Resolves to my subjective judgement of why he was kicked out.
I will end this market in 30 days, no extensions. This makes "we don't know" a possible reasonable answer.
Comment to add some other reasons and I'll add them if I think they are interesting.
edit 2023-11-17 20:41:
Multiple options can resolve to YES, this is an unlinked multichoice question. For example, if Sam was fired for lying to the board to conceal his profit-driven company direction, then it could mean that "Sam defrauding/lying to the board" and "Disagreement over the profit vs nonprofit direction of OpenAI" could both resolve to YES (if there is sufficient evidence that he was fired for both reasons).
So, I am somewhat surprised that the option "Sam defrauding/lying to the board" is trading so low given that we have pretty convincing evidence (the statement from the OpenAI board themselves) that is what he was fired for...
1,000
3.00
This market is quite the wild ride.
https://twitter.com/eshear/status/1726526112019382275
"PPS: Before I took the job, I checked on the reasoning behind the change. The board did not remove Sam over any specific disagreement on safety, their reasoning was completely different from that. I'm not crazy enough to take this job without board support for commercializing our awesome models."
This feels to me like it should be pretty low right now. "Not being candid" could be something pretty different from lying. Would your resolution criteria for this be very different from https://manifold.markets/CalebBiddulph/did-sam-altman-literally-lie-to-the?r=Q2FsZWJCaWRkdWxwaA @ayylmao?
@CalebBiddulph My resolution criteria is different in several ways from your market. Probably the biggest difference is that I consider lying by omission to be lying. The reason for this is that, personally, I usually consider it to be lying (and I think most people do too?). Additionally, that was kind of the stated reason that OpenAI gave to fire him, "not being consistently candid".
My resolution criteria also differs in that I don't need conclusive evidence or rock solid statements from openAI or sam to resolve on this question. I want this market to be a lot more vibes based than being a letter-of-the-law kind of thing. I will review all the available evidence at market close and then make a judgement. I will strive to be reasonable, and I will make a comment explaining my judgement too. If you think my judgement at that time is poor then I invite you to give me a bad rating as well as suggestions on how I could improve.
So, with that said, and with what I said in response to Cate Hall's question. It depends on what happens in the next 29 or so days. If lots of "evidence" comes out that the "real" reason they fired him wasn't because he wasn't being "consistently candid" but actually because of some other reason (see: ai safety, profit vs nonprofit, etc), then probably I will resolve "Sam defrauding/lying to the board" to NO or some low %. It's hard to say exactly what that evidence would look like at this time. This seems kind of unlikely to me, because it would be contradictory to OpenAI's initial statement that he was fired for "not being sufficiently candid", so the evidence would kind of have to explain that away, which I think is unlikely to happen. As Ernie pointed out, it's likely a question of what he was lying about, so it could be two things, that he did X and that he lied about not doing X, that led to him being fired. As reminder, this is an unlinked multichoice question, so multiple answers can resolve to YES.
To put it another way, what I'm going for with this market is, if you ask someone on the street why sam was fired, and you let them do as much googling as they want before answering you, what will they say?
By the way I think your market has a pretty good resolution criteria. I think it is biased toward NO, though, because I think it is unlikely that conclusive proof will come out, and I also think it is unlikely that OpenAI board members will make rock solid on-the-record statements about this.
And I realize I haven't said it in the description, but my usual policy, which also applies here, is that I won't bet on my own markets that are subjective. I like that you asked this clarifying question, and this highlights why I like some element of subjectivity in these markets. I would not be able to predict the "is lying by omission actually lying" issue ahead of time.
@zzlk Thanks for the detailed answer! That makes sense, I could see many people on the street thinking of lying by omission as "lying." I still think 63% is pretty high, so I'll keep my money where it is for now.
Seems like it wasn't pressure from Microsoft.
https://www.axios.com/2023/11/17/microsoft-openai-sam-altman-ouster
@CateHall press releases like this often conceal what's really going on. See: "stepping away to spend more time with family"
I agree that this press release seems a lot more direct than usual, but the whole situation seems abrupt and unusual. I think it's fairly possible new evidence comes out in 30 days that there are other factors involved in the decision to oust him.
Also, if I were to resolve the the "lying to the board" category right now with the information available I would resolve it to "yes", but there's 30 days left, and key players have yet to make statements.
he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities.
@zzlk Press releases will sometimes provide an innocuous excuse for an exec resigning, but I have never heard of a board using an excuse that would subject them to potential liability. The press release is very unusual. No doubt there is an additional thing he was concealing from the board that is independently worse than the concealing, but that's a separate question.
@CateHall just to be clear regarding the separate question comment (and for other people reading), this is an unlinked multi choice question so many of these statements can be true and be resolved to YES eventually. Put another way, if there is overlap between two categories, both can resolve to YES.