Pivot - Emergency Episode! Sam Altman Out at OpenAI and X's Advertiser Exodus

Episode Date: November 18, 2023

It's an emergency crossover episode of Pivot and the Prof G Pod and there's a lot to discuss. Sam Altman is out as CEO of OpenAI – but what exactly happened? Kara shares her latest reporting. Plus, major advertisers are fleeing X after Elon Musk endorsed an antisemitic conspiracy theory. Will Elon and X survive the firestorm? Kara and Scott break it all down. Follow us on Instagram and Threads at @pivotpodcastofficial. Follow us on TikTok at @pivotpodcast. Send us your questions by calling us at 855-51-PIVOT, or at nymag.com/pivot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now and say you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed. Hi, everyone. I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway.

And this is an emergency crossover episode of Pivot and the Prof G Pod, because a lot of news just broke in the last few hours, especially because it's a Friday and we need to discuss it. Let's start with a story I don't think anyone saw coming. Sam Altman is out as CEO of OpenAI. Quote, this is from the board, quote, Mr. Altman's departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities. The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue to lead OpenAI. Chief Technology Officer Mira, I think it's Maradi, is now the interim CEO. Altman himself posted on X, I love my time at OpenAI.

It was transformative for me personally and hopefully the world a little bit. Most of all, I love my time at OpenAI. It was transformative for me personally and hopefully the world a little bit. Most of all, I love working with such talented people. I have more to say about what's next later. So just so you know, the president and co-founder of OpenAI, Greg Brockman, posted a statement a little while ago that he is quitting following the news. As I noted in a post myself, I've done a little reporting. There are a lot more departures of top folks. I've been hearing from them all night at Open a little reporting. There are a lot more departures of top folks. I've been hearing from them all night at OpenAI. I understand it was a misalignment of the profit versus nonprofit adherence of the company.

Developer Day was an inflection point. Some people on Sam's side are calling it a coup. Other people are calling it a misalignment, as I said, or that it was getting too far away from its open nonprofit status and was moving too quickly, not thinking of safety and diversity and other issues, and that he was doing stuff without consulting them. And there was a side of the company, including its chief scientist and another board member who were on one side and Brockman and all were another. The way the board phrased it was so funny, the candid, meaning he lied. That's a word for lie. It did leave open enormous amounts of rumors, including some very sordid

personal ones on the internet. I've been trying to chase all those down too, because people are like, oh, it was really this, and it was this. And I'm not even going to repeat them because I haven't been able to confirm any of them. I just don't want to go anywhere with stuff I don't know. It sounds like this developer day was an issue and that maybe he was the face of AI and open AI. He's gotten very famous. He was just at a meeting in San Francisco with the president. He's been all over the place. As you know, I've interviewed him a bunch of times. I happen to like Sam Altman. But I think there was a real misalignment here. Let me say one last thing is Microsoft absolutely didn't know this was coming. And my sources say Satya didn't know. And the company was told just minutes before they put out the press release. So they were caught unawares. So, you know, I don't know. I don't know. It's

really a big deal, I think. This is a big, big deal. It is a big deal. And there's a lot here, and we'll know more. So I think you can make an educated, there's an educated guess around what happened, but an uneducated guess around what inspired. And what likely happened is that the board found something that upset them, asked him to clarify, and then later they found that he had lied and misled them. Because for them to dismiss a CEO who has created or at least spearheaded an increase in value of $90 billion. And quite frankly, was seen as sort of a good guy, a lot of hope. This is the most exciting new technology in probably a decade.

This must have been real. I mean, boards don't do this lightly. And I would put it, you know, if you wanted to now start handicapping the why and the uneducated guess. The personal scandal stuff, I think, is less likely because other executives are resigning. And if it had been a personal scandal thing, I think they would have thought, maybe I'll be the CEO or I don't want to get anywhere near the appearance of support of this type of behavior. It would just be on. And not only that, I hate to say this incorrectly, probably, or incorrectly.

When you create $90 billion in shareholder value, boards have a habit of trying to wallpaper over scandal or personal scandal. Yeah. And then when they're- Because, look, I just said people, you know, there was, I've gotten everything from he was doing some of the company, like maybe it was this, maybe it was that, right? You know what I mean? You can go through all of the possibilities. That seems less likely. What seems the most likely here is that Sam was investing in, doing a side hustle, starting something that had some sort of competitive conflict, perhaps with other people at the company. I'll just give you a scenario.

Maybe at some point OpenAI has decided we want to pull an Apple and not be dependent upon NVIDIA or Intel. The way Apple was dependent upon Intel, they said we're going to develop our own chips. Or Intel, the way Apple was dependent upon Intel, they said, we're going to develop our own chips. Maybe OpenAI said, we have enough money now, we should develop our own chips instead of building NVIDIA's business. And they were developing their own chips. And at the same time, Sam was working with other people and funding a chip company focused on AI and maybe wasn't as forthcoming about his activities as the board would have liked. And they feel like, boss, you can't have your cake and eat it too, and dismissed him. The notion around the semantics around the split between profit and nonprofit, I find that unlikely because there's so much money here. Yeah, Open, just so you know, OpenA was exploring making its own chips. But I'm using that as an example. Starting, it has. Starting another generative AI company. Who knows, right? Yeah, he's got a lot of other interests, including fusion, energy, all kinds of things.

But the board doing this, I mean, I was sad in the sense that I was hoping this guy was going to be anti-Elon and present a more optimistic, aspirational, and quite frankly, just responsible, masculine, mature version of what it means to be a business leader. So I was disappointed that he was ousted. It's a victory for corporate governance, though, because boards, the whole point- Well, if that's what he did, if they just had a misalignment about profit versus nonprofit, then it's a little funnier, right? Don't you find it? I personally think that the whole point of corporate governance and governance in general, whether it's the Congress or whether it's board of directors, is that we have figured out that when individuals aggregate a lot of power, it begins to corrupt their thinking and that they can become dangerous and make bad decisions that are bad for stakeholders. So we create governance. And governance is meant to prevent a tragedy that comments, protect shareholders, and act as fiduciaries, and do something wonderful, and that is tap into our advantages as species and cooperate with each other and learn from

one another. And when you have no board, no governance, no fiduciary responsibility, it goes bad places. So I think this is actually, in my view- What if he's not wrong about the direction? The developer day was very exciting and everything else. Maybe they're just a bad board. Maybe they're an experienced board. Maybe they made the wrong decision. This press release feels stupid to me, unless he's—the way they phrased it left them open to all kinds of problems. And we have bad referees in the Premier League, and on the whole, it's the way to govern the game.

Of course, but what if it's just a bad board and they just had a fight and one side beat the other? You know, that doesn't make them good governments at all. I'd have to push back on this from my reporting. I would bet when the news comes out, I just find it highly unlikely that a group of people governing a company that had increased 90 billion in value. I can't imagine they wanted to do this, Kara. I think we're going to find there was real reason here. If they didn't like the direction of the company, if they thought he was too organized around profit, if they didn't like how the developer day, which again, several people on both sides said it was an inflection point of tension. So, you know, it's just a direction thing. So no, I think they could do that. That's happened on

boards. We're going to go this way and not this way. And one side tends to win. Boards make bad decisions all the time. When you're ousting the CEO of a company that, as I said, has created this amount of economic value, and there's enough to go around for everyone, for the nonprofit side, the profit side. They're all making a shit ton of money. And they decided to fire him? Well, not Sam Altman. He doesn't own very much of it. Well, okay.

Better yet. But I got to think there's a there there here. This is pretty dramatic. Yeah, it is. But maybe it's just that. It's a difference of the direction of the company. And he was going a different direction and just not heeding them. Right. And that's a problem, of billions of dollars of thinking I can do whatever the fuck I want. Yes, that's correct. Because the role model here does whatever the fuck he wants and totally ignores his board.

He has no board. And so I wouldn't find it unusual to find out that the CEO was ignoring everything the board told him he could or could not do. Right. You know, we'll just we'll he could or could not do. Right. You know, we'll just, we'll find out. But this is, I mean, I was flummoxed by this. The board needed to be much more transparent. And he's got to make a statement too. Now it's kind of like, only because there's so much, you know, in several articles previously,

he's got a sister who's making all those kinds of allegations against him, which has been out for a while. I'm not even going to go through them right now. I did run that down too. People told me it had nothing to do with it. They've got to be more clear. This is the zeitgeist company of the moment. And if they're not clear and transparent and their statement, I'm sorry, I thought it was clottish. Like, what? What does that mean? What did he lie about? You can't just be unspecific. If there was a real problem, they should have been, we've hired an outside law firm to do an investigation. Like, they were so unspecific

that it left everything open. And you cannot do that. It gives me the impression that this company doesn't, the board of the company or the one that won doesn't understand the impact this company is having, right? Or something. It seems like a very inexperienced board, and I think it is. Well, within a couple hours, it's probably already happening. Both sides are going to go on background and try and spin it to their advantage. Yes. And so we're going to find out what happened here.

But this is, I mean, I was totally shocked. I do, I got to be honest, though, I do have left, all these people are leaving OpenAI, we'll go with him and they will just reformat. You know, let me just say, we've done this before. We leave and go to things, right? And it's never as juicy as it is inside. It's usually just a misalignment. It is indeed a misalignment. But you just said, you just offered a very realistic scenario here. It's never as juicy as it is ship. It's going to create enough value to solve a lot of problems, nonprofit, for-profit. But this guy is, you just don't fire a CEO on a

company that's creating this type of value. No. And if it's a personal thing, they should have said, we're doing an investigation right away. Like it should have said, I don't think that's the case, but because with the president leave with him the same day. Yeah, I know. I don't think that,

but I think that they should have been more clear. This statement is clottish to the extreme. I just was like, you're leaving. What happened here? You can't be this unspecific and

yet say a word like not candid. What does that mean? Right. They were specific and deeply unspecific, leaving them open to all kinds of crazy rumors, all kinds of speculation. And it is and pretending it's not the most important company, AI. Right. So and then and then and then surprising Microsoft, their big partner and their big funder. Are you kidding me? Microsoft should have known days in advance what was happening. They had no- Satya looks stupid. He was on stage with them last week.

No, Satya didn't know. Let me just say- And that's my point. Satya didn't know. So that means something's wrong with his board. That's my feeling. Yeah, I think that's fair. Governance.

You don't tell Satya Nadella. You do not surprise Satya Nadella. That's my feeling. Yeah, I think that's fair. Governance. Like, you don't tell Satya Nadella. You do not surprise Satya Nadella. That's my feeling. Someone who's giving you billions and billions of dollars in investment. They're going to pull it. You know, they've got their product, but I don't know. When you're building this kind of value and all the things you just talked about, we've got Microsoft as a partner. He was on stage with the CEO.

I think there's a lot of reasons to not fire him. And they decided to fire him, you know, in a pretty unceremonial fashion. Maybe, maybe there was an article being worked on and they, I don't know. I would like them to be specific. If it's a really serious personal thing, you need to say we're doing an investigation. If it's not, you need to be more clear. It's really left it far too open. It's really badly done. Badly done, let's just say. Poorly done. I'm also getting a bunch of theories from very smart people in Silicon Valley via text live as we talk. One theory from one person who actually does know quite a bit about this board is that he called them effective altruists. They're very much more oriented towards nonprofit ideas of what chat GPT should be versus a commercial operation. So interesting. A lot of the board, in fact, when you look at it, is in that direction. I don't know if it's effective altruism, but it's definitely much more, it's a crunchier group of people, I would say.

Yeah. So that sounds like one viable kind of door number three here, but I just would have been shocked they couldn't figure it out, given the amount of money that's being created, that they couldn't have figured out a way to say, okay, well, $10 billion to build parks and homes for veterans. I would have just thought they would have tried to figure this out. Yeah, well, I had a very smart person also just text me, my boring version, bored. Don't launch GPT store until it's safe.

Sam, okay. Also, Sam, we launched GPT store. So. Yeah, and it goes back to the notion that you wouldn't be surprised, nor could you, I don't want to say blame Sam Altman, but when he looks around and says, oh, people of my genius and my shareholder value creation can do whatever the fuck I want. The board is just there to rubber stamp it, full stop.

Well, we'll enjoy his new company, Closed AI. There you go. Anyway, it's not just open AI making news. Elon Musk and X are dealing with a firestorm yet again. Anyway, it's not just open AI making news. Elon Musk and X are dealing with a firestorm. Yet again, this follows Elon's comments on X endorsing an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory by saying it's the actual truth. Usually he goes, interesting, or something like this. around Jewish people having a dialectical something or other hatred, a dialectical hatred of white people

and trying to replace them by bringing immigrants into this company. It's one of the most more heinous anti-Semitic tropes, replacement theory. So he did that and major advertising, and then Linda Iaccarino, the pain sponge, was trying to dial it back by saying, we don't agree with this at all, but never mentioned her, the CTO, because the call is coming from inside the house. Major advertisers on X are now cutting off their spending.

Companies are pulling back, including Disney, Warner Brothers Discovery, Lionsgate, Apple, and IBM. I've heard from a half dozen more who are pulling, just calling me, saying, we're going to pull too. Even Comcast, NBCUniversal paused advertising. That's Linda Yaccarina's former employer, where she was head of advertising. It's been a deluge in the last few hours. The White House has also chimed in and condemned Musk for boosting anti-Jewish conspiracy theory. The White House spokesman said it was, quote, unacceptable to repeat the hideous lie behind the most fatal act of anti-Semitism in American history at any time, let alone one month after the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust. He's trying to dial it back by saying he's going to kick off everyone who says things like from the river to the sea. Colonization.

Decolonization. And he's saying genocide is not acceptable. Thank you, Elon. Who's on the genocide side except for the genociders? It was so ridiculous. What a ridiculous joke he's making. It's easier to speculate what happened here. And that is, first off.

Go right ahead. Well, the guy gets home late, is ridiculously high. And the real Elon comes out, the angry whatever, you know. I got a lot of pushback for calling him an anti-Semite. I think he's absolutely an anti-Semite. And then he says this, and advertisers start falling, you know, withdrawing like crazy, including pretty iconic ones, Apple, IBM. And Linda calls him and says, you're going to have to put more money into the company. And all of a sudden he's like, uh-oh. And then he starts saying, he starts backpedaling.

And it's so ridiculous for him to say, we will not tolerate this kind of hate speech unless you're high on ketamine and own the company. And at four in the morning, start tweeting out anti-Semitic tweets. I mean, it was just so ridiculous for him then to pretend that he's a warrior against these hateful terms. And also, I've got to be honest, I'm heartened by this because I have been really disappointed that more people have not been more robust, strong, pushing back on anti-Semitic comments. Well, no well-known people have, no other billionaires. Can I just make this point? Sure.

I gave him a hard time. Bill Ackman, who's like beating up on college students who, let's just say, probably don't have good judgment, has not word one about this. About Twitter and Elon? About Elon. Not word one. Here he is like do Elon? About Elon. Not word one. Here he is like doxing kids. I'm sorry.

These kids are stupid and there's not that many of them that are that stupid. Some of them just are calling for a ceasefire and they can do that in America. Like we may agree or not agree with them, but this guy was trying to dox them. And then he has not a word for this, which is such an obvious thing. Nobody does. None of them do. The finance community has a lot of leadership that's Jewish whose parents are Holocaust survivors.

They are. And they don't come out against Twitter because they, or they want to be involved in SpaceX's IPO. Right, exactly. Hey, Bill Ackman. Come on, Bill. And here's the reality. 90 years ago, we didn't speak up enough. Yeah.

And it's happening again. So organizations, people, customers, financiers, and just general U.S. citizens need to speak up and say, I'm selling my fucking Tesla. I am not going on some of some of Tesla's backers are doing that right now. But let me say, tell me why they can go after students like this. And you could disagree with these students and say they're acting badly and whatever, and then say nothing. Please explain that to me, how you can punch down but not up. You're 100% correct. And, Molly, that, quite frankly—

I want you to explain it to me me since you worked with these terrible people. Since I worked? No, it's indefensible. Not only that, these people should be held to a higher standard than students because they should know better. They are responsible for the livelihoods of other companies. They have enormous influence. When you're a 19-year-old where your prefrontal cortex is still evolving and you're pushing the limits of, as a function of growth and evolution, you're pushing the limits and the boundaries, which is natural. That's part of growth. And you say something stupid,

we provide young people with a bit of a hall pass. And I have said, there's a difference between free speech and hate speech. And if a student is saying hateful things, I think he or she should be incenting violence, should be brought in front of a student board and even maybe just suspended and have to call their parents and say, this is why you're paying for me to be at school and I was suspended. I think that's a learning moment. But when you're the wealthiest man in the world and you're responsible for employees and you have dramatic influence over the behavior, you set a role model for young men and you start talking about retweeting things about replacement theory, that's totally fucking unacceptable. And what I find just so upsetting is not as many people as I would have thought nor hoped have said, I'm embarrassed I wrote a biography on this guy.

We are canceling the movie we were going to do on him. I am selling my Tesla. I am selling my shares. We will not be involved in any financing, wealth management, or debt offerings for any company that this individual is involved in. If we don't cauterize this shit right now, it gets out of control. And I'm just incredibly shocked and disappointed that more people aren't pushing back. They're going to make the movie. I have written lots of these people, just so you know. I've written a lot of them. And they're just like, well, I'm like, well, what?

Well, he doesn't mean it. I'm like, oh, my God, it's the seventh to tenth time he's either retweeted an anti-Semitic thing. And in this case, he's now gone even further. He agrees with it. And he says he agrees with it. I was like, how many times is he going to get a pass here on this stuff from you people? Because you hear, I literally, I'm like, I'm washing my hands at you people, because I just don't even understand. I do

understand it now. The money, the green is what you're looking at here. And, you know, and listen, Linda Iaccarino, I don't know what you're going to do here, but don't. Stop going down with this ship. You better find yourself a door you can float on at some point here, because this is really appalling. This is appalling. It's appalling you didn't call out your own employee, by the way, the CTO of your company. I don't know.

What's going to happen to her? She got to go? I've been told by people close to her she's going to go down with a ship. That's her attitude. She's in literally an impossible position. She can leave. I think she would do herself well.

I'm biased here to say, she doesn't even have to be this specific. If she said, look, this is a great opportunity. I don't mean to throw the company into more chaos, but I'm just personally not comfortable with some of the actions and words of the person who controls this company. I think she'd get a job offer the next day. Next day. We'd give her a job. Yeah. And not only that, you know what? She already has enough money. Her kids would be proud of her when they're talking about mom. You got to think about, you know how history is going to judge you. It's never the wrong time to do the right thing, especially when you're in a position of economic security and you can afford to.

do the right thing, especially when you're in the position of economic security and you can afford to. I'd say that again. It's never the wrong time to do the right thing. Nice. It's true. Yeah. So where does it go? Do you think he gets another pass, like a Trumpian thing?

Oh, did he say that? Advertisers will fall. Now his advertising revenue will be down 80%. And he will fund the thing because he's still the wealthiest man in the world. And all of these companies that that would that will send out tweets about or Instagram posts about Indigenous Peoples Day will line up, even though they have, you know, I wouldn't even say a lot of Jews in their company, but claim to be concerned about bigotry and suck his cock so they can get the next IPO. And this type of behavior, principles don't mean anything unless you're willing to sacrifice for them. That's right. What I would say to the investment banks involved in constantly doing debt offerings, financings for this company, are your notions that anti-Semitic content and statements are unacceptable? Is that a principle of yours or is it just an opinion? If it's a principle, then you can't work with this guy.

Yeah. They don't. Honestly, I just I was only use Ackman as one of the examples. But boy, like we're waiting, Bill. We're waiting for some statement because this was pretty appalling. And it was it wasn't pretty appalling. It was appalling period. Anyway, we'll see what happens. I don't know. What's it and this goes back to income inequality, when someone can aggregate a quarter of a trillion dollars in wealth and start buying huge influential companies and have absolutely no safeguards, the board of this company, even if it was a real board, if Tesla was a real board, they would say, you can't be on Twitter. Let me pretend I'm the hero here. I've been on boards where there's been a control shareholder and we on the board have said we recommend the following firing the CEO or not firing whatever it might be or doing this or not doing this. And the control shareholder calls us and says, no, and I'm in control here.

I'm the control shareholder. And then the board says, and this has happened to me twice. Fine. Then we will resign and you can replace us. Fine. Then we will resign and you can replace us. And the world will know that in a public company, the control shareholder got in a fight with the board and the independent board directors resigned. That's what this, in my opinion,. They all want to be, you know, next to this cool company. These companies have no boards. They clearly don't even want to save this guy from himself. But there are things the investment banks, his board of directors, can and should be doing.

And instead, everyone's like, well, everyone starts making all these excuses. And you're right. And then with these students, they want it to be one strike and you're out. I'll tell you what I hear from, oh, Kerry's not really anti-Semitic. I'm like, really? Because it feels very anti-Semitic, the things he's retweeting and posting and promoting. And this is the actual truth. And and the actual this is the actual truth. Pretty clear, pretty clear when you're talking about replacement theory or or the the dialectical hatred of white people. I'm like, well, it feels and oh, well, he does. Oh, well, they're always this is what happens. And I that I just didn't, the surface area of the iceberg below the surface of anti-Semitism that I had no idea existed. Let me ask you this.

What if he was saying this about non-whites? How would Hollywood respond? What if he was making this? If there was the same level. He said it about gays. He's already been insulting to gays. So keep going, trans people. I agree. He has made homophobic.

And transphobic. And transphobic. But in general, what I have found is the level of tolerance for these anti-Semitic hate speech recently. anti-Semitic hate speech recently, if I said any of this shit about non-whites or gay people on campus, if this is the double standard here, enough is enough. If people need to speak out. Why don't you say that to Bill Ackman? Enough is enough, Bill. Well, I think we're saying that, but let's be honest, Bill, you got to give Bill some credit. At least he's- I'm not going to give him credit because he's not, I don't want him punching down at students when he refuses to punch up at Elon Musk.

Okay, but he's mostly going after the leadership of these universities. I don't care. He should say something about Elon. This is the most famous person on the planet Earth right now. I agree with you. So, come on, don't get on your high horse and then refuse to look straight at the person who has more influence than all those college campus heads put together. So anyway, we're going to end it there. I'm going to read some very funny.

One thing that Twitter and also threads are good at is is making jokes about this. So there's a couple I want to read about Sam Altman leaving. Maybe GPT-5 is already sentient and live and wants sam altman gone uh this is from new york times pitch bot probably was a mistake for sam altman to do that tiktok about how much he loves osama bin laden another one uh sam walton was actually typing out all the chat gpt responses himself and the board just found out i thought that was funny the one i saw that i liked was if if Mike Pence had only done the right thing. That's good. Yeah, this is an unfolding story, as you would say, or a developing story. Developing story. So we'll see what happens. We'll see. Maybe something even more

heinous will come out about Sam. Something we are certain that Elon Musk will say something even more heinous and he still won't get into trouble. That we can assure you of. Okay, Scott, we're going to wrap it up there. We'll have much more on Pivot and the Prof G pod next week. I'm going to read us out

because this is an emergency pod. Can you just go emergency? I want to hear you say that. I want to hear you say it loud. Emergency. No, that's not an emergency. I feel like we're in some weird sex game. You're making me uncomfortable.

What's my safe word here? You're making me feel uncomfortable. Well, you know what my safe word is? The board is firing you, Nascar. You know what my safe word is? Maybe. Okay. Scott, you've been less than candid with us about it.

We're going to have to fire you now. Yeah, yeah. This show was produced by Nishat Kerwa and Zoe Marcus. Brandon McFarlane engineered this episode. Thanks also to Claire Miller and Drew Burrows. Thanks for listening to Pivot and the Prof G Pod from New York Magazine and Vox Media. Obviously, we'll be back soon.