Source: Lan Xi, Weibo
The explosive news still needs to be read in the "Wall Street Journal". The details of OpenAI's internal rift were all exposed by Deep Throat.
The previous situation is that, except for Sam Altman, almost all members of OpenAI's founding team have been out. The latest move is that Sam Altman began to change OpenAI's non-profit structure, turning it into a truly commercial company, and raising funds at a valuation of $150 billion, which once again caused several veterans including the CTO to leave.
The risk of Sam Altman's rollover is getting bigger and bigger, mainly because the suspicion of "dishonesty" he was accused of during the internal struggle last year is constantly being exposed. For example, there are rumors that he will be granted 7% of the equity - equivalent to more than 10 billion US dollars - but he once said in front of everyone at a congressional hearing that he did not need shares. Of course, this 7% figure was denied again today, which is very confusing.
The key points of the Wall Street Journal report are as follows:
- Sam Altman has long been away from technical research, and is more willing to prioritize financial matters, such as promoting AI globally, raising money for the company to build data centers, etc., which makes many early employees who joined OpenAI for scientific research purposes very dissatisfied;
- But when Sam Altman cares about the product, his eagerness to achieve success has brought too much pressure to the team that attaches importance to security alignment. For example, the launch of GPT-4o was to intercept Google's annual conference, so only 9 days of security testing time was reserved, which constantly conflicted with the technical department led by the CTO;
- There is a misunderstanding that can be solved, that is, the market's practice of OpenAI's repeated futures releases - search and voice are always delayed after the announcement - thinks that Sam Altman is unreliable, but in fact he wants to launch it quickly, but is always stopped by the CTO who resigned this time because she believes that the technology is not mature enough;
- Overall, internal employees have a misunderstanding about Sam Altman. Altman's criticism is quite mild. He does not think that he has done anything wrong. Instead, he thinks that the company is paying more and more attention to product supply, but neglecting the research and advancement of underlying technology. They think that this has weakened OpenAI's leading edge. It should have been a unique company, but now it has been caught up by Anthropic and xAI, and even more and more colleagues have defected to competitors.
- Last year, the palace coup initiated by Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever was not resolved as it appeared on the surface. Instead, it was the beginning of a secret turmoil. All the conflicts in the past year began with the team standing in those few days.
- If Sam Altman and Ilya Sutskever could shake hands and make peace, it might be the least damaging outcome, but there is no if. After being regarded as the leader of the rebellion, Ilya Sutskever did not return to the office for half a year, nor did he make any sound, and then officially resigned in May this year.
- OpenAI's executives took turns to go to Ilya Sutskever's home to persuade him, and brought him stacks of cards from employees missing him. Ilya Sutskever once seriously considered whether to go back, but one day he received a call from OpenAI informing him that the offer to return had been cancelled; - Leike, another researcher who had worked with Ilya Sutskever on safety alignment, went to Anthropic. He cryptically stated on Twitter that "the debate with OpenAI management over what was more prioritized had reached a critical point, and finally, the safety culture and process were completely replaced by the glamorous products"; - John Schulman, another co-founder, was overwhelmed by the office politics within the company. He had hoped that Ilya Sutskever would come back to continue to be a colleague, but he did not expect the management to be so resolute, so he also left and switched to Anthropic. So it is not without reason that Claude has made great progress this year; - Greg Brockman, the biggest supporter of Sam Altman and president of OpenAI, also had problems. The president is an administrative title that looks awesome but actually has no business authority, but he likes to intervene in projects that he is interested in, which has caused many people to complain. Sam Altman was forced to approve the long-term leave of this loyal ally to avoid further quarrels;
- According to the conditions set by Sam Altman in the new round of fundraising, if OpenAI cannot "normalize" the company structure within 2 years, that is, it is no longer a non-profit organization, then this round of investors has the right to withdraw funds, which is equivalent to a bet agreement.
Add some reports from "The Information", which is more personal;
- Another reason for employees' dissatisfaction is that they did not pay enough overtime pay. . . Yes, in the lofty AI cause that is changing the future, top participants are also concerned about whether their remuneration is worthy of their labor intensity. Sam Altman is a strong leader. In order to quickly launch products, he made overtime a norm in the company. However, under extremely high pressure, employees generally feel that the compensation is not enough; - This is based on the background that OpenAI is continuously poaching people with high salaries. One of the most important tasks of the CTO and CFO every day is to talk to employees. These employees will frankly show the quotes of other companies, which means that if OpenAI cannot offer a higher price, they will run away. Well, California does not allow the signing of non-compete agreements; - OpenAI's employees have cashed out a total of 1.2 billion US dollars, and they are busy starting to consider more about the balance between quality of life and work intensity. A researcher who left said that he bought a house with a swimming pool, but he has no time to swim in it. This is outrageous hahahaha... src="https://img.jinse.cn/7303400_watermarknone.png" title="7303400" alt="UjBiHVDNFFRGf8oiSZXfQS7GU4AvYDWUK1wmNFkG.jpeg">
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