On OpenAI Drama
Lots going on and I actually find this first absolutely enraging and then in time utterly deflating and then finally boring; but I thought I would at least mark this moment with some comments even if for my own future reference.
It is important to note that Sam Altman is a fucking venture capitalist. Not a “founder”. Not a “builder”. The original announcement of OpenAI in 2015 makes it exceedingly clear that OpenAI was founded by a group of engineers — not by Sam Altman, who is NOT pictured in a team shoot on the launching Team page , and is listed rather as a Sponsor along with Musk, Thiel, Brockman, Reid Hoffman and Jessica Livingston (of YCombinator, the partner of Paul Graham). Altman is not listed as founding member, but rather as a donor and co-chair.
“Sam, Greg, Elon, Reid Hoffman, Jessica Livingston, Peter Thiel, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Infosys, and YC Research are donating to support OpenAI.”
This is not Sam Altman’s company. He is a venture capitalist who took the CEO role in 2019, four years after the announcement of the company. And now is completing a coup and washing out all of the founding vision of the people WHO ACTUALLY STARTED AND BUILT THIS.
He was and is a venture capitalist first. And he is part of a cabal of venture capitalists, from Founder’s Fund, a16z, and YCombinator, that are engaged in multiple, expansive, economic and technological plots; these same people orchestrated the hostile take-over of Twitter, as well as the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, which drove over 2 billion dollars during the early days alone, onto a16z owned crypto financial infrastructure. So it is important to note, that this ugly, dramatic, frothy, bloody coups and takeovers, is becoming more and more the modus operandi of the venture capital conspiracy. While thousands of startups over time have been subjected to various versions of this, the unrelenting tension between the venture capitalist and the people who are actually doing the thing — as venture capital has ascended to new heights on the backs of the actual workers in the industry — these attacks and takeovers are becoming more blatant and catastrophic than ever, and point even more to a reckless, irresponsible, overly powered venture capital function. It is also fundamentally re-shaping the nature of competition in the industry, and pushing the window further and further on what kinds of tactics and strategies will be employed. Lowering the bar into yet another stage of hell. This bloodthirstiness and recklessness, will cause the industry to go to that bottom. And unlike popular notions of competition as being positive (for anything outside of VC returns), this promises a particularly ugly and immoral developmental period.
It is hilarious and gross that the public dialogue has been shaped, around a16z + PayPal mafia talking points and political platforms, into positioning Sam as the humble toiling builder, his aspirations checked by the Woke Mind Virus in the board, who is trying to Stop Him From Innovating. The actual story here is of a research group with very good intentions and good people, that got hijacked by venture capitalists, those VCs then entering a very shaky alliance with Microsoft, who are now lionized as if they were “the builders” themselves, being persecuted by “management”. Importantly, the ACTUAL technological founder, is listed in the launch documents as “research director [] Ilya Sutskever, one of the world experts in machine learning,” now on the ousting board. This individual, who actually started and directed the technological direction of the company, particularly in the formative early years where Sam was a SPONSOR, not a team member, is now being raked over the coals, absolutely crucified, insulted, demeaned, discredited. This shows the utterly depraved nature of new venture capital propaganda about builders and techno-optimism, which accrues to the venture capitalist as some sort of godhead rising triumphantly over the engineers, taking on the mantle and dignity that only the engineers have earned while demeaning them. This can not be divorced in any way from the overall, exploitative relationships between venture capital and the people who actually build the technology and perform the core functions around it. My time in Silicon Valley was a master class and front row seat to watching engineers get exploited over and over and over again, by abusive and dangerous work loads, theft of code, theft of compensation, theft of technological contribution and credit, theft of entire careers and technical trajectories. Theft of their companies, hijacking of their startups, hostile takeovers of their executives and boards.
A major motivation here — as has been for once correctly stated by the tech press, getting ONE thing right — a major motivation here is the transformation and wresting of the company from its original founding goals and structure — the very same that Sam first “sponsored” — the VERY first paragraph of the OpenAI launch post from 2015 makes the intent very clear:
“OpenAI is a non-profit artificial intelligence research company. Our goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return.”
It has been covered elsewhere how the structure of the company has changed over time, how this vision has been distorted, manipulated, perverted and utterly compromised by Sam Altman and his crony venture capitalists. This is the height of that transformation and that hijacking. And it is a tale as old as time: the entire venture capital model relies on exploiting engineers for their profits and returns and their aspirations to own major chunks of technology infrastructure. In this case, there is the additional factor that the ACTUAL technical co-founder here is clearly gravely concerned about where the technology is going under venture capital, how and what for it is being developed, etc.,; it is clear and stated that the motive of Sam’s ouster is the actual technical co-founder’s concerns. This view is being marginalized here. And if the technical co-founder is so concerned that he is willing to take these grave steps and put his entire career and work on the line… why is that not being listened to by other supposed builders? They are held under the spell of venture capital.
It is possible that Altman will stay at OpenAI, with this opportunity granting him the ability to totally command the situation, neuter Microsoft in the situation, complete the hijacking, flush out internal dissent. As far as the clearly sycophantic streak in OpenAI engineering: it’s not unusual for engineers to not realize that are, in fact, being taken for a ride; nor should proximity to the manufactured fame of venture capitalists like Sam Altman be overlooked as an organizing principle. People often don’t realize the are being exploited by venture capitalists and instead lower to bootlicking. Either way the chips fall — venture capitalists are opportunistic fucks and will do whatever they need to move their agenda forward — for the conspiracy, there are benefits and drawbacks to all options; importantly, the venture capital network that Altman is part of have dozens and dozens of AI startups, a vast network of talent and financial vehicles, etc.; both scenarios as far as leaving and staying are plausible and both scenarios forward the agenda here.
As far as what I have found the most concerning in this scenario. First of all, the cult of celebrity and personality around Sam. Everyone is heralding him as a Steve Jobs figure; neglecting that the celebrity of both Steve Jobs and Sam Altman is deeply manufactured and that this cult of personality has been specifically created. You see the sycophantic nature of the tech industry, which uncritically accepts Sam Altman as a demagogue because they have been TOLD that he is so great, over and over… by the other venture capitalists that he is in constant conspiracy with. You will note they have a lot of really good things to say to each other all of the time!! Add to this the PR teams and the blah blah blah, the fact that these people literally own Twitter — Elon was a “sponsor”/ “donor” of OpenAI, you may recall — that they control and command the tech press … this is not an industry that is coming to its own conclusion or even has any insight whatsoever into who these people are, what they are like, etc. , but rather is uncritically accepting an image of certain specific people as savants, geniuses, once in a lifetime talents, etc., people who are not even the ones building shit, but rather saying the same carefully prepared talking points over and over and over again in a purpose-built limelight.
It’s honestly disgusting and disgraceful to watch venture capital effortlessly capture the conversation on technological development to this degree, to not only own the capital flow but, necessarily also, the public discourse, and the beliefs of people inside of the industry. In this instance, the industry takes the side of a venture capitalist over the founding engineer, while also maintaining that this is about standing with builders. LOL WAT.
We should not be in a situation, as an industry, where these massive shake-ups and disruptions are happening because of a small group of fucking sociopathic assholes and their Game of Thrones cosplay; the industry is captive to this cult of personality and the insane assumptions about innate superiority, genius, and how technological development should happen — under the control of individuals who are lionized as populist figures while living as dictators. These marketing stunts are very polarizing and very destructive. We should be having sensible, reasoned and fair discussions about all of this, as a large body of technologists, and instead we are in some media fueled hell scape of hero worship and bootlicking; remember, these are the folks who invented page views, and it should be no surprise that they are able to generate these never-ending circuses, massively impoverishing the discourse about artificial intelligence, distorting public perspective on what AI even is, needlessly radicalizing and confusing the programmer base, etc.
This is playing right into the ideological battlefield that venture capital has been trying to set up, most crystallized in Marc Andreessen’s techno-optimist manifesto, which is radicalizing computer programmers against a manufactured enemy; in this case, that manufactured enemy takes the form of the TECHNICAL FOUNDER on the board, over a fucking venture capitalist slime ball who has been openly hikacking it away from the original vision for years.
I hope Satya is waking up to some shit here, realizing now that he has been hit by the smooth criminal syndicate of a16z and PayPal Mafia. It was vexing to watch you crawl unheeding into bed with an enemy that would surely betray you, but I hope you learned your lesson, that you will become a war-time CEO, because we need at least one of them that is after these fucks.
I hope you don’t make the mistake of thinking this was not carefully orchestrated by Altman and his cronies and that they didn’t know these possible outcomes and trajectories, didn’t plan or arrange them, weren’t positioned to take advantage of them, were in any way surprised. They do not want to be in bed with you or beholden to you or the people who actually started and built this company. Personally, I think it is most likely that PayPal Mafia + a16z alights to their own new structure where they can take all the money, deals, researchers and engineers, that YOU paid for, into a new offering — and onto Oracle infrastructure, oh yes my friend, that is absolutely a possibility for your future. In Microsoft, they took on a bunch of fucking money but also ceded far too much control. Thus, re-gaining control becomes a priority and was likely planned all along, and that will be true regardless of the way this goes.
Important: This is a conspiracy who owns Twitter and thus has the Twitter firehose — the most valuable data on the planet — and in the aspirations to make X the “everything” platform, an AI fed on real-time Twitter data, integrated into the platform, is definitely in the cards. I’m pretty sure they don’t want Microsoft involved in that loop.
Why, as you watched this conspiracy literally capture Twitter, perform the shadiest, darkest maneuvering of brunt force overtaking of the most important global communications infrastructure in the world, did you think that Microsoft would be different, would be immune from this hijacking? Why, as you saw this same conspiracy demolition Silicon Valley Bank, would you believe you wouldn’t be a target? I will spare you from further chastisements above and beyond that you are surely heaping upon yourself now. But I hope you have learned who your enemies really are instead of just trying to woo them back.
In summary, this situation could go a few ways; all of them will benefit the same conspiracy of venture capitalists who are wrecking destruction in every other vertical of technology. This was yet another attack on technology infrastructure, another hijacking by venture capital. And they’ve got a lot more of that where it came from. Especially as this has all worked out very beautifully for them.