sirlance99

mpantone said:

planetary paul said:

Obviously the intention was to kill off the company. Some serious litigation is in order methinks.

Whose intention?

Certainly not Altman's. He had a large equity stake in the company. It was his baby.

Certainly not the board of directors. They represent the shareholders.

Certainly not Microsoft. They have 49% ownership. Destroying OpenAI would mean flushing most of their investment stake down the toilet. (That's what Elon Musk is singlehandedly in the process of doing with X/Twitter.)

My hunch (unsubstantiated) is that the BOD identified irregularities that pointed to fraudulent behavior by Altman, akin to Elizabeth Holmes (Theranos) and Sam Bankman-Fried (FTX). Liars don't commit just one lie. Lying permeates almost everything they do. Not just their business dealings, also their personal lives.

If the boards of Theranos and FTX had identified such issues early enough with Holmes and SBF, those companies might still exist today.

We won't learn what it is but some general information will probably come to light someday. Not today, not tomorrow, but the reasons won't stay hidden forever.

Remember that this is a privately held company that lost -$540 million on revenues of $28 million in 2022.

Silicon Valley is pretty small. My guess is that the biggest and best connected venture capitalists and IP law firms already have an idea of what went wrong.

The shareholders can revolt and elect a new BOD but Microsoft has 49% control. My guess is that some minority shareholder, probably some bigshot VC got suspicious from Altman's behavior, started poking around and found something rotten.

The people who would benefit from an OpenAI collapse are the competitors, companies like Alphabet, Meta, maybe Amazon, IBM, a bunch of startups, etc. Maybe a disgruntled former OpenAI employee, a jilted lover (we saw SBF's former girlfriend testify against him). But not someone with a sizable equity stake in OpenAI.

Silicon Valley has plenty of hubris and guys like Altman have an excess of it. Executives like Holmes and SBF have made people see red flags when people talk it up without showing real results (that is, profitability). My guess is that this will eventually end up with legal action against Altman and possibly other senior execs. The CFO would come under heavy scrutiny, there's always a money trail behind any sort of corporate shenanigans.

"Fake it until you make it" is not a real business strategy in the real world. That might be fine in a movie but it doesn't work in high tech especially when you're playing with someone else's money. The numbers eventually don't add up.

This is going to get more interesting.

cougarmeat said:

With Microsoft leading the AI advance, I no longer fear AI taking over the world. I think of all the programs MS has "acquired" and made worse while driving better-designed programs out of the market.

davgreg said:

Take it all with a grain of salt.
I have Amazon Prime but do not use the included music.
I have free Spotify from one of my ISP but do not use it.
I pay for Apple Music and use it.
I pay for Idagio and use it.
I get YouTube Music as a bonus to YouTube Premium and do not use it.

So how do the analytics score someone in my situation?

bakerzdosen said:

This gives me hope we'll see a $199 sale at Best Buy one of these days. I'll be in for at least one at that point.