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0 pointscodeulike2y ago0 comments

For what its worth, here's a thread from someone who used to work with Sam who says they found him deceptive and manipulative

https://twitter.com/geoffreyirving/status/172675427022402397...

I have no details of OpenAI's Board’s reasons for firing Sam, and I am conflicted (lead of Scalable Alignment at Google DeepMind). But there is a large, very loud pile on vs. people I respect, in particular Helen Toner and Ilya Sutskever, so I feel compelled to say a few things.

...

Third, my prior is strongly against Sam after working for him for two years at OpenAI:

1. He was always nice to me.

2. He lied to me on various occasions

3. He was deceptive, manipulative, and worse to others, including my close friends (again, only nice to me, for reasons)

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6 comments · 2 top-level

cma2y ago· 2 in thread

Here's another anecdote, posted in 2011 but about something even earlier:

> "We were trying to get a big client for weeks, and they said no and went with a competitor. The competitor already had a terms sheet from the company were we trying to sign up. It was real serious.

> We were devastated, but we decided to fly down and sit in their lobby until they would meet with us. So they finally let us talk to them after most of the day.

> We then had a few more meetings, and the company wanted to come visit our offices so they could make sure we were a 'real' company. At that time, we were only 5 guys. So we hired a bunch of our college friends to 'work' for us for the day so we could look larger than we actually were. It worked, and we got the contract."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3048944

kmlevitt2y ago

Call me unscrupulous, but I’m tolerant of stuff like that. It’s the willingness to do things like that that makes the difference between somebody reaching the position of CEO of a multibillion dollar company, or not. I’d say virtually everybody who has reached his level of success in business has done at least a few things like that in their past.

cma2y ago

If you do that kind of thing internally though or against the org with an outside interest it isn't surprising that it wouldn't go over well. Though that isn't confirmed yet as they never made a concrete allegation.

kmlevitt2y ago· 2 in thread

The General anecdotes he gives later in the thread line up with their stated reasons for firing him: he hired another person to do the same project (presumably without telling them), and he gave two different board members different opinions of the same person.

Those sound like good reasons to dislike him and not trust him. But ultimately we are right back where we started: they still aren't good enough reasons to suddenly fire him the way they did.

leoc2y ago

It's possible that what we have here is one of those situations where people happily rely on oral reports and assurances for a long time, then realise later that they really, really should have been asking for and keeping receipts from the beginning.

kmlevitt2y ago

Not sure if you’re referring to Sam, the board, or everybody trying to deal with them. But either way, yeah.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

6 comments · 2 top-level

cma2y ago· 2 in thread

Here's another anecdote, posted in 2011 but about something even earlier:

> "We were trying to get a big client for weeks, and they said no and went with a competitor. The competitor already had a terms sheet from the company were we trying to sign up. It was real serious.

> We were devastated, but we decided to fly down and sit in their lobby until they would meet with us. So they finally let us talk to them after most of the day.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3048944

kmlevitt2y ago

cma2y ago

kmlevitt2y ago· 2 in thread

Those sound like good reasons to dislike him and not trust him. But ultimately we are right back where we started: they still aren't good enough reasons to suddenly fire him the way they did.

leoc2y ago

kmlevitt2y ago

Not sure if you’re referring to Sam, the board, or everybody trying to deal with them. But either way, yeah.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse