bad PR (and a lot of very real human rights abuses) the Saudi's are not as black as they're painted.
G42 is Emirati, but KAUST is Saudi as you mentioned. Not sure what the PR on the UAE is like.
The same reason superstar athletes and athletic events are all flocking to the Middle East. Some of the richest fortunes on the planet are associated there, but they’ve been amassed almost exclusively on oil and in nations that are generally considered highly conservative and insular and in an area of the world likely to be most severely impacted by climate change. They are throwing hundreds of billions of dollars to try and get the rest of the world invested in them before the need for oil disappears and they are left to wither and die. Hence tourist cities like Dubai exploding practically overnight. There’s also been enormous spending in the Middle East on sporting events like the FIFA World Cup, golf, soccer and basketball stars, F1, boxing and MMA, and even eSports. Look at how valuable the fab industry has made Taiwan to the world. Something similar in the Middle East is something many oligarchs there would be more than happy to throw money at.
> I was not aware that the Arab states were such a Mecca (pun very much intended) for AI
Why wouldn't they? The Arab world loves science
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_the_medieval_Islami...
Because the current AI boom started around 2010-2016, and the time period to which you are referring ended about 800 years earlier.
So they shouldn't be interested anymore because the last time they were was a long time ago?
Would you say something similar about Italy if they were to be interested about AI (no tech, no space, no chip industries), but couldn't because the last time they were interested in mathematics was during the Renaissance period?
I'm the heretic one
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism
Italy is not an AI hub to my knowledge.
I would be very surprised if high profile AI figures and companies started making ties with them.
What are you getting at?
The Islamic world's golden age of science reached its short peak over a thousand years ago. Hardly a relevant example. It's like using Euclid and Archimedes as examples of how the Greeks have a passion for math.
So they are no longer allowed to be back at it? What are you trying to suggest here?
Be supportive of countries wanting to be interested in science instead of being so negative
I thought he invested in several AI chip companies. Which one is this about?
He helped make a new pie and decided to take a slice
Too many hands in too many cookie jars, this feels like.
My take too. Honestly, I don't feel like Sam Altman is a trustworthy character at all. But that's just a feeling based on my observations, I don't know him.
100% sure he was fired because he started some side hustle to get a bigger chunk of the ai cake. In a few we will have some launch of a new venture and a bunch of openai peeps will flip over to the new co.
Will this be good or bad for the general public?
Impossible to say. If OpenAI makes it– I think it'll be better for AI safety then with Sam at the helm. But that's a big if. Time will tell.
Depends on how your values align with those of Middle East sovereign wealth funds and their owners.
I don’t understand why people with such amount of cash still looking for VC instead of bootstrapping their company.
You don't "bootstrap" a chip fab.
Also lol why would he risk his own money when he can keep it, risk other people's money, and end up richer on the other side even if he fails?
Maybe elon could. But very few people can.
You rent it from TSMC, just like nvidia.
Because you want to share risk? You can play more games if you share risk.
you can always be richer and more powerful
How much money do you think sama has available?
I understand that we easily get confused when dealing with fantasy money numbers, but the higher the number, the more the exact number of zeroes actually matters.
Well well how the turntables...