It was a really bad look to scramble to get him back once he triggered a mass exodus. Having him at the helm is either so dangerous for AI safety they had to push him out with a bureaucratic coup, or it isn’t. Doing that severely hurts their credibility on multiple levels (did they really not realize how popular he was within the company and that the price was going to be some of their top researchers?) and after pushing him out the way they did, they should hardly be surprised that Microsoft hoovered him up before the weekend was even over. Why would they give him a few days to process the betrayal and maybe come back around?

After this, we shouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft suddenly starts sabotaging OpenAI until it has no choice but to sell itself off to MS, at which point Altman gets all his toys back.

Stuff like this is why I never took their safety mission all that seriously. It was going to bump up against the business imperatives before long, and given the level of interest business has in AI… what else was the outcome going to be other than corporate sabotage and malfeasance?

Hate that Altman guy, he’s Zuckerberg with more important technology, but somewhere in the mix of articles I read one of the board members complained that “this board is not the group of people you want to see spearheading AI safety.” Yeah, I guess not!