Comment by lolinder
22 days ago
ChatGPT is already out when the story picks up, it's talking about concerns about GPT-4.
And the story isn't about that single incident of Altman dodging review and working behind the backs of the board—it's about a pattern of deception and toxic management practices that culminated in Altman lying to Murati about what the legal department had said, which lie was given to the board as part of a folio of evidence that he needed to be ousted.
You're trying to distill a pattern of toxicity and distrust into a single decision, which ameliorates it more than is fair.
Yeah to me the overt lying is more damning than any particular decision. If he owned the decision to bypass ethics review and release a model, fine, we can argue if that was prudent or not, but at least it's honest leadership. Lying that the counsel said it was ok when they hadn't is a whole other thing! When someone starts doing that repeatedly, and it keeps getting back to you that stuff they said was just outright false, you can't work with them at all imo.
If this is something he's been doing for years, it becomes clearer why Y Combinator fired him, though they have been kind of cagey about it.
The question then remains: if you have a lying, toxic, manipulative boss, who would want to work for them ? Especially the direct reports of one
From the story it sounds like the direct reports generally did not want to work with Altman, Brockman excluded. Even Murati was one of the primary instigators of the firing, but she changed her mind for reasons that the article doesn't really explore.
My interpretation is that she realised the blowback was going to be worse than reinstating Altman, but her grievances didn't really change, which is why she left to start Thinking Machines.
Money.