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This is a big boi newsletter today. We’ll be back to regular scheduled programming next week, fear not.

Also this is the last Wednesday newsletter with Sam as our intrepid writer. Please join us in thanking Sam for her service. We are all smarter and hotter because she’s taught us the wild ways of the AI world. Follow Sam here on her journey as an AI startup founder. Boys Club is nothing without its people!

This newsletter will continue with a new writer next week.

Love,

The Boys

Writer: Sam
Editor: Deana

This OpenAI situation has us in an absolute chokehold. In what can only be described as a leaked script for the reboot of HBO’s Silicon Valley, the past few days have us begging for mercy while also starving for more. Here’s what happened, what we know so far, and where we’re dying for answers.

Let’s set the stage. The company we all know and (mostly) love as OpenAI (makers of ChatGPT) is owned by a non-profit, with a very convoluted governance structure. Up until last Friday, the board of that non-profit consisted of three of the original OpenAI founders and current leaders (Sam Altman - CEO, Greg Brockman - President, and Ilya Sutskever - Chief Scientist), as well as three independent board members including Adam D’Angelo, the CEO of Quora. Yes, Quora.

Last Friday, 4 of the 6 board members voted to fire Sam, citing he was “not consistently candid in his communications” with them. How vague! Greg immediately rage quit, and several other senior staffers followed suit. As the news spread, tensions rose amongst the rest of the staff throughout the weekend and many demanded to bring Sam and Greg back. These sentiments were echoed by investors (including Microsoft, who poured $13B into the company), who were told minutes before the company announced the news publicly.

However the negotiation to bring Sam back devolved Sunday night, and the board named Emmett Shear - the dude who started Twitch and a vocal AI decel (more on that later) - as the new CEO. OpenAI employees thought not, and replied to a company all-hand announcement with the middle finger emoji. In an incredibly show of loyalty, 743 of the ~770 OpenAI employees signed a letter to the board demanding they reinstate Sam and all resign, or they would all pull a JoJo and leave, get out, right now. The most notable signature? Ilya, the board member who initially voted Sam out and later posted on X that he screwed up big time. Oopsie!

Satya Nadella (Microsoft CEO) announced Sunday that Sam and Greg would be joining Microsoft to start a new AI division and all OpenAI employees are welcome. But by Monday, Satya stated in an interview that it was actually still TBD where Sam will end up. The board has been edging us for the past few days about its decision., and as of this writing, Sam has is still in negotiations with them to be re-instated as CEO with a new board.

As of this morning, Sam is officially back in the OpenAI CEO saddle.

Wtf was the catalyst for all of this in the first place? While some juicy conspiracies have been flying around X and even Elon (who had a falling out with Sam) has joined the chat, there’s one prevailing (yet unsubstantiated) theory about what happened, and it has to do with some weird acronyms: EA vs e/acc.

EA, or Effective Altruism, is a movement dedicated to applying evidence and reason to determine the most effective ways to address humanity's most pressing problems. When it comes to AI, EA folks worry about unintended negative consequences, like that power and wealth will become even more concentrated than it is now, exacerbating inequality - or worse, AI will end up killing us all. They believe in proceeding with extreme caution and decelerating the pace of AI progress (hence “decels”). Emmett has shared that if AI progress is moving at a 10 right now, it should be slowed to a 1 or 2.

On the other hand, the e/acc movement - Effective Accelerationism - is the techno-optimist philosophy that the advent of AI (and specifically AGI - artificial general intelligence) will lead humanity to new heights. To get there we must move fast and promote healthy competition to push the field forward. Many speculate that the board (specifically Ilya) felt Sam and Greg were moving too fast in this direction, and they got spooked. If true, what Ilya likely didn’t realize was that every employee who had dedicated their careers to the development of safe AI that benefits humanity would not take kindly to him effectively putting the kibosh on their mission and revolt.

We are all desperately awaiting the final episode of this season. Will Sam go back to OpenAI or will the entire staff walk out? Will we ever find out what actually happened? Was this actually a doomer AGI’s first act against humanity? Tune in next time.

This newsletter is supported by your new project management bff. Join the waitlist at www.catalistai.com

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