The increasing amount of time Altman spent at OpenAI riled longtime partners at Y Combinator, who began losing faith in him as a leader. The firm’s leaders asked him to resign, and he left as president in March 2019.
Graham said it was his wife’s doing. “If anyone ‘fired’ Sam, it was Jessica, not me,” he said. “But it would be wrong to use the word ‘fired’ because he agreed immediately.”
I don’t think it’s fair to say that claim 5 was knowably, obviously false at the time it was made, based on this. The above two paragraphs really sound like “Sam Altman was fired from YCombinator”. Now, it’s possible that the journalist who wrote this was engaging in selective quotation and the non-quoted sections are deliberately misleading. This is compatible with PG’s recent clarification on Twitter. But I think it’d be stranger to read those two paragraphs and then believe that he wasn’t fired, than to believe that he was fired. In isolation, PG’s rejection of the word “fired” because “he agreed immediately” is nonsensical. Agreeing to be fired is still being fired.
I still have substantial uncertainty about what happened here. “The firm’s leaders asked him to resign” is a pretty straightforward claim about reality written in the journalist’s voice, and I would be somewhat surprised if the journalist knew that Paul & Jessica had (claimed) to have presented Sam with the “choose one” option and decided to describe that as “asked him to resign”. That’s less “trying to give people a misleading impression” and more “lying about an obvious matter of fact”.
In isolation, PG’s rejection of the word “fired” because “he agreed immediately” is nonsensical. Agreeing to be fired is still being fired.
It is nonsensical to read it as not being fired even with pg’s logic-chopping “clarification”. They issued an ultimatum: step down from OA or be fired from YC CEO. He did not step down. Then he was fired from YC CEO. (And pulled shenanigans on the way out with the ‘YC Chair’ and ‘advisor’ business, further emphasizing that it was a firing.)
The WSJ article says the following:
I don’t think it’s fair to say that claim 5 was knowably, obviously false at the time it was made, based on this. The above two paragraphs really sound like “Sam Altman was fired from YCombinator”. Now, it’s possible that the journalist who wrote this was engaging in selective quotation and the non-quoted sections are deliberately misleading. This is compatible with PG’s recent clarification on Twitter. But I think it’d be stranger to read those two paragraphs and then believe that he wasn’t fired, than to believe that he was fired. In isolation, PG’s rejection of the word “fired” because “he agreed immediately” is nonsensical. Agreeing to be fired is still being fired.
I still have substantial uncertainty about what happened here. “The firm’s leaders asked him to resign” is a pretty straightforward claim about reality written in the journalist’s voice, and I would be somewhat surprised if the journalist knew that Paul & Jessica had (claimed) to have presented Sam with the “choose one” option and decided to describe that as “asked him to resign”. That’s less “trying to give people a misleading impression” and more “lying about an obvious matter of fact”.
It is nonsensical to read it as not being fired even with pg’s logic-chopping “clarification”. They issued an ultimatum: step down from OA or be fired from YC CEO. He did not step down. Then he was fired from YC CEO. (And pulled shenanigans on the way out with the ‘YC Chair’ and ‘advisor’ business, further emphasizing that it was a firing.)