Before he was removed, I had no strong impression of Sam Altman; I'd say I had a neutral-to-positive opinion him, based on "generic tech executive" and "OpenAI seems to be doing vaguely okay at balancing capabilities, alignment, and mundane safety work".
As of Wed 22 Nov, I have a somewhat negative opinion of Sam Altman, with great uncertainty. I find the degree of personal loyalty to him among OpenAI employees very weird. Based on this and his history at YC, I suspect he's manipulative and power-grabby. I suspect the board removed him because they felt Altman was not completely aligned with the nonprofit mission and was becoming ungovernable, in a way they could not communicate legibly or without creating legal risk to themselves.
There are still a ton of unknowns here. As more information comes out and we gain more distance from the events, I'm curious whether my opinion will change substantially.
Resolves to YES if I feel more positively about Altman compared to before , 50% if I feel basically the same, and NO if I feel more negatively about him.
I will not bet in this market.
This market will close on the next listed date. I'll resolve the question for that date and update the close time to the next date.
@jcb How have the controversies of the last few days affected your opinion of Sam Altman?
@Bayesian the non-disparagement thing seems pretty bad. also the dissolution of the superalignment team. (I am not much of a doomer but...if you believe you are building something that will define the future of humanity, seems like you should not abandon your efforts to get it right.) ⤵
Today I realized that I had not resolved the "24 Nov" option on time. I'm editing this market to close on Dec 1 so I get a reminder to resolve (and I'll reopen and extend to the next date then).
As of 24 Nov and continuing to now, my opinion about Sam hasn't changed since 22 Nov as given in the description (i.e. more negative than 16 Nov before the upheaval, but uncertain). The news has gotten very quiet in terms of new info and I haven't seen anything that's updated my opinion.