Time: Nov 30 23:59, PST
1,000
3.00@MickBransfield I don’t think we will ever see that document. This is an official OpenAI announcement, on their own website, by Sam himself. That would never happen without a signed contract.
@MickBransfield we never saw the contract he was ever employed at OpenAI. There's no point in nitpicking over what is required. OpenAI is officially saying he's the CEO on their website, that's enough.
@firstuserhere he's joking based on comments by people who bet NO further down on this page
@barak You bought 1000 mana of NO at ~98%. That's something like 36,000 shares, which is much more than the YES you had. Then you sold the NO when the market was higher, so took a loss on it.
Sam Altman returns as CEO, OpenAI has a new initial board
Okay, NOW it's over.
I think we were right to wait for official announcement.
@jacksonpolack haha wouldn't that be a twist, official statement today that he's back followed by an official statement tomorrow that he was never officially let go.
@HenriThunberg he wouldn't need a guest entrance badge if his old one worked, which it wouldn't if he was terminated from openAI
@firstuserhere If I have any doubt they actually got the paperwork done officially, I don't think him having the badge or not makes much of a difference either way. E.g. I could also see the other way around, him still having the official badge over the weekend (after all, he was terminated remotely) despite the paperwork being officially signed. But maybe that's my conditional probability being off.
This Semafor article reads like Altman is already back.
A week after Sam Altman resumed his role as OpenAI’s CEO, the most salient explanation for the board’s decision to fire him remains the only one it has publicly given so far, leaving some OpenAI employees feeling uneasy, people familiar with the matter said.
...
“We are happy that Sam is back but we are still in the dark about a lot of things,” a senior OpenAI staffer told Semafor.
https://www.semafor.com/article/11/29/2023/openai-staff-uneasy-after-sam-altmans-return
@MickBransfield I came here to post the same article. OpenAI employees are saying that Altman IS back, not that he will be back in the future
@CaseyCollins "Sam is back" isn't a precise statement by itself, people often talk about future things like that, or things like "in-principle agreements". Remember that these people don't know we're hanging on their every word and care about the distinction. There is a sense in which Sam is back, it's just not the one (that we know of, yet) needed to resolve this market.
@MickBransfield Yes, exactly. I mean, we don't need to see it, but we should have evidence one has been signed. Not that such evidence needs to talk about a contract specifically, just anything that implies he is officially employed (which would have involved a contract).
I'm not the market creator, but if we're going for official-ness (which it sounds like we are), then there will be an employment contract.
@MickBransfield Lol this reminds me of the PI (real money) market “Will Fauci retire by the end of 2022?” There were lots of requests to FOIA a resignation letter, an option we don’t have here. In the end it was resolved by him stating repeatedly his last day would be 12/31. At a certain point we have to accept that people and organizations generally don’t post employment letters online. So this market could end up as N/A if even Sam himself is viewed as not credible on the dates of his employment, and the Board doesn’t say exactly when he came back.
@MarkHamill I'm not saying we need to see an employment contract, actually I clarified that we don't need to see one. If Sam tweets that his official start date is blahblah, then that will be fine, because it implies that's the date on a contract.
I'm just saying that the contract is the actual thing we care about, that's the official thing that means he's working there, that's the thing we are looking for evidence of. But there are plenty of ways to get that evidence without actually seeing a contract, the market certainly shouldn't N/A because we don't see a contract (which we almost certainly won't).
https://twitter.com/gdb/status/1729946335376502993#m
Greg Brockman is back at work at OpenAI. Definitely not saying this is proof Sam is back but also they were operating as a packaged deal after Sam was fired.
I'm just emailed the reporter of the semafor article to confirm if Altman has returned, and he immediately responded:
Yes, he’s back
@MickBransfield Can you provide the exact wording of the question you asked? Was that the only response?
@MickBransfield Thanks.
Unfortunately, given how reporters have been reporting on the in-principle agreement, this doesn't move the needle a whole lot for me. Is he physically there? Is he employed? How come we don't have better evidence? "He's back" is how many articles have described the situation seemingly based on the same tweets we saw.
And I don't mean to be too much of a stickler, but the wording of your question and the answer are still consistent with something happening in the future - it can be confirmed that he will become CEO in the future, and people will still describe this as "he's back". It's unfortunate that people don't disambiguate more when talking about these things, I think they don't realise a lot of the time that these ambiguities exist.
A reporter at credible news organization confirmed Altman is back at OpenAI (screenshot above).
Does this allow you to resolve the market as YES?
@chrisjbillington I disagree that we need an employment contract for this to resolve yes. As long as Sam is working for openai it should be enough, even if the actual contract is being negotiated.
@Odoacre We don't need to see it, but there's no way Sam is working in any sense if there hasn't been a contract of some sort signed. It might be for zero pay, it might not be for a CEO position, he might officially be an external consultant or something (not sure if that should count for this market though! Could be an edge case). But openAI is not letting anyone have a computer login who isn't officially on the books. Their lawyers would explode.
Employment is a legal concept, and whilst verbal agreements can be valid, a company like OpenAI is extremely unlikely to be relying on them.
they didn't even let other employees use their computers while sam was out!
@chrisjbillington I'm not so sure about that. But I think we are in agreement in practice. I think if it's shown that Sam has access to his openai computer, email, access pass, or login account that should be sufficient for yes