Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Altman firing retaliation incoming?, published by trevor on November 19, 2023 on LessWrong.

"Anonymous sources" are going to journalists and insisting that OpenAI employees are planning a "counter-coup" to reinstate Altman, some even claiming plans to overthrow the board.

It seems like a strategy by investors or even large tech companies to create a self-fulfilling prophecy to create a coalition of OpenAI employees, when there previously was none.

What's happening here reeks of a cheap easy move by someone big and powerful. It's important to note that AI investor firms and large tech companies are highly experienced and sophisticated at power dynamics, and potentially can even use the combination of AI with user data to do sufficient psychological research to wield substantial manipulation capabilities in unconventional environments, possibly already as far as in-person conversations but likely still limited to manipulation via digital environments like social media.

Companies like Microsoft also have ties to the US Natsec community and there's potentially risks coming from there as well (my model of the US Natsec community is that they are likely still confused or disinterested in AI safety, but potentially not at all confused nor disinterested any longer, and probably extremely interested and familiar with the use of AI and the AI industry to facilitate modern information warfare). Counter-moves by random investors seems like the best explanation for now, I just figured that was worth mentioning; it's pretty well known that companies like Microsoft are forces that ideally you wouldn't mess with.

If this is really happening, if AI safety really is going mano-a-mano against the AI industry, then these things are important to know.

Most of these articles are paywalled so I had to paste them a separate post from the main Altman discussion post, and it seems like there's all sorts of people in all sorts of places who ought to be notified ASAP.

Forbes: OpenAI Investors Plot Last-Minute Push With Microsoft To Reinstate Sam Altman As CEO (2:50 pm PST, paywalled)

A day after OpenAI's board of directors fired former CEO Sam Altman in a shock development, investors in the company are plotting how to restore him in what would amount to an even more surprising counter-coup.

Venture capital firms holding positions in OpenAI's for-profit entity have discussed working with Microsoft and senior employees at the company to bring back Altman, even as he has signaled to some that he intends to launch a new startup, four sources told Forbes.

Whether the companies would be able to exert enough pressure to pull off such a move - and do it fast enough to keep Altman interested - is unclear.

The playbook, a source told Forbes would be straightforward: make OpenAI's new management, under acting CEO Mira Murati and the remaining board, accept that their situation was untenable through a combination of mass revolt by senior researchers, withheld cloud computing credits from Microsoft, and a potential lawsuit from investors. Facing such a combination, the thinking is that management would have to accept Altman back, likely leading to the subsequent departure of those believed to have pushed for Altman's removal, including cofounder Ilya Sutskever and board director Adam D'Angelo, the CEO of Quora.

Should such an effort not come together in time, Altman and OpenAI ex-president Greg Brockman were set to raise capital for a new startup, two sources said. "If they don't figure it out asap, they'd just go ahead with Newco," one source added.

OpenAI had not responded to a request for comment at publication time. Microsoft declined to comment.

Earlier on Saturday, The Information reported that Altman was already meeting with investors to raise funds for such a project. One source close to Altman said...