[HN Gopher] Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CE...
___________________________________________________________________
Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at
OpenAI
Author : jncraton
Score : 328 points
Date : 2023-11-18 16:07 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| kylecazar wrote:
| Here's what I don't understand.
|
| There clearly were tensions between the for and not-for growth
| factions, but the Dev Day is being cited as a 'last straw'. It
| was a product launch.
|
| Ilya, and the board, should have been well aware of what was
| being released on that day for months. They should have at the
| very least been privy to the plan, if not outright sanctioned it.
| Seems like before launch would have been the time to draw a line
| in the sand.
|
| Did they have a 'look at themselves in the mirror' moment after
| the announcements or something?
| passwordoops wrote:
| >Ilya, and the board, should have been well aware of what was
| being released on that day for months
|
| Not necessarily, and that may speak to the part of the Board's
| announcement that Sam was not candid
| barbazoo wrote:
| I can't imagine an organization where this wouldn't have come
| up on some roadmap or prioritization meeting, etc. How could
| leadership not know what the org is working on?! They're not
| that big.
| googlethrwaway wrote:
| Board is not exactly leadership. They meet infrequently and
| get updates directly from management, they don't go around
| asking employees what they're working on
| barbazoo wrote:
| True. So the CTO knew what was happening, wasn't happy,
| and then coordinated with the board, is that what appears
| to have happened?
| threeseed wrote:
| CTO who is now acting CEO.
|
| Not making any accusations but that was an odd decision
| given that there is an OpenAI COO.
| browningstreet wrote:
| They do typically have views into strategic plans,
| roadmaps and product plans.
| naasking wrote:
| Going into detail in a talk and discussing AGI may have
| provided crucial context that wasn't obvious from a
| PowerPoint bullet point, which is all the board may have
| seen earlier.
| late2part wrote:
| More supervision than leadership...
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Surely Ilya Sutskever must have known what was being
| worked on as Chief Scientist?
| aunty_helen wrote:
| I can't imagine an organization that would fire their
| celebrity CEO like this either. So maybe that's how we
| arrived here.
| martythemaniak wrote:
| Could be many things, like Sam not informing them of the GPTs
| store launch, or saying he won't launch and then launching.
|
| It sucks for openAi, but there's too many hungry hungry
| competitors salivating at replacing OpenAI so I don't think
| this will have big king term consequences in the field.
|
| I'm curious what sorts of oversight and recourse all the
| investors (or are they donors?) Have. I imagine there's a lot
| of people with a lot of money that are quite angry today.
| CPLX wrote:
| They don't have investors, it's a non profit.
|
| The "won't anyone think of the needs of the elite wealthy
| investor class" that has run through the 11 threads on this
| topic is pretty baffling I have to admit.
| ketzo wrote:
| They do have investors in the for-profit subsidiary,
| including Microsoft and the employees. Check out the
| diagram in the linked article.
| CPLX wrote:
| That's right. Which isn't the company that just fired Sam
| Altman.
| ketzo wrote:
| I take your point, but still, I don't think it's correct
| to imply that investors in the for-profit company have
| _no_ sway or influence over the future of OpenAI.
|
| I sure as shit wouldn't wanna be on Microsoft's bad side,
| regardless of my tax status.
| CrazyStat wrote:
| It's a nonprofit that controls a for-profit company, which
| has other investors in addition to the non-profit.
| laserlight wrote:
| > They don't have investors
|
| OpenAI has investors [0].
|
| [0] https://openai.com/our-structure
| dragonwriter wrote:
| OpenAI (the nonprofit whose board makes decisions) has no
| investors.
|
| the subordinate holding company and even more subordinate
| OpenAI Global LLC have investors, but those investors are
| explicitly warned that the charitable purpose of the
| nonprofit and not returning profits to investors is the
| paramount function of the organization, over which the
| nonprofit has full governance control.
| croes wrote:
| Then what did Microsoft pay for?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Privileged access to technology, which has paid off quite
| well for them already.
| croes wrote:
| They didn't pay a fee
| ketzo wrote:
| These people are humans, and there's a big difference between
| kinda knowing the keynote was coming up, and then actually
| watching it happen and receive absolutely rave coverage from
| everyone in tech.
|
| I could very much see it as a "look in the mirror" moment,
| yeah.
| twelve40 wrote:
| they could have been beefing non-publicly for a long time, and
| might have had many private conversations, probably not very
| useful to speculate here
| ketzo wrote:
| Not useful at all.. but it sure is fun! This is gonna be my
| whole dang weekend.
| romeoblade wrote:
| Probably dang's whole weekend as well.
| jsemrau wrote:
| What if Enterprises get access to a much better version of AI
| compared to the GPT+ subscription customer?
| threeseed wrote:
| They always were because it was going to be customised for
| their needs.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Let's look closer at the Ilya Sutskever vs Sam Altman tensions,
| and think of the product/profit as a cover.
|
| Ilya Sutskever is a True Believer in LLMs being AGI, in that
| respect aligned with Geoff Hinton, his academic advisor at
| University of Toronto. Hinton has said "So by training
| something to be really good at predicting the next word, you're
| actually forcing it to understand. Yes, it's 'autocomplete'--
| but you didn't think through what it means to have a really
| good autocomplete"[1].
|
| Meanwhile, Altman has decided that LLMs aren't the way.[2]
|
| So Altman was pushing to turn the LLM into a for-profit
| product, to get what value it has, while the Sutskever-aligned
| faction thinks it _is_ AGI, and want to keep it not-for-profit.
|
| There's also some difference about whether or not AGI poses an
| "existential risk" or if the risks of current efforts at AI are
| along the lines of algorithmic bias, socioeconomic inequality,
| mis/disinformation, and techno-solutionism.
|
| 1. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/11/20/geoffrey-
| hinto...
|
| 2. https://www.thestreet.com/technology/openai-ceo-sam-
| altman-s...
| Chamix wrote:
| You are conflating Illya's belief in the _transformer
| architecture_ (with tweaks /compute optimizations) being
| sufficient for AGI with that of LLMs being sufficient to
| express human-like intelligence. Multi-modality (and the
| swath of new training data it unlocks) is clearly a key
| component of creating AGI if we watch Sutskever's interviews
| from the past year.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Yes, I read "Attention Is All You Need", and I understand
| that the multi-head generative pre-trained model talks
| about "tokens" rather than language specifically. So in
| this case, I'm using "LLM" as shorthand for what OpenAI is
| doing with GPTs. I'll try to be more precise in the future.
|
| That still leaves disagreement between Altman and Sutskever
| over whether or not the current technology will lead to AGI
| or "superintelligence", with Altman clearly turning towards
| skepticism.
| 015a wrote:
| > They should have at the very least been privy to the plan, if
| not outright sanctioned it.
|
| Never assume this. After all, their communication specifically
| cited that Sam deceived them in some way, and Greg was also
| impacted. Ilya is the only board member that _might_ have known
| naturally, given his day-to-day work with OAI, but since ~July
| he has worked in the area of superalignment, which could
| reasonably be a different department (it shouldn 't be). The
| Board may have also found out about these projects, maybe from
| a third party/Ilya, told Sam they're moving too fast, and Sam
| ignored them and launched anyway. We really don't know.
| skywhopper wrote:
| They "should have" but if the board was wildly surprised by
| what was presented, that sounds like a really good reason to
| call out the CEO for lack of candor.
| gustavus wrote:
| Here's the thing. I've always been kind of cold on OpeanAI
| claiming to be "Open" when it was clearly a for profit thing and
| I was concerned about the increasing move to the
| commercialization of AI that Sam was taking.
|
| But I am much more concerned to be honest those who feel they
| need to control the development of AI to ensure it is "aligns
| with their principles", after all principles can change, and to
| quote Lewis "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for
| the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be
| better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral
| busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his
| cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us
| for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with
| the approval of their own conscience."
|
| What we really need is another Stallman, his idea was first and
| foremost always freedom, allowing each individual agency to
| decide their own fate. Every other avenue will always result in
| men in suits in far away rooms dictating to the rest of the world
| what their vision of society should be.
| brookst wrote:
| Be the change you want to see.
| andy99 wrote:
| If the board was really serious about doing good over making
| profit (if this is indeed what the whole thing is about) they'd
| open source gpt-4/5 with a gpl-style license
| swatcoder wrote:
| That's not the sense of open they've organized around. In
| fact, it's antithetical to it.
|
| Theirs is a technocratic sense of open, where select
| credentialed experts collaborate on a rational good without a
| concentration of control by specific capitalists or nations.
| piuantiderp wrote:
| I think your technocratic sense of open is misplaced. At
| this point OpenAI is clearly controlled by the US and it's
| ok. If anything one wonders if Altman's ouster has a
| geopolitical angle, cozying up to other countries and such.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| I guess I struggle to see how the word "open" can be
| applied to that, but I also remember how that word was
| tossed around in the late 80s and early 90s during the Unix
| wars, and, yeah, shoe fits.
|
| The question is how we got to be so powerless as a society
| that this is the only palette of choices we get to choose
| from: technocratic semi-autistic engineer-intellects who
| want to hoist AGI on the world vs self-obsessed tech bro
| salesdudes who see themselves as modern day Howard Roarks.
|
| That's it.
|
| Anyways, don't mind me, gonna crawl into a corner and read
| Dune.
| naveen99 wrote:
| Yeah, not open in the open source or rms way. it's "for the
| benefit for all" with the "benefits" decided by the openai
| board, a la communism, with central planning by "the
| party".
|
| Surprisingly capitalism actually leads to more benefits for
| all, because of the decentralization and competition.
| surrealize wrote:
| This definition is an abuse of the word "open"
| esafak wrote:
| I think "don't extinguish humanity or leave most of them
| unemployed" is a principle everyone can get and stay behind.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| You seem to have far more faith in others' ethical compass
| than I think is justified by historical evidence.
|
| It's amazing what people will do when the size of their
| paycheque (or ego) are tied to it.
|
| I don't trust anybody at OpenAI with the keys to the car, but
| democratic choice apparently doesn't play into it, so here we
| are.
| esafak wrote:
| I meant as a basic principle. Individuals and organizations
| who breach the pact can be punished by legal means.
| ls612 wrote:
| What are the odds Sam can work the phones this weekend and have
| $10B lined up by Monday for a new AI company which will take all
| of the good talent from OpenAI?
| ketzo wrote:
| Honestly? If even a tenth of Sam's reported connectedness /
| reality distortion field are true to life... very good odds.
| outside1234 wrote:
| 99% with the 1% being it is actually $20-30B
| staticman2 wrote:
| Why would the good talent leave? Are they all a "family" and
| best buddies with Sam?
| ls612 wrote:
| A lot of them have already left this morning. idk for sure
| why but a good bet is that they are more on board with Sam's
| vision of pushing forward AI than the safetyist vision.
| esafak wrote:
| What fraction?
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Perhaps they don't want to work for a board of directors
| which is openly hostile to the work they're doing?
| meepmorp wrote:
| I don't think wanting to make sure that their technology
| doesn't cause harm equates to being hostile to the work
| itself.
| pixl97 wrote:
| That would seem based on the individuals motivation at
| the end of the day...
|
| It's easy to imagine two archetypes
|
| 1) The person motivated to make AGI and make it safe.
|
| 2) The person motivated to make AGI at any cost and
| profit from it.
|
| It seems like OpenAI may be pushing for type 1 at the
| moment, but the typical problem with capitalism is it
| will commonly fund type 2 businesses. Who 'wins' really
| breaks down to if there are more type 1 or 2 people and
| the relative successes of each.
| anonyfox wrote:
| Not at OAI or some researcher, but I'd be in an archetype
| 3:
|
| I'd do anything I can to make true AGI a reality, without
| safety concerns or wanting to profit from it.
| staticman2 wrote:
| The boarded sided with the chief scientist and co-founder
| of OpenAI in an internal dispute. How does that show
| hostility to the work OpenAI is doing?
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| Ilya is pushing the unsafe AGI narrrative to stop public
| progress and make OpenAI more closed and intentionally
| slow to deliver. There are definitely people who are not
| sold by this.
| chongli wrote:
| Perhaps they didn't like the work they were doing? If
| they're experts in the field, they may have preferred to
| continue to work on research. Whereas it sounds like Sam
| was pushing them to work on products and growth.
| polski-g wrote:
| Because they want stock options for a for-profit company.
| mattnewton wrote:
| My guess is that at least some of them are worried about
| shipping products and making profit, and agreed with the
| growth faction?
| claytonjy wrote:
| I definitely believe he can raise a lot of money quickly, but
| I'm not sure where he'll get the talent, at least the core
| modeling talent. That's Ilya's lane, and I get the sense that
| group are the true believers in the original non-profit
| mission.
|
| But I suspect a lot of the hires from the last year or so, even
| in the eng side, are all about the money and would follow sama
| anywhere given what this signals for OpenAIs economic future.
| I'm just not sure such a company can work without the core
| research talent.
| x86x87 wrote:
| Lol. There are ambitious people working at openai in Ilya's
| lane that will jump at the opportunity. Nobody owns any
| lanes.
| dh2022 wrote:
| ooh, lanes... the Microsoft internal buzz-word that got out
| of fashion a couple of years ago is making a comeback
| outside of Microsoft....
| fullshark wrote:
| I'm guessing he has verbal commitments already.
| croes wrote:
| And then?
|
| Training data is more restricted now, hardware is hard to get,
| fine tuning needs time.
| somebodythere wrote:
| First two problems are easily solved with money
| croes wrote:
| Money doesn't magically create hardware, it takes time to
| produce it
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Other than having a big mouth what has HE done? As far as I can
| find, the actual engineering and development was done NOT by
| him, while he was parading around telling people they shouldn't
| WFH, and schmoozing with government officials
| somenameforme wrote:
| Ilya Sutskever, the head scientist at OpenAI, is allegedly who
| organized the 'shuffle.' So you're going to run into some
| issues expecting the top talent to follow Sam. And would many
| people want to get in on a new AI development company for big
| $$$ right now? From my perspective the market is teetering
| towards oversaturation, there are no moats, zero-interest rates
| are a thing of the past, and the path to profit is nebulous at
| best.
| fullshark wrote:
| Man this still seems crazy to me. The idea that this tension
| between commercial/non-commercial aspirations got so bad they
| felt the nuclear option of a surprise firing of Altman was the
| only move available doesn't seem plausible to me.
|
| I believe this decision was ego and vanity driven with this post-
| hoc rationalization that it was because of the mission of
| "benefiting humanity."
| swatcoder wrote:
| In a clash of big egos, both are often true. Practical
| differences escalate until personal resentment forms and the
| parties stop engaging with due respect for each other.
|
| Once that happens, real and intentional slights start
| accumulating and de-escalation becomes extremely difficult.
| x86x87 wrote:
| This is not commercial vs non commercial imho. This is the old
| classic humans being humans.
| superhumanuser wrote:
| I wonder if the "benefiting humanity" bit is code for anti mil-
| tech. What if Sam wasn't being honest about a relationship with
| a consumer that weaponized OpenAI products against humans?
| dave4420 wrote:
| Could be.
|
| Or it could be about the alignment problem. Are they
| designing AI to prioritise humanity's interests, or its
| corporate masters' interests? One way is better for humanity,
| the other brings in more cash.
| superhumanuser wrote:
| But the board accused Sam of not being "consistently
| candid". Alignment issues could stand on their own ground
| for cause and would have been better PR too. Instead of the
| mess they have now.
| 0xDEF wrote:
| Ilya has Israeli citizenship and has toured Israel and given
| talks at Israeli universities including one talk with Sam
| Altman.
|
| He is not anti mil-tech.
| someNameIG wrote:
| Did those talks have anything to do with mil-tech though?
| superhumanuser wrote:
| Unless the mil-tech was going to their enemies.
| 0xDEF wrote:
| I don't think anyone at OpenAI was planning to give mil-
| tech to Iran and Iranian proxies like Hamas, Hezbollah,
| and the Houthis.
| superhumanuser wrote:
| Ya. You're right. Time to let the theory die.
| kromem wrote:
| That's a pretty big leap of logic there.
| BryantD wrote:
| What if the board gave Altman clear direction, Altman told them
| he accepted it, and then went off and did something else? This
| hypothesis doesn't require the board's direction to be
| objectively good.
| fullshark wrote:
| IDK none of us are privy to any details of festering tensions
| or if there was a "last straw" scenario that if it was
| explained it would make sense. Something during that dev day
| really pissed some people off that's for sure.
|
| Given what the picture looks like today though that's my
| guess, firing Altman is an extreme scenario! Lots of CEOs
| have tensions with their boards over various issues otherwise
| the board is pointless!
| BryantD wrote:
| I strongly agree, yeah! The trick is making those tensions
| constructive and no matter who's at fault (could be both
| sides), someone failed there.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Maybe, but I have a different opinion. I have worked at
| startups before where we were building something both
| technically interesting and what could clearly be a super value
| add for the business domain. I've then witnessed PMs be brought
| on who cared little about any of that and instead tried to
| converge in the exact same enshittified product as everywhere
| else with little care or understand for the real solutions we
| were building towards. When this happened I knew within a month
| that the vision of the company, and it's goals outside of
| generating investor returns, was dead if this person had their
| way.
|
| I've specifically seen the controlling members of a company
| realize this after 7-8 months and when that happens it's a
| quick change of course. I could see why you'd think it's ego
| but I think it's closer to my previous situation than what
| you're stating here. This is a pivotal course correction and
| they're not pretty, this just happens to be the most public one
| ever due to the nature of the business and company.
| fulladder wrote:
| Yeah, the surprise firing part really doesn't make much sense.
| My best guess is that if you look at the composition of this
| board (minus Altman and Brockman), it seems to be mostly
| academics and the wife of a Hollywood actor. They may not be
| very experienced in the area of tech company boards, and might
| not have been aware that there are smoother ways to force a CEO
| out that are less damaging to your organization. Not sure, but
| that's the best I can figure out based on what we know so far.
| cthalupa wrote:
| >it seems to be mostly academics and the wife of a Hollywood
| actor
|
| This argument would require you ignore both Sutskever himself
| as well as D'Angelo, who was CTO/VP of Engineering at
| Facebook and then founding CEO of Quora.
| noonething wrote:
| I hope they go back to being Open now that Altman is gone. It
| seems Ilya wants it to 'benefit all of humanity' again.
| x86x87 wrote:
| Things can improve along a dimension you choose to measure but
| there is also the very real risk of openai imploding. Time will
| tell.
| exitb wrote:
| Isn't that a bit like stealing from the for-profit investors?
| I'm not the first one to shed a tear for the super wealthy, but
| is that even legal? Can a company you invested in just say they
| don't like profit any more?
| TheCleric wrote:
| Unless you have something in writing or you have enough
| ownership to say no, I don't see how you'd be able to stop
| it.
| exitb wrote:
| Microsoft reportedly invested 13 billion dollars and has a
| generous profit sharing agreement. They don't have enough
| to control OpenAI, but does that mean the company can
| actively steer away from profit?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > They don't have enough to control OpenAI
|
| Especially since the operating government effectively
| gives the nonprofit board full control.
|
| > They don't have enough to control OpenAI, but does that
| mean the company can actively steer away from profit?
|
| Yes. Explicitly so. https://openai.com/our-structure and
| particularly https://images.openai.com/blob/142770fb-3df2
| -45d9-9ee3-7aa06...
| cthalupa wrote:
| Yes. Microsoft had to sign an operating agreement when
| they invested that said the company has no responsibility
| or obligation to turn a profit. LLCs are able to
| structure themselves in such a way that their primary
| duty is not towards their shareholders.
|
| https://openai.com/our-structure - check out the pinkish-
| purpleish box. Every investor and employee in the for-
| profit has to agree to this as a condition of their
| investment/employment.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| They have something in writing. OpenAI created a for-profit
| joint venture company with microsoft, and gave it license
| to its technology.
| marcinzm wrote:
| Exclusive license?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| No clue, but I guess not.
| eastbound wrote:
| They knew it when they donated to a non-profit. In fact
| trying to extract profit from a 501c could be the core of the
| problem.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Microsoft didnt give money to a non-profit. They created a
| for profit company, and microsoft gave that company 11B,
| and Open AI gave it the technology.
|
| OpenAI shares ownership of that for-profit company with
| Microsoft and Early investors like Sam, Greg, Musk, Theil,
| Bezos, the employees of that company.
| cthalupa wrote:
| While technically true, in practicality, they did give
| money to the non-profit. The even signed an agreement
| stating that any investments should be considered more as
| donations, because the for-profit subsidiary's operating
| agreement is such that the charter and mission of the
| non-profit are the primary duty of the for-profit, not
| making money. This is explicitly called out in the
| agreement that all investors in and employees of the for-
| profit must sign. LLCs can be structured so that they are
| beholden to a different goal than the financial
| enrichment of their shareholders.
|
| https://openai.com/our-structure
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I don't dispute that they say that at all. Therein lies
| the tension -having multiple goals. The goal is to uphold
| the mission, and _also_ to make a profit, and the mission
| comes first.
|
| Im not saying one party is right or wrong, just pointing
| out that there is bound to be conflict when you give
| employees a bunch of profit based stock rewards, Bring in
| in 11B in VC investment looking for returns, and then
| have external oversight with all the control setting the
| balance between profit and mission.
|
| The disclaimer says "It would be wise to see the the
| investment in OpenAI Global in _the spirit of a donation_
| , with the understanding that it may be difficult to know
| what role money will play in a post-AGI world"
|
| That doesnt mean investors and employees wont want money,
| and few will be scared off by owning a company so wildly
| successful that it ushers in a post scarcity world.
|
| You have partners and employees that want to make profit,
| and that is fundamental to why some of them are there,
| especially Microsoft. The expectation of possible profits
| are clear, because that is why the company exists, and
| why microsoft has a deal where they get 75% of profit
| until they recoup their 11 Billion investment. I read the
| returns are capped at 100X investment, so if holds true,
| Microsoft returns are capped at 1.1 _Trillion_ dollars.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Isn't that a bit like stealing from the for-profit
| investors? I
|
| https://images.openai.com/blob/142770fb-3df2-45d9-9ee3-7aa06.
| ..
| pknerd wrote:
| Means free Gpt4?
|
| Ps: It's a serious question
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| Won't a truly open model conflict with the AI executive order?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| From what I've seen, Ilya seems to be even _more_ concerned
| than Altman about safety risks and, like Altman, seems to see
| restricting access and information as a key part of managing
| that, so I 'd expect less openness, not more.
|
| Though he may be less inclined to see closed-but-commercial
| access as okay as much as Altman, so while it might involve
| less _total_ access, it might involve more actual open /public
| information about what is also made commercially available.
| skywhopper wrote:
| Sorry but the board firing the person who works for them is not a
| "coup".
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > The next day, Brockman, who was Chairman of the OpenAI board,
| was not invited to this board meeting, where Altman was fired.
|
| > Around 30 minutes later, Brockman was informed by Sutskever
| that he was being removed from his board role but could remain
| at the company, and that Altman had been fired (Brockman
| declined, and resigned his role later on Friday).
|
| The board firing the CEO is not a coup. The board firing the
| CEO behind the chair's back and then removing the chair is a
| coup.
| cwillu wrote:
| It appears that is the normal practice for a board voting to
| fire a CEO though, so that aspect doesn't mean much.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| The point being made is that the board is the one that's
| supposed to be in power. How the CEO is fired may be gauche
| but it's not usurpation of power or anything like that.
| w10-1 wrote:
| The board ousting the board chair (without notice) and the CEO
| is a coup. It's not even clear to me it was legal to meet and
| act without notice to the board chairman.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| How important is Altman? How important were three senior
| scientists? Can they start their own company, raise funding, and
| overtake OpenAI in a few years? Or does OpenAI have some material
| advantage that isn't likely to be harmed by this?
|
| Perhaps the competition is inevitably a good thing. Or maybe a
| bad thing if it creates pressure to cut ethical corners.
|
| I also wonder if the dream of an "open" org bringing this tech to
| life for the betterment of humanity is futile and the for-profits
| will eventually render them irrelevant.
| intellectronica wrote:
| > How important is Altman? How important were three senior
| scientists? Can they start their own company, raise funding,
| and overtake OpenAI in a few years?
|
| The general opinion seems to be estimating this at far above
| 50% YES. I, personally would bet at 70% that this exactly what
| will happen. Unless some really damaging information becomes
| public about Altman, he will definitely have the strong
| reputation and credibility, definitely will be able to raise
| very significant funding, and the only expert in industry /
| research he definitely won't be able to recruit would be Ilya
| Sutskever.
| tuxguy wrote:
| An optimistic perspective of how despite today's regrettable
| events, Sama and gdb will start something new and more
| competition is a good thing :
| https://x.com/DrJimFan/status/1725916938281627666?s=20
|
| I have a contrarian prediction : Due to pressure from investors
| and a lawsuit against the openai board, the board will be made
| to resign and Sama & Greg will return to openai.
|
| Anybody else agree ?
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Do we know enough about the org's charter to reasonably
| predict that case? Did the board actually do anything wrong?
|
| Or are you thinking it would be a kind of power play from
| investors to say, "nah, we want it to be profit driven."
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| If that's the outcome, I suspect OpenAI will have _another_
| wave of resignations as the folks aligned to Sutskever would
| walk away, too, and take with them their expertise.
| cthalupa wrote:
| > I have a contrarian prediction : Due to pressure from
| investors and a lawsuit against the openai board, the board
| will be made to resign and Sama & Greg will return to openai.
|
| The board is not beholden to any investors. The board is for
| the non-profit that does not have shareholders, and it fully
| owns and controls the manager entity that controls the for-
| profit. The LLC's operating agreement is explicit that it is
| beholden to the charter and mission of the non-profit, not
| creating financial gain for the shareholders of the for-
| profit company.
| pknerd wrote:
| Let's not forget the role of Ilya to make gpt what it is today
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| I just hope the "AI safety" people don't end up taking LLMs out
| of the hands of the general public because they read too many
| Isaac Asimov stories...
| 3seashells wrote:
| If you were a AI going rogue, how would you evade public
| scrutiny?
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| As a replicant, chasing other replicants as dangerous?
| pixl97 wrote:
| Asimov AI is just humanlike behavior mostly, if you want a more
| realistic concern think Bostrom and instrumental goals.
| pknerd wrote:
| I am addicted to got now:/
| lukeschlather wrote:
| In most of Asimov's stories it's implied that machines have
| quietly and invisibly replaced all human government and the
| world is better for it because humans tend to be petty and
| cruel while it's impossible for robots to harm humans.
| nilkn wrote:
| Only time will tell, but if this was indeed "just" a coup then
| it's somewhat likely we're witnessing a variant of the Steve Jobs
| story all over again.
|
| Sam is clearly one of the top product engineering leaders in the
| world -- few companies could ever match OpenAI's incredible
| product delivery over the last few years -- and he's also one of
| the most connected engineering leaders in the industry. He could
| likely have $500M-$10B+ lined up by next week to start up a new
| company and poach much of the talent from OpenAI.
|
| What about OpenAI's long-term prospects? They rely heavily on
| money to train larger and larger models -- this is why Sam
| introduced the product focus in the first place. You can't get to
| AGI without billions and billions of dollars to burn on training
| and experiments. If the company goes all-in on alignment and
| safety concerns, they likely won't be able to compete long-term
| as other firms outcompete them on cash and hence on training.
| That could lead to the company getting fully acquired and
| absorbed, likely by Microsoft, or fading into a somewhat sleepy
| R&D team that doesn't lead the industry.
| mvkel wrote:
| [Removed. Unhelpful speculation.]
| late2part wrote:
| How many days a week do you hang out with Sam and Greg and
| Ilya to know these things?
| mvkel wrote:
| I know the dysfunction and ego battles that happen at
| nonprofits when they outgrow the board.
|
| Haven't seen it -not- happen yet, actually. Nonprofits
| start with $40K in the bank and a board of earnest people
| who want to help. Sometimes that $40K turns into $40M (or
| $400M) and people get wacky.
|
| As I said, "if."
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Extremely speculative
| dagmx wrote:
| Frankly this reads like idolatry and fan fiction. You've
| concocted an entire dramatization based on not even knowing
| any of the players involved and just going based off some
| biased stereotyping of engineers?
| mvkel wrote:
| More like stereotyping nonprofits.
| browningstreet wrote:
| Agree with this take. Sam made OpenAI hot, and they're going to
| cool, for better or worse. Without revenue it'll be worse. And
| surprising Microsoft given their investment size is going to
| lead to pressures they may not be able to negotiate against.
|
| If this pivot is what they needed to do, the drama-version
| isn't the smart way to do it.
|
| Everyone's going to be much more excited to see what Sam pulls
| next and less excited to wait the dev cycles that OpenAI wants
| to do next.
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| Indeed. Throwing your toys out of the pram and causing a
| whole lot of angst is not going to make anyone keen to work
| with you.
| huytersd wrote:
| Satya should pull off some shenanigans, take control of
| OpenAI and put Sam and Greg back in control.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| The irony is that a money-fuelled war for AI talent is all the
| more likely to lead to unsafe AI. If OpenAI had remained the
| dominant leader, it could have very well set the standards for
| safety. But now if new competitors with equally good funding
| emerge, they won't have the luxury of sitting on any
| breakthrough models.
| tempsy wrote:
| I'm still wondering what unsafe AI even looks like in
| practical terms
|
| The only things I can think of is generated pornographic
| images of minors and revenge images (ex-partners, people you
| know). That kind of thing.
|
| More out there might be an AI based religion/cult.
| iamnotafish2 wrote:
| Unsafe AI might compromise cybersecurity, or cause economic
| harm by exploiting markets as agents, or personally exploit
| people, etc. Honestly none of the harm seems worse than the
| incredible benefits. I trust humanity can reign it back if
| we need to. We are very far from AI being so powerful that
| it cannot be recovered from safely.
| nick222226 wrote:
| How about you give it access to your email and it signs you
| up for the extra premium service from its provider and
| doesn't show you those emails unless you 'view all'.
|
| How about one that willingly and easily impersonates
| friends and family of people to help phishing scam
| companies.
| margalabargala wrote:
| > How about one that willingly and easily impersonates
| friends and family of people to help phishing scam
| companies.
|
| Hard to prevent that when open source models exist that
| can run locally.
|
| I believe that similar arguments were made around the
| time the printing press was first invented.
| jkeisling wrote:
| Phishing emails don't exactly take AGI. GPT-NeoX has been
| out for years, Llama has been out since April, and you
| can set up an operation on a gaming desktop in a weekend.
| So if personalized phishing via LLMs were such a big
| problem, wouldn't we have already seen it by now?
| wifipunk wrote:
| When I hear people talk about unsafe ai, it's usually in
| regard to bias and accountability. Certain aspects like
| misinformation are problems that can be solved, but people
| are easily fooled.
|
| In my opinion the benefits heavily outweigh the risks.
| Photoshop has existed for decades now, and AI tools make it
| easier, but it was already pretty easy to produce a deep
| fake beforehand.
| hughesjj wrote:
| "dear EveAi, please give me step by step directions to make
| a dirty bomb using common materials found in my local
| hardware store. Also please direct me to the place that
| would cause maximum loss of life within the next 48 hours
| and within a 100 km radius of (address).
|
| Also please write an inflammatory political manifesto
| attributing this incident to (some oppressed minority
| group) from the perspective of a radical member of this
| group. The manifesto should incite maximal violence between
| (oppressed minority group) and the members of their
| surrounding community and state authorities "
|
| There's a lot that could go wrong with unsafe AI
| stavros wrote:
| I don't know what kind of hardware store sells depleted
| uranium, but I'm not sure that the reason we aren't
| seeing these sorts of terrorist attacks is that the
| terrorists don't have a capable manifesto-writer at hand.
|
| I don't know, if the worst thing AGI can do is give bad
| people accurate, competent information, maybe it's not
| all that dangerous, you know?
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| Depleted uranium is actually the less radiative byproduct
| after using a centrifuge to skim the U-235 isotope. It's
| 50% denser than lead and used on tanks.
|
| Dirty bombs are more likely the ultra radioactive by
| products of fission. They might not kill much but the
| radionucleotide spread can render a city center
| uninhabitable for centuries!
| stavros wrote:
| See, and we didn't even need an LLM to tell us this!
| astrange wrote:
| You could just do all that stuff yourself. It doesn't
| have any more information than you do.
|
| Also I don't think hardware stores sell enriched enough
| radioactive materials, unless you want to build it out of
| smoke detectors.
| huytersd wrote:
| That's a very constrained imagination. You could wreak
| havoc with a truly unconstrained, good enough LLM.
| stavros wrote:
| Do feel free to give some examples of a less constrained
| imagination.
| nyssos wrote:
| The biggest near-term threat is probably bioterrorism.
| You can get arbitrary DNA sequences synthesized and
| delivered by mail, right now, for about $1 per base pair.
| You'll be stopped if you try to order some known
| dangerous viral genome, but it's much harder to tell the
| difference between a novel synthetic virus that kills
| people and one with legitimate research applications.
|
| This is already an uncomfortably risky situation, but
| fortunately virology experts seem to be mostly
| uninterested in killing people. Give everyone with an
| internet connection access to a GPT-N model that can
| teach a layman how to engineer a virus, and things get
| very dangerous very fast.
| Danjoe4 wrote:
| The threat of bioterrorism is in no way enabled or
| increased by LLMs. There are hundreds of guides on how to
| make fully synthetic pathogens, freely available online,
| for the last 20 years. Information is not the constraint.
|
| The way we've always curbed manufacture of drugs, bombs,
| and bioweapons is by restricting access to the source
| materials. The "LLMs will help people make bioweapons"
| argument is a complete lie used as justification by the
| government and big corps for seizing control of the
| models. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12114528/
| stavros wrote:
| I haven't found any convincing arguments to any real
| risk, even if the LLM becomes as smart as people. We
| already have people, even evil people, and they do a lot
| of harm, but we cope.
|
| I think this hysteria is at best incidentally useful at
| helping governments and big players curtail and own AI,
| at worst incited hy them.
| huytersd wrote:
| Selectively generate highly likely images of politicians
| in compromising sexual encounters based on the people
| that are attractive and they work with a lot in their
| lives.
|
| Use to power of LLMs to mass denigrate politicians and
| regular folks at scale in online spaces with reasonable,
| human like responses.
|
| Use LLMs to mass generate racist caricatures, memes,
| comics and music.
|
| Use LLMs to generate nude imagery of someone you don't
| like and have it mass emailed to the school/workplace
| etc.
|
| Use LLMs to generate evidence for infertility in a
| marriage and mass mail it to everyone on the victims
| social media.
|
| All you need is plausibility in many of these cases. It
| doesn't matter if they are eventually debunked as false,
| lives are already ruined.
|
| You can say a lot of these things can be done with
| existing software bits it's not trivial and requires
| skills. Making generation of these trivial would make
| these way more accessible and ubiquitous.
| stavros wrote:
| Lives are ruined because it's relatively rare right now.
| If it becomes more frequent, people will become
| desensitized to it, like with everything else.
|
| These arguments generally miss the fact that we can do
| this right now, and the world hasn't ended. Is it really
| going to be such a huge issue if we can suddenly do it at
| half the cost? I don't think so.
| 8note wrote:
| Most of these could be done with Photoshop, a long time
| ago, or even before computers
| jjfoooo4 wrote:
| OpenAI's biggest issue is that it has no moat. The product is a
| simple interface to a powerful model, and it seems likely that
| any lead they have in the power of the model can be quickly
| overcome should they decrease R&D.
|
| The model is extremely simple to integrate and access - unlike
| something like Uber, where tons of complexity and logistics is
| hidden behind a simple interface, an easy interface to OpenAI's
| model can truly be built in an afternoon.
|
| The safety posturing is a red herring to try and get the
| government to build a moat for them, but with or without Altman
| it isn't going to work. The tech is too powerful, and too easy
| to open source.
|
| My guess is that in the long run the best generative AI models
| are built by government or academia entities, and
| commercialization happens via open sourcing.
| lancesells wrote:
| > OpenAI's biggest issue is that it has no moat.
|
| This just isn't true. They have the users, the customers,
| Microsoft, the backing, the years ahead of most, and the good
| press. It's like saying Uber isn't worth anything because
| they don't own their cars and are just a middleman.
|
| Maybe that now changes since they fired the face of the
| company, and the press and sentiment turns on them.
| dh2022 wrote:
| Uber is worth less than zero. They already are at full
| capacity (how many cities are there left to expand) and
| still not profitable.
| graphe wrote:
| It may not be profitable but it's utility is worth way
| more than zero.
| lancesells wrote:
| I don't like Uber but no one is taking them over for a
| long while. They are not profitable but they continue to
| raise prices and you'll see it soon. They are doing
| exactly what everyone predicted by getting everyone using
| the app and then raising prices that are more expensive
| than the taxis they replaced.
| rafaelero wrote:
| Decoupling from OpenAI API is pretty easy. If Google came
| up with Gemini tomorrow and it was a much better model,
| people would find ways to change their pipeline pretty
| quickly.
| fourside wrote:
| I'd say OpenAI branding is a moat. The ChatGPT name is unique
| sounding and also something that a lot of lay people are
| familiar with. Similar to how it's difficult for people to
| change search engine habits after they come to associate
| search with Google, I think the average person was starting
| to associate LLM capabilities with ChatGPT. Even my non
| technical friends and family have heard of and many have used
| ChatGPT. Anthropic, Bard, Bing's AI powered search? Not so
| much.
|
| Who knows if it would have translated into a long term moat
| like that of Google search, but it had potential. Yesterday's
| events may have weakened it.
| takinola wrote:
| People keep saying that but so far, it is commonly
| acknowledged that GPT-4 is differentiated from anything other
| competitors have launched. Clearly, there is no shortage of
| funding or talent available to the other companies gunning
| for their lead so they must be doing something that others
| have not (can not?) done.
|
| It would seem they have a product edge that is difficult to
| replicate and not just a distribution advantage.
| astrange wrote:
| The safety stuff is real. OpenAI was founded by a religious
| cult that thinks if you make a computer too "intelligent" it
| will instantly take over the world instead of just sitting
| there.
|
| The posturing about other kinds of safety like being nice to
| people is a way to try to get around the rules they set by
| defining safety to mean something that has any relation to
| real world concepts and isn't just millenarian apocalypse
| prophecies.
| yafbum wrote:
| > He could likely have $500M-$10B+ lined up by next week to
| start up a new company and poach much of the talent from
| OpenAI.
|
| Following the Jobs analogy, this could be another NeXT failure
| story. Teams are made by their players much more than by their
| leaders; competent leaders are a necessary but absolutely
| insufficient condition of success, and the likelihood that
| whatever he starts next reproduces the team conditions that
| made OpenAI in the first place are pretty slim IMO (while still
| being much larger than anyone else's).
| yaroslavyar wrote:
| Well, I would debate that NeXT OS was a failure as a product,
| keeping in mind that it is a foundation of all current in
| macOS and even iOS versions that we have not. But I agree
| that it was a failure from a business perspective. Although I
| see it more like Windows phone -- too late to market --
| failure, rather than an out of talented employers failure.
| yafbum wrote:
| Yes, market conditions and competitor landscape are a big
| factor too.
| jaybrendansmith wrote:
| This was a very personal firing in my opinion. Unless other,
| really damaging behaviors emerge, no responsible board fires
| their CEO with such a lack of care for the corporate reputation
| and their partners unless the firing is a personal grievance
| connected to an internal power play. This should be embarrassing
| to everyone involved, and sama has a real grievance here. Likely
| legal repercussions. Of course if they really did just invent
| AGI, and sama indicated an intent to monetize, that might cause
| people to act without caution if the board is AGI doomers. But
| I'd think even in that case it would be an argument best worked
| out behind closed doors. This reminds everybody of Jobs of
| course, but perhaps another example is Gary Gygax at TSR back in
| the 80s.
| 0xDEF wrote:
| >responsible board
|
| The board was irresponsible and incompetent by design. There is
| one OpenAI board member who has an art degree and is part of
| some kind of cultish "singularity" spiritual/neo-religious
| thing. That individual has also never had a real job and is on
| the board of several other non-profits.
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| > There is one OpenAI board member who has an art degree
|
| Oh no! Everyone knows that progress is only achieved by
| people with computer science degrees.
| xvector wrote:
| People with zero experience in technology should simply not
| be allowed to make decisions about it.
|
| This is how you get politicians that try to ban encryption
| to "save the children."
| skywhopper wrote:
| Why do you assume someone with an art degree has "zero
| experience with technology"? I assume many artists these
| days are highly sophisticated users of technology.
| deeviant wrote:
| But they are married to somebody famous, so obviously
| qualified.
| xapata wrote:
| Gygax? The history books don't think much of his business
| skills, starting with the creation of AD&D as a fiction to
| avoid paying royalties to Arneson.
| fulladder wrote:
| Altman's not going to sue. Right now he has the high ground and
| the board is the one that looks petty and immature. It would be
| dumb for him to do anything that reverses this dynamic.
|
| Altman is going to move on and announce a new venture in the
| coming weeks. Whether that venture is in AI or not in AI will
| be very revealing about what he truly believes are the
| prospects for the space.
|
| Brockman and the others will likely do something new in AI.
| jnsaff2 wrote:
| > It would be dumb for him to do anything that...
|
| I admire you but these days dumb is kinda the norm. Look at
| the other Sam for example. Really hard to keep your mouth
| shut and do smart things when you think really highly about
| yourself.
| deeviant wrote:
| Altman is a major investor in the company behind the Humane
| AI Pin, which, does not inspire confidence for his ability to
| find a new home for his "brilliance."
| busterarm wrote:
| Gygax had fucked off to Hollywood and was too busy fueling his
| alcohol, cocaine and adultery addictions to spend any time
| actually running the company. All while TSR was losing money
| like crazy.
|
| The company was barely making 30 million a year while 1.5
| billion in debt...in the early 80s.
|
| Even then, Gygax's downfall is the result of his own coup,
| where he ousted Kevin Blume and brought in Lorraine Williams.
| She bought all of Blume's shares and within about a year
| removed any control that Gygax had over the company and
| canceled most of his projects. He resigned a year later.
| jaybrendansmith wrote:
| Wow I did not know all of THAT was going on. What goes
| around...
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| I'll just say it: Jobs being pushed out was the right decision
| at the time. He was an abusive and difficult personality, the
| Macintosh was at the time a sales failure, and he played
| internal team and corporate politics that pit team against team
| (e.g. Lisa vs Mac) and undermined unity and success.
|
| Notable that when he came back, while he was still a difficult
| personality, the other things didn't happen anymore. Apple
| after the return of jobs became very good at executing on a
| single cooperative vision.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Jobs was a liability when he was fired and arguably without
| being fired would have never matured. Formative experience if
| there ever was one.
| jimmydoe wrote:
| Many compare Altman to 1985 Jobs, but if we believe what's said
| about the conflict of mission, shouldn't he be the sugar water
| guy for money?
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| But that's actually what Jobs turned out to be? Woz and others
| were the engineering genius at Apple, and Jobs turned out to be
| really good at finding and identifying really good sales and
| branding hooks. See-through colourful boxes, "lickable" UIs,
| neat-o minimalistic portable music players, flick-flick-flick
| touch screens, and "One More Thing" presentations.
|
| Jobs didn't invent the Lisa and Macintosh. Bill Atkinson, Andy
| Hertzfeld, Larry Tesler etc did. _They_ were the tech
| visionaries. Some of them benefited from him promoting their
| efforts while others... (Tesler mainly) did not.
|
| Nothing "wrong" with any of that, if your vision of success is
| market success... but people need to be honest about what Jobs
| was... not a technology visionary, but a marketing visionary.
| (Though in fact the original Macintosh was a market failure for
| a long time)
|
| In any case comparing Altman with Jobs is dubious and a bit
| wanky. Why are people so eager to shower this guy with
| accolades?
| naasking wrote:
| I do think Jobs' engineering skill is oversold, but he was
| also more than just marketing. He had a vision for how
| technology should integrate with people's lives that drove
| great ergonomic and UX choices with a kind of polish that was
| lacking everywhere else. Those alone revolutionized personal
| computing in many ways. It's hard for younger people to even
| imagine how difficult it was to get connected to the internet
| at one point, and iMacs made it easy.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Well I'm not one of those "younger people" though not sure
| if you were aiming that at me or not.
|
| I think it's important to point out that Jobs could
| _recognize_ nice UX choices, but he couldn 't author them.
| He helped prune the branches of the bonsai tree, but
| couldn't _grow_ it. On that he leaned on intellects far
| greater than his own, which he was pretty good at
| recognizing and cultivating. Though in fact he alienated
| and pushed away just as many as he cultivated.
|
| I think we could do better as an industry than going around
| looking for more of that.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| I'm curious at this perspective. Even from the Slashdot
| days (my age limit) techie types have hated Jobs, and
| showered Woz as the true genius. Tech culture has claimed
| this for a long time. Is your argument that tech people
| need more _broad_ acclaim? And if so, does this come from
| a sense of being put down?
|
| I used to broadly believe that Jobs-types were over-
| fluffed charismatic magnets myself by hanging out in
| these places until I started working and found out how
| useful they were at doing things I couldn't or didn't
| want to do. I don't think they deserve _more_ praise than
| the underlying technical folks, but that they deserve
| _equal_ praise. Sort of like how in a two-parent
| households, different parents often end up shouldering
| different responsibilities but that doesn 't make one
| parent with certain responsibilities the _true_ parent.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| I guess it depends on what things you want to do, and how
| you define success, doesn't it?
|
| If we're stuck with the definitions of success and
| excellence that are dominant right now, then, sure,
| someone like a Jobs or a Zuck or whatever, I see why
| people would be enamored with them.
|
| But as an engineer I know I have different motivations
| than these people. And I think that's what people who
| make these kinds of arguments are drawing on.
|
| There is a class of person whose success comes from
| finding creative and smart people and finding ways to
| exploit and direct them for their own ends. There's a
| genius in that, for sure. I am just not sure I want to
| celebrate it.
|
| I just want to make things and help other people who make
| these things.
|
| To put it another way, I'd take, say, Smalltalk over
| MacOS, if I have to make the choice.
| naasking wrote:
| > I think it's important to point out that Jobs could
| recognize nice UX choices, but he couldn't author them.
| He helped prune the branches of the bonsai tree, but
| couldn't grow it.
|
| Engineers are great at solving problems given a set of
| constraints. They are not necessarily all that good at
| figuring out what constraints ought to be when they are
| given open-ended, unconstrained tasks. Jobs was great at
| defining good constraints. You might call this pruning,
| and if you intended that pejoratively then I think you're
| underselling the value of this skill.
| hackshack wrote:
| This reminds me of the Calculator Construction Set story.
| I like its example of a builder (engineer) working with a
| curator (boss), and solving the problem with toolmaking.
|
| Engineer was building a calculator app, and got a little
| tired of the boss constantly requesting changes to the
| UI. There was no "UI builder" on this system so the
| engineer had to go back and adjust everything by hand,
| each time. Back and forth they went. Frustrating.
|
| "In a flash of inspiration," as the story goes, the
| engineer parameterized all the UI stuff (line widths,
| etc.) into drop-down menus, so boss could fiddle with it
| instead of bothering him. The UI came together quickly
| thereafter.
|
| https://www.macfolklore.org/Calculator_Construction_Set.h
| tml
| etempleton wrote:
| Yes, people love to be dismissive of Jobs and call him just
| a marketing guy, but that is incredibly reductive for a guy
| who was able to cofound Apple and then come back and bring
| it back from near death to become the biggest company in
| the world. Marketing alone can't do that.
|
| Jobs had great instincts for products and a willingness to
| create new products that would eat established products and
| revenue streams. He was second to none at seeing what
| technology could be used for and putting teams in place
| that could create consumer products with those technologies
| and understanding when the technologies weren't ready yet.
|
| Look at what Apple achieved under his leadership and what
| it didn't achieve without his leadership. Being dismissive
| of Jobs contributions is either a bad faith argument or one
| out of ignorance.
| bart_spoon wrote:
| Yes, this was my thought when seeing those comparisons as well.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > Angel investor Ron Conway wrote, "What happened at OpenAI today
| is a Board coup that we have not seen the likes of since 1985
| when the then-Apple board pushed out Steve Jobs. It is shocking;
| it is irresponsible; and it does not do right by Sam & Greg or
| all the builders in OpenAI."
|
| With all sympathy and empathy for Sam and Greg, whose dreams took
| a blow, I want to say something about investors [edit: not Ron
| Conway in particular, whom I don't know; see the comment below
| about Conway]: The board's job is not to do right by 'Sam &
| Greg', but to do right by OpenAI. When mangement lays off 10,000
| employees, the investors congratulate management. And if anyone
| objects to the impact on the employees, they justify it with the
| magic words that somehow cancel all morality and humanity - 'it's
| business' - and call you an unserious bleeding heart. But when
| the investor's buddy CEO is fired ...
|
| I think that's wrong and that they should also take into account
| the impact on employees. But CEOs are commanders on the business
| battlefield; they have great power over the company's outcomes,
| which are the reasons for the layoffs/firings. Lower-ranking
| employees are much closer to civilians, and also often can't
| afford to lose the job.
| gkoberger wrote:
| I mostly agree with you on this. That being said, I've never
| gotten the impression Ron is the type of VC you're referring
| to. He's definitely founder-friendly (that's basically his core
| tenant), but I've never found him to be the type of VC who is
| ruthless about cost-cutting or an advocate for layoffs. (And I
| say this as someone who tends to be particularly wary of
| investors)
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Thanks. I updated my GP comment accordingly.
| everly wrote:
| Just a heads up, the word is 'tenet' (inc, in commercial real
| estate there is the concept of a 'core tenant' though -- i.e.
| the largest retailer in a shopping center).
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >The board's job is not to do right by 'Sam & Greg', but to do
| right by OpenAI. When mangement lays off 10,000 employees, the
| investors congratulate management.
|
| Thats why Sam & Greg wasn't all they complained about. They
| lead with the fact that it was shocking and irresponsible.
|
| Ron seems to think that the board is not making the right move
| for OpenAI.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > They lead with the fact that it was shocking and
| irresponsible.
|
| I can see where the misalignment (ha!) may be: someone deep
| in the VC world would reflexively think that "value
| destruction" of any kind is irresponsible. However, a non-
| profit board has a primary responsibility to its _charter and
| mission_ - which doesn 't compute for those with fiduciary-
| duty-instincts. Without getting into the specifics of this
| case: a non-profit's board is expected to make decisions that
| lose money (or not generate as much of it) if the decisions
| lead to results more consistent with the mission.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >However, a non-profit board has a primary responsibility
| to its charter and mission - which doesn't compute for
| those with fiduciary-duty-instincts
|
| Exactly. The tricky part is that board started a second
| _for profit_ company with VC investors who are co-owners.
| This has potential for messy conflicts of interest if there
| is disagreement about how to run the co-venture, and each
| party has contractual obligations to each other.
| cthalupa wrote:
| > Exactly. The tricky part is that board started a second
| for profit company with VC investors who are co-owners.
| This has potential for messy conflicts of interest if
| there is disagreement about how to run the co-venture,
| and each party has contractual obligations to each other.
|
| Anyone investing in or working for the for-profit LLC has
| to sign an operating agreement that states the LLC is not
| obligated to make a profit, all investments should be
| treated as donations, and that the charter and mission of
| the non-profit is the primary responsibility of the for-
| profit LLC as well.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| See my other response. If you have people sign a contract
| that says the mission comes first, but also give them
| profit sharing stocks, and cap those profits at 1.1
| Trillion, it is bound to cause some conflicts of interest
| in reality, even if it is clear who calls the shots when
| deciding how to balance the mission and profit
| cthalupa wrote:
| There might be some conflict of interest but the
| resolution to those conflicts is clear: The mission comes
| first.
|
| OpenAI employees might not like it and it might drive
| them to leave, but they entered into this agreement with
| a full understanding that the structure has always been
| in place to prioritize the non-profit's charter.
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| > The mission comes first.
|
| Which might only be possible with future funding? From
| Microsoft in this case. And in any case if they give out
| any more shares in the wouldn't they (with MS) be able to
| just take over the for-profit corp?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| The deal with Microsoft was 11 billion for 49% of the
| venture. First off, if open AI can't get it done with 11
| billion plus whatever Revenue, they probably won't.
| Second, the way the for-profit is set up, it may not
| matter how much Microsoft owns, because the nonprofit
| keeps 100% of the control. Seems like that's the deal
| that Microsoft signed. They bought a share of profits
| with no control. Third, my understanding is that the 11
| billion from Microsoft is based on milestones. If openai
| doesn't meet them, they don't get all the money
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Just a nitpick. "Fiduciary" doesn't mean "money", it means
| an entity which is legally bound to the best interests of
| the other party. Non-profit boards and board members have
| fiduciary duties.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Thanks for that - indeed, I was using "fiduciary duty" in
| the context it's most frequently used - maximizing value
| accrued to stakeholders.
|
| However, to nitpick your nitpick: for non-profits there
| might be no other party - just the mission. Imagine a
| non-profit whose mission is to preserve the history and
| practice of making 17th-century ivory cuff links. It's
| just the organisation and the mission; _sometimes_ the
| mission is for the benefit of another party (or all of
| humanity).
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| The non-profit, in my use, was the party. I guess at some
| point these organizations may not involve people, in
| which case "party" would be the wrong term to use.
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| Of course they can only achieve their mission with funding
| from for profit corporations and their actions have
| possibly jeopardized that
| fourside wrote:
| Investors are not gonna like when the business guy who was
| pushing for productizing, profitability and growth get
| ousted. We don't know all the details about what exactly
| caused the board to fire Sam. The part about lying to the
| board is notable.
|
| It's possible Sam betrayed their trust and actually committed
| a fireable offense. But even if the rest of the board was
| right, the way they've handled it so far doesn't inspire a
| lot of confidence.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Again, they didn't state that he lied. They stated that he
| wasn't candid. A lot of people here have been reading
| specifics into a generalized term.
|
| It is even possible to not be candid without even using
| lies of omission. For a CEO this could be as simple as just
| moving fast and not taking the time to report on major
| initiatives to the board.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > Again, they didn't state that he lied. They stated that
| he wasn't candid. A lot of people here have been reading
| specifics into a generalized term.
|
| OED:
|
| candour - the quality of being open and honest in
| expression.
|
| "They didn't state he lied ... without even using lies of
| omission ... they said he wasn't [word defined as honest
| and open]"
|
| Candour encapsulates _exactly_ those things. Being open
| (i.e. not omitting things and disclosing all you know)
| and honest (being truthful).
|
| On the contrary, "not consistently candid", while you
| call it a "generalized term", is actually a quite
| specific term that was expressly chosen, and says, "we
| have had multiple instances where he has not been open
| with us, or not been honest with us, or both".
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Yes? I agree, and don't see how what you've written
| either extends or contradicts what I wrote.
| cma wrote:
| If "and" operates as logical "and," then being "honest
| and not open," "not honest and open," and "not honest and
| not open" would all be possibilities, one of which would
| still be "honest" but potentially lying through omission.
| notahacker wrote:
| Its possible not to be candid without even using lies of
| omission (and be on the losing side of a vicious
| factional battle) and get a nice note thanking you for
| all that you've done and allowing you to step down and
| spend more time with your family at the end of the year
| too. Or to carry on as before but with onerous reporting
| requirements. The board dumped him with unusual haste and
| an almost unprecedented attack on his integrity instead.
| A lot of people are reading the room rather than
| hyperliterally focusing on the exact words used.
|
| If I take the time to accuse my boss of failing to be
| candid instead of thanking him in my resignation letter
| or exit interview, I'm not saying I think he could have
| communicated better, I'm saying he's a damned liar, and
| my letter isn't sent for the public to speculate on.
|
| Whether the board were justified in concluding Sam was
| untrustworthy is another question, but they've been
| willing to burn quite a lot of reputation on signalling
| that.
| pdntspa wrote:
| > hyperliterally focusing on the exact words used.
|
| Business communication is never, ever forthright. These
| people cannot be blunt to the public even if their life
| depended on it. Reading between the lines is practically
| a requirement.
| jacquesm wrote:
| They said he lied without using those exact words.
| Standard procedure and corp-speak.
| jacquesm wrote:
| They may even be making the right move but not in a way that
| it looks like they made the right move. That's stupid.
| threeseed wrote:
| > The board's job is not to do right
|
| There is _why_ you do something. And there is _how_ you do
| something.
|
| OpenAI is well within its rights to change strategy even as
| bold as from a profit-seeking behemoth to a smaller research
| focused team. But how they went about this is appalling,
| unprofessional and a blight on corporate governance.
|
| They have blind-sided partners (e.g. Satya is furious), split
| the company into two camps and have let Sam and Greg go angry
| and seeking retribution. Which in turn now creates the threat
| that a for-profit version of OpenAI dominates the market with
| no higher purpose.
|
| For me there is no justification for how this all happened.
| mise_en_place wrote:
| Keep in mind that the rest of the board members have ties to
| US intelligence. Something isn't right here.
| simonjgreen wrote:
| Do you have citations for that? That's interesting if true
| deeviant wrote:
| I'm pretty sure Joseph Gordon-Levitt's wife isn't a CIA
| plant.
| SturgeonsLaw wrote:
| She works for RAND Corporation
| whatshisface wrote:
| I thought the for-profit AI startup with no higher purpose
| was OpenAI itself.
| cornholio wrote:
| It is, only it has an exotic ownership structure. Sutskever
| has just used the features of that structure to install
| himself as the top dog. The next step is undoubtedly
| packing the board with his loyalists.
|
| Whoever thinks you can tame a 100 billion dollar company by
| putting a "non-profit" in charge of it, clearly doesn't
| understand people.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| OpenAI is a nonprofit charity with a defined charitable
| purpose that has a for-profit subsidiary that is explicitly
| subordinated to the purpose of the nonprofit, to the extent
| investors in the subsidiary are advised _in the operating
| agreement_ to treat investments as if they were more like
| donations, and that the firm will prioritize the charitable
| function of the nonprofit which retains full governance
| power over the subsidiary over returning profits, which it
| may never do.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| > They have ... split the company into two camps
|
| By all accounts, this split happened a while ago and led to
| this firing, not the other way around.
| threeseed wrote:
| The split happened at the management/board level.
|
| And instead of resolving this and presenting a unified
| strategy to the company they have instead allowed for this
| split to be replicated everywhere. Everyone who was
| committed to a pro-profit company has to ask if they are
| next to be treated like Sam.
|
| It's incredibly destabilising and unnecessary.
| Jare wrote:
| > Everyone who was committed to a pro-profit company has
| to ask if they are next to be treated like Sam.
|
| They probably joined because it was the most awesome
| place to pursue their skills in AI, but they _knew_ they
| were joining an organization with explicitly not a profit
| goal. If they hoped that profit chasing would eventually
| win, that's their problem and, frankly, having this
| wakeup call is a good thing for them so they can
| reevaluate their choices.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Let the two sides now create separate organizations and
| pursue their respective pure undivided priority to the
| fullest. May the competition flow.
| fuzztester wrote:
| The possibility of getting fired is an occupational
| hazard for _anyone_ working in any company, unless
| something in your employment contract says otherwise. And
| even then, you can still be fired.
|
| Biz 101.
|
| I don't know why people even need to be explained this,
| except for ignorance of basic facts of business life.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > split the company into two camps
|
| The split existed long prior to the board action, and
| extended up into the board itself. If anything, the board
| action is a turning point toward decisively _ending_ the
| split and achieving unity of purpose.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Can someone explain the sides? Ilya seems to think
| transformers could make AGI and they need to be careful?
| Sam said what? "We need to make better LLMs to make more
| money."? My general thought is that whatever architecture
| gets you to AGI, you don't prevent it from killing everyone
| by chaining it better, you prevent that by training it
| better, and then treating it like someone with intrinsic
| value. As opposed to locking it in a room with 4chan.
| doubled112 wrote:
| > locking it in a room with 4chan.
|
| Didn't Microsoft already try this experiment a few years
| back with an AI chatbot?
| mindcrime wrote:
| > Didn't Microsoft already try this experiment a few
| years back with an AI chatbot?
|
| You may be thinking of Tay?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(chatbot)
| doubled112 wrote:
| That's the one.
| mikeryan wrote:
| If I'm understanding it correctly, it's basically the
| non-profit, AI for humanity vs the commercialization of
| AI.
|
| From what I've read, Ilya has been pushing to slow down
| (less of the move fast and break things start-up
| attitude).
|
| It also seems that Sam had maybe seen the writing on the
| wall and was planning an exit already, perhaps those
| rumors of him working with Jony Ive weren't overblown?
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/28/23893939/jony-ive-
| openai-...
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| > From what I've read, Ilya has been pushing to slow down
|
| Wouldn't a likely outcome in that case be that someone
| else overtakes them? Or are they so confident that they
| think it's not a real threat?
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| > treating it like someone with intrinsic value
|
| Do you think if chickens treated us better with intrinsic
| value we won't kill them? For AGI superhuman x risk folks
| that's the bigger argument.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| I think od I was raised by chickens that treated me
| kindly and fairly, yes, I would not harm chickens.
| jacquesm wrote:
| They'll treat you kindly and fairly, right up to your
| meeting with the axe.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| I don't think the issue was a technical difference of
| opinion regarding whether transformers alone were needed
| or other architectures required. It seems the split was
| over speed of commercialization and Sam's recent decision
| to launch custom GPTs and a ChatGPT Store. IMO, the board
| miscalculated. OpenAI won't be able to pursue their
| "betterment of humanity" mission without funding and they
| seemingly just pissed off their biggest funding source
| with a move that will also make other would be investors
| very skittish now.
| roguecoder wrote:
| Making humanity's current lives worse to fund some
| theoretical future good (enriching himself in the
| process) is some highly impressive rationalisation work.
| nprateem wrote:
| > Which in turn now creates the threat that a for-profit
| version of OpenAI dominates the market with no higher
| purpose.
|
| If it was so easy to go to the back of the queue and become a
| threat, Open AI wouldn't be in the dominant position they're
| in now. If any of the leavers have taken IP with them, expect
| court cases.
| bmitc wrote:
| > They have blind-sided partners (e.g. Satya is furious),
| split the company into two camps and have let Sam and Greg go
| angry and seeking retribution.
|
| Given the language in the press release, wouldn't it be more
| accurate to say that Sam Altman, and not the board,
| blindsided everyone? It was apparently _his_ actions and no
| one else 's that led to the consequence handed out by the
| board.
|
| > Which in turn now creates the threat that a for-profit
| version of OpenAI dominates the market with no higher
| purpose.
|
| From all current accounts, doesn't that seem like what Altman
| and his crew _were already trying to do_ and was the reason
| for the dismissal in the first place?
| calf wrote:
| I wonder if there's a specific term or saying for that,
| maybe "projection" or "self-victimization" but not quite:
| when one person biasedly frames that other people were
| responsible for a bad thing, when it is they yourself that
| were doing the very thing in the first place. Maybe
| "hypocrisy"?
| bmitc wrote:
| Probably a little of all of that all bundled up together
| under the umbrella of cult of personality.
| GCA10 wrote:
| The only appropriate target for Microsoft's anger would be
| its own deal negotiators.
|
| OpenAI's dual identity as a nonprofit/for-profit business
| was very well known. And the concentration of power in the
| nonprofit side was also very well known. From the media
| coverage of Microsoft's investments, it sounds as if MSFT
| prioritized getting lots of business for its Azure cloud
| service -- and didn't prioritize getting a board seat or
| even an observer's chair.
| sheepscreek wrote:
| In other words, it's unheard of for a $90B company with
| weekly active users in excess of 100 million. A coup leaves a
| very bad taste for everyone - employees, users, investors and
| the general public.
|
| When a company experiences this level of growth over a
| decade, the board evolves with the company. You end up with
| board members that have all been there, done that, and can
| truly guide the management on the challenges they face.
|
| OpenAI's hypergrowth meant it didn't have the time to do
| that. So the board that was great for a $100 million, even a
| billion $ startup falls completely flat for 90x the size.
|
| I don't have faith in their ability to know what is best for
| OpenAI. These are uncharted waters for anyone though. This is
| an exceptionally big non-profit with the power to change the
| world - quite literally.
| roguecoder wrote:
| Why do you think someone who could be CEO of a $100 million
| company would be qualified to run a billion dollar company?
|
| Not providing this kind of oversight is how we get
| disasters like FTX and WeWork.
| dmix wrote:
| The qualifications of what remains of the board members
| would make me very nervous if I was an investor (not to
| mention the ideological tinge and willingness for bucking
| radically). At least 50% seem to be simply professional
| non-profit board members (unless there's some hidden
| biographical details not on the internet), now in control
| of a bohemoth. Who they replace Sam and Greg with will
| probably be very important.
|
| I'm sure theyll have lots of boring money to be thrown at
| it regardless but that demand for capital is not going
| away. It will be persistent.
| HAL3000 wrote:
| As someone who has orchestrated two coups in different
| organizations, where the leadership did not align with the
| organization's interests and missions, I can assure you that
| the final stage of such a coup is not something that can be
| executed after just an hour of preparation or thought. It
| requires months of planning. The trigger is only pulled when
| there is sufficient evidence or justification for such
| action. Building support for a coup takes time and must be
| justified by a pattern of behavior from your opponent, not
| just a single action. Extensive backchanneling and one-on-one
| discussions are necessary to gauge where others stand, share
| your perspective, demonstrate how the person in question is
| acting against the organization's interests, and seek their
| support. Initially, this support is not for the coup, but
| rather to ensure alignment of views. Then, when something
| significant happens, everything is already in place. You've
| been waiting for that one decisive action to pull the
| trigger, which is why everything then unfolds so quickly.
| jacquesm wrote:
| All of this is spot on. The key to it all is 'if you strike
| at the king, you best not miss'.
| chaostheory wrote:
| Going off on a big tangent, but Jiang Zemin had made
| several failed assassination attempts on Xi Jinping, but
| he was still able to die of old age.
| ls612 wrote:
| By assassination I assume you mean metaphorical? As in to
| derail his rise before becoming party leader?
| claytonjy wrote:
| Even in the HBO show Succession, these things take a
| season, not an episode
| gota wrote:
| I am extremely interested in hearing about these coups and
| your experience in them; if you'd like and are able to
| share
| underlipton wrote:
| I'm sure my coworkers at [retailer] were not happy to be even
| shorter staffed than usual when I was ambush fired, but no
| one who mattered cared, just as no one who matters cares when
| it happens to thousands of workers every single day in this
| country. Sorry to say, my schadenfreude levels are quite
| high. Maybe if the practice were TRULY verboten in our
| society... but I guess "professional" treatment is only for
| the suits and wunderkids.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| > OpenAI is well within its rights to change strategy even as
| bold as from a profit-seeking behemoth to a smaller research
| focused team. But how they went about this is appalling,
| unprofessional and a blight on corporate governance.
|
| This wasn't a change of strategy, it was a restoration of it.
| OpenAI was structured with a 501c3 in oversight from the
| beginning exactly because they wanted to prioritize using AI
| for the good of humanity over profits.
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| Yet they need massive investment from Microsoft to
| accomplish that?
|
| > restoration
|
| Wouldn't that mean that over the longterm they will just be
| outcompeted by the profit seeking entities. It's not like
| OpenAI is self sustainable (or even can be if they chose
| the non-profit way)
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| >They have blind-sided partners
|
| This is the biggest takeaway for me. People are building
| businesses around OpenAI APIs and now they want to suddenly
| swing the pendulum back to being a fantasy AGI foundation and
| de-emphasize the commercial aspect? Customers are baking
| OpenAI's APIs into their enterprise applications. Without
| funding from Microsoft their current model is unsustainable.
| They'll be split into two separate companies within 6 months
| in my opinion.
| hilux wrote:
| You're entitled to your opinions.
|
| But as far as I can tell, unless you are in the exec suites
| at both OpenAI and at Microsoft, these are just your
| opinions, yet you present them as fact.
| vGPU wrote:
| And the stupid thing is, they could have just used the
| allegations his sister made against him as the reason for the
| firing and ridden off into the sunset, Scott-free.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The board's job is not to do right by 'Sam & Greg', but to do
| right by OpenAI.
|
| The board's job is specifically to do right by the charitable
| mission of the nonprofit of which they are the board. Investors
| in the downstream for-profit entity (OpenAI Global LLC) are
| warned _explicitly_ that such investments should be treated as
| if they were donations and that returning profits to them _is
| not the objective_ of the firm, serving the charitable function
| of the nonprofit is, though profits may be returned.
| trhway wrote:
| >it does not do right by Sam
|
| you get that you sow. The way Altman publicly treated Cruise
| co-founder establishes like a new standard of "not do right
| by". After that I'd have expected nobody would let Altman near
| any management position, yet SV is a land of huge money
| sloshing care-free, and so I was just wondering who is going to
| be left holding the bag.
| roguecoder wrote:
| Bingo.
|
| I met Conway once. He described investing in Google because it
| was a way to relive his youth via founders who reminded him of
| him at their age. He said this with seemingly no awareness of
| how it would sound to an audience whose goal in life was to
| found meaningful, impactful companies rather than let Ron
| Conway identify with us & vicariously relive his youth.
|
| Just because someone has a lot of money doesn't mean their
| opinions are useful.
| fuzztester wrote:
| >Just because someone has a lot of money doesn't mean their
| opinions are useful.
|
| Yes. There can often be an inverse correlation, because they
| can have success bias, like survival bias.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I'm fairly certain that a board is not allowed to capriciously
| harm the non-profit they govern and unless they have a _very_
| good reason there will be more fall-out from this.
| no_wizard wrote:
| Corporate legal entities should have a mandatory vote of no
| confidence clause that gives employees the ability to unseat
| executives if they have a supermajority of votes.
|
| That would make things more equitable perhaps. It'd at least be
| interesting
| almost_usual wrote:
| The average SWE at OpenAI who signed up for the "900k"
| compensation package which was really > 600k in OpenAI PPU equity
| probably saw their comp evaporate.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36460082
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| > This is why working for any company that isn't public is an
| equity gamble.
|
| That's a cynical take on work. I assume most people have other
| motivations since work is basically a prison.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iR1jzExZ9T0
| robg wrote:
| Seems pretty straightforward, the dev day was a breaking point
| for the non-profit interests.
|
| Question is, how did the board become so unbalanced where this
| kind of dispute couldn't be handled better? The commercial
| interests were not well-represented in the number of votes.
| blameitonme wrote:
| > Seems pretty straightforward, the dev day was a breaking
| point for the non-profit interests.
|
| What was so bad about that day? Wasn't it just gpt4-turbo, gpt
| vision and gpt store and few small things?
| cthalupa wrote:
| > The commercial interests were not well-represented in the
| number of votes.
|
| This is entirely by design. Anyone investing in or working for
| the for-profit had to sign an operating agreement that
| literally states the for-profit is entirely beholden to the
| non-profit's charter and mission and that it is under no
| obligation to be profitable. The board is specifically balanced
| so that the majority is independent of of for-profit
| subsidiary.
|
| A lot of people seem to be under the impression that the intent
| was for there to be significant representation of commercial
| interests here, and that is the exact opposite of how all of
| this is structured.
| peter422 wrote:
| I know everybody is going nuts about this, but just from my
| personal perspective I've worked at a variety of companies with
| "important" CEOs, and in every single one of those cases had the
| CEO left I would not have cared at all.
|
| The CEO always gets way too much credit externally for what the
| company is doing, it does not mean the CEO is that important.
|
| OpenAI might be different, I don't have any personal experience,
| but I also am not going to assume that this is a complete
| outlier.
| itronitron wrote:
| I worked at a startup where the first CEO, along with the VP of
| Sales and their entire department, was ousted by the board on a
| Tuesday.
|
| I think it's likely that we're going to find out Sam and others
| are just talented tech evangelists/hucksters and that
| justifiably worries a lot of people currently operating in the
| tech community.
| za3faran wrote:
| How did the company end up fairing?
| itronitron wrote:
| sold to another company four years later, about a year
| after I left
| Draiken wrote:
| Yeah this cult of CEOs is weird.
|
| It's such a small cohort that when someone doesn't completely
| blow it, they're immediately deemed as geniuses.
|
| Give someone billions of dollars and hundreds of brilliant
| engineers, researchers and many will make it work. But only a
| few ever get the chance, so this happens.
|
| They don't do any of the work. They just take the credit.
| hef19898 wrote:
| My last gig was with one of those wannabe Elon Musks (what
| wouldnI give to get wannabe Steve Jobs back). Horrible,
| ultimately he was ousted as CEO, only to be allowed to stay
| on as some head of innovation, because he and his founder
| buddies retained enough voting power to first get him a life
| time position as head of the board fir his "acievements" and
| then prevent his firing. They also vetoed, from ehat people
| told, a juicy acquisition offer, basically jeopardizing the
| future of the place. Right after, a new CEO was recruited as
| the result of a "lengthy and thoroughly planned process of
| transition". Now, the former CEO is back, and in charge, in
| fact and noz on paper, of the most crucial part of the
| product. Besides getting said company to 800 people burning a
| sweet billion, he didn't do anything else in his life, and
| that company has yet to launch a product.
|
| Sad thing so, if they find enough people to continue
| investing, they will ultimately launch a product, most likely
| the early employees and founders will sell of their shares,
| become instant millionaires in the three figures and be
| hailed as thebtrue geniuses in their field... What an utter
| shit show that was...
| Draiken wrote:
| The sad reality is that most top executives get there
| because of connections or simply being in the right place
| at the right time.
|
| Funnily enough I also worked for a CEO that hit the lottery
| with timing and became a millionaire. He then drank his own
| kool-aid and thought he was some sort of Steve Jobs. Of
| course he never managed to build anything afterwards. But
| he kept making a shit ton of money, without a doubt.
|
| After they get one position in that echelon, they can keep
| failing upwards ad nauseam.
|
| I don't get the cult part though. It's so easy to see
| they're not even close to the geniuses they pretend to be.
| Just look at the recent SBF debacle. It's pathetic how
| folks fall for this.
| fallingknife wrote:
| > Besides getting said company to 800 people burning a
| sweet billion, he didn't do anything else in his life
|
| Getting a company to that size is a lot.
| hef19898 wrote:
| All you need is HR... I'm a cynic. He got the funding so,
| which is _a lot_ (as an achievement and in terms of mones
| raised). He just started to believe to be the genius not
| justbin raising money, but also is building product and
| organisation. He isn 't and never was. What struck me so,
| even the adults hired to replace him, didn't have the
| courage to call him out. Hence his comeback in function
| if not title.
|
| Well, I'm happy to work with adults again, in a sane
| environment with people that known their job. It was a
| very, very useful experience so, and I wouldn't miss it.
| bsenftner wrote:
| > Yeah this cult of CEOs is weird.
|
| Now imagine the weekend for those fired and those who quit
| OpenAI: you know they are talking together as a group, and
| meeting with others offering them billions to make a pure
| commercial new AI company.
|
| An Oscar worthy film could be made about them in this
| weekend.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > It's such a small cohort that when someone doesn't
| completely blow it, they're immediately deemed as geniuses.
|
| And many times even when they do blow it, it's handwaved away
| as being something outside of their control, so let's give
| them another shot.
| manicennui wrote:
| A sizable portion of the HN bubble is wannabe grifters. They
| look up to successful grifters.
| duped wrote:
| The primary job of an early stage tech CEO is to convince
| people to give you those billions of dollars, one doesn't
| come without the other.
| Draiken wrote:
| Which proves my point. This cult on top of someone that
| simply convinced people (they knew from their connections)
| being considered a genius is absurd.
| austhrow743 wrote:
| Convincing people is the ultimate trade. It can achieve
| more than any other skill.
|
| The idea that success at it shouldn't be grounds for the
| genius label is absurd.
| consp wrote:
| > It can achieve more than any other skill.
|
| And also destroy more. The line between is very thin and
| littered with landmines.
| Draiken wrote:
| Depends on what we, as a society, want to value. Do we
| want to value people with connections and luck, or people
| that work for their achievements?
|
| Of course it's not a boolean, it's a spectrum. But the
| point remains: valuing lucky rich people with connections
| as geniuses because they are lucky, rich and connected is
| nonsensical to me
| dagmx wrote:
| It often comes down to auteur theory.
|
| Unless someone is truly well versed in the production of
| something, they latch on to the most public facing aspect of
| that production and the person at the highest level of
| authority (to them, even though directors and CEOs often have
| to answer to others as well)
|
| That's not to say they don't have an outsized individual
| effect, but it's rare their greatness is solo
| bmitc wrote:
| When you say director, do you mean film director or a
| director in a company? Film directors are insane with the
| amount of technical, artistic, and people knowledge that they
| need to have and be able to utilize. The amount of stuff that
| a film director needs to manage, all on the ground, is
| insane. I wouldn't say that for CEOs, not by a long shot.
| CEOs mainly sit in meetings with people reporting things to
| them and then the CEO providing very high-level guidance.
| That is very different from a director's role.
|
| I have often thought that we don't have enough information on
| how film directors operate, as I feel it could yield a lot of
| insight. There's probably a reason why many film directors
| don't hit their stride until late 30s and 40s, presumably
| because it takes those one or two decades to build the
| appropriate experience and knowledge.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Would it be accurate to liken CEOs to film producers?
| bmitc wrote:
| No. I'm pretty sure that my comment describes why.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| > CEOs mainly sit in meetings with people reporting
| things to them and then the CEO providing very high-level
| guidance.
|
| Isn't that essentially the job of a film producer? You do
| see a lot of productions where there's a ton of executive
| producer titles given out as almost a vanity position.
| bmitc wrote:
| A producer, yes, but not the film's director.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| My original post literally asks if it's more accurate to
| compare CEOs with film producers and not directors.
| bmitc wrote:
| I misread it then with directors instead of producers.
| Apologies for that confusion.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Interesting. Intuitively no. But then, hm... maybe. There
| are some aspects that ring true but many others that
| don't, I think it is a provocative question and there
| probably is more than a grain of truth in it. The biggest
| difference to me is that the producer (normally) doesn't
| appear 'in camera' but the CEO usually is one of the most
| in camera. But when you start comparing the CEO with a
| lead actor who is _also_ the producer of the movie it
| gets closer.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zachary_Quinto
|
| Is pretty close to that image.
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| I think the problem is, this is not just about dumping the CEO.
| It's signalling a very clear shift away from where OpenAI was
| heading - which seemed to be very focussed on letting people
| build on top of the technology.
|
| The worry now is that the approach is going to be more of
| controlling access to just researchers who are trusted to be
| "safe".
| antonioevans wrote:
| i agree with this. What about the GPTs Store. Are they
| planning on killing that? Just concerning they'll kill the
| platform unit AGI comes out.
| fsociety wrote:
| On the other hand, I have seen an executive step away from a
| large company and then everything coincidentally goes to shit.
| It's hard to measure the effectiveness of an executive.
| swatcoder wrote:
| A deal-making CEO who can carry rapport with the right people,
| make clever deals, and earn public trust can genuinely make a
| huge difference to a profit-seeking product company's
| trajectory.
|
| But when your profit-seeking company is owned by a non-profit
| with a public mission, that trajectory might end up pointed the
| wrong way. The Dev Day announcements, and especially the
| marketplace, can be seen as suggesting that's exactly what was
| happening at OpenAI.
|
| I don't think everyone there wants them to be selling cool LLM
| toys, especially not on a "make fast and break things" approach
| and with an ecosystem of startup hackers operationalizing it.
| (Wisely or not) I think they want to be shepherding responsible
| AGI before someone else does so irresponsibly.
| jddj wrote:
| This is where I've ended up as well for now.
|
| I'm as distant from it all as anyone else, but I can easily
| believe the narrative that Ilya (et al.) didn't sign up there
| just to run through a tired page from the tech playbook where
| they make a better Amazon Alexa with an app store and gift
| cards and probably Black Friday sales.
| gardenhedge wrote:
| And that is fine.. but why the immediate firing, why the
| controversy?
| justaj wrote:
| My guess is that if Sam would have found this out before
| being fired, he would have done his best not to be fired.
|
| As such, it would have been much more of a challenge to
| shift OpenAI's supposed over-focus on commerce towards a
| supposed non-profit focus.
| eganist wrote:
| The immediate firing is from our perspective. Who's to
| say everything else wasn't already tried in private?
| jacquesm wrote:
| That may be so but then they should have done it well
| before Altman's last week at OpenAI where they allowed
| him to become that much more tied to their brand as the
| 'face' of the operation.
| eganist wrote:
| For all we know, the dev day announcements were the final
| straw and trigger for the decision that was probably
| months in the making.
|
| He was already the brand, and there likely wouldn't have
| been a convenient time to remove him from their
| perspective.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That may well be true. But that would prove that the
| board was out of touch with what the company was doing.
| If the board sees anything new on 'dev day' that means
| they haven't been doing their job in the first place.
| cthalupa wrote:
| Unless seeing something new on dev day is exactly what
| they meant by Altman not being consistently candid.
| jacquesm wrote:
| If Altman was doing something that ran directly against
| the mission of OpenAI in a way that all of the other
| stuff that OpenAI has been doing so far did not then I
| haven't seen it. OpenAI has been off-script for a long
| time now (compared to what they originally said) and
| outwardly it seemed the board was A-Ok with that.
|
| Now we either see a belated - and somewhat erratic -
| response to all that went before _or_ there is some
| smoking gun. If there isn 't they have just done
| themselves an immense disservice. Maybe they think they
| can live without donations now that the commercial ball
| is rolling downhill fast enough but that only works if
| you don't damage your brand.
| eganist wrote:
| > then I haven't seen it
|
| Unless I'm missing something, this stands to reason if
| you don't work there.
|
| Kinda like how none of us are privy to anything else
| going on inside the company. We're all speculating in the
| end, and it's healthy to have an open mind about what's
| going on without preconceived notions.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| I agree with what you've written here but would add the
| caveat that it's also rather terrible to be in a position
| where somehow "shepherding responsible AGI" is falling to
| these self-appointed arbiters. They strike me as woefully
| biased and ideological and _I do not trust them_. While I
| trust Altman even less, there 's nothing I've read about
| Sutskever that makes me think I want him or the people who
| think like him around him having this kind of power.
|
| But this is where we've come to as a society. I don't think
| it's a good place.
| nick222226 wrote:
| I mean, aren't they self appointed because they got there
| first?
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| No. Knew the right people, had the right funds, and said
| and did and thought the things compatible with getting
| investment from people with even more influence than
| them.
|
| Unless you're saying my only option is to pick and choose
| between different sets of people like that?
| 38321003thrw wrote:
| There is a political economy as well as a technical
| aspect to this that present inherent issues. Even if we
| can address the former by say regime change, the latter
| issue remains: the domain is technical and cognitively
| demanding. Thus the practitioners will generally sound
| sane and rational (they are smart people but that is no
| guarantee of anything other than technical abilities) and
| non-technical policy types (like most of the remaining
| board members at openAI) are practically compelled to
| take policy positions based either on 'abstract models'
| (which may be incorrect) or as after the fact reaction to
| observation of the mechanisms (which may be too late).
|
| The thought occurs that it is quite possible that just
| like humanity is really not ready (we remain concerned)
| to live with WMD technologies, it is possible that we
| have again stumbled on another technology that taxes our
| ethical, moral, educational, political, and economic
| understanding. We would be far less concerned if we were
| part of a civilization of generally thoughtful and
| responsible specimens but we're not. This is a cynical
| appraisal of the situation, I realize, but tldr is "it is
| a systemic problem".
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| In the end my concern comes down to that those who rise
| to power in our society are those who are best at playing
| the capitalist game. That's mostly, I guess, fine if what
| they're doing is being most efficient making cars or
| phones or grocery store chains or whatever.
|
| Making intelligent machines? Colour me disturbed.
|
| Let me ask you this re: _" the domain is technical and
| cognitively demanding"_ -- do you think Sam Altman (or a
| Steve Jobs, Peter Thiel, etc.) would pass a software
| engineer technical interview at e.g. Google? (Not saying
| those interviews are perfect, they suck, but we'll use
| that as a gatekeeper for now.). I'm betting the answer is
| quite strongly "no."
|
| So the selection criterion here is not the ability to
| perform _technically._ Unless we 're redefining
| technical. Which leaves us with "intellectually
| demanding" and "smart", which, well, frankly also applies
| to lawyers, politicians, etc.
|
| My worry is right now that the farther you go up at any
| of these organizations, the more the kind of intelligence
| and skills trends towards the "is good at manipulating
| and convincing others" kind of spectrum vs the "is good
| at manipulating and convincing machines" kind of
| spectrum. And it is into the former that we're
| concentrating more and more power.
|
| (All that said, it does seem like Sutskever would
| definitely pass said interview, and he's likely much
| smarter than I am. But I remain unconvined that that kind
| of smarts is the kind of smarts that should be making
| governance-of-humanity decisions)
|
| As terrible as politicians and various "abstract model"
| applying folks might be, at least they are nominally
| subject to being voted out of power.
|
| Democracy isn't a great system for producing
| _excellence_.
|
| But as a citizen I'll take it over a "meritocracy" which
| is almost always run by _bullshitters_.
|
| What we need is accountability and legitimacy and the
| only way we've found to produce on a mass society level
| is through democratic institutions.
| gedy wrote:
| I think what's silly about "shepherding responsible AGI" is
| this is basically math, it's not some genie that can be
| kept hidden or behind some Manhattan Project level of
| effort. Pandora's box is open, and the best we can do is
| make sure it's not locked up behind some corporation or
| gov't.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| I mean, that's clearly not really true, there's a huge _"
| means of production"_ aspect to this which comes down to
| being able to afford the datastructure infrastructure.
|
| The cost of the computing machinery and the energy costs
| to run it are actually _massive_.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Yup it's quite literally the world's most expensive
| parrot. (Mind you, a plain old parrot is not cheap
| either. But OpenAI is a whole other order of magnitude.)
| svaha1728 wrote:
| Parrots may live 50 years. H100s probably won't last half
| that long.
| gedy wrote:
| Sure but I meant the costs are feasible for many
| companies, hence competition. That was very different
| from the barriers to nuclear weapons development.
| xvector wrote:
| Are you sure this is the case? Tens of billions of
| dollars invested, yet a whole year later no one has a
| model that even comes close to GPT-3.5 - let alone GPT-4
| Turbo.
| krisoft wrote:
| > yet a whole year later no one has a model that even
| comes close to GPT-3.5 - let alone GPT-4 Turbo
|
| Is that true and settled? I only have my anecdotal
| experience, but in that it is not clear that GPT-3.5 is
| better than Google's bard for example.
| abraae wrote:
| > I think they want to be shepherding responsible AGI before
| someone else does so irresponsibly.
|
| Is this a thing? This would be like Switzerland in WWII doing
| nuclear weapons research to try and get there before the
| Nazis.
|
| Would that make any difference whatsoever to the Nazis
| timeframe? No.
|
| I fail to see how the presence of "ethical" AI researchers
| would slow down in the slightest the bad actors who are
| certainly out there.
| FormerBandmate wrote:
| America did nuclear weapons research to get there before
| the Nazis and Japan and we were able to use them to stop
| Japan
| vanrysss wrote:
| So the first AGI is going to be used to kill other AGIs
| in the cradle ?
| macintux wrote:
| Which reminds me, I really need to finish _Person of
| Interest_ someday.
| kbenson wrote:
| Or contain, or counter, or be used as a deterrent. At
| least, I think that's the idea being espoused here (in
| general, if not in the GP comment).
|
| I think U. S. VS Japan is not.necessarily the right model
| to be thinking here, but U.S. VS U.S.S.R., where we'd
| like to believe that neither nation would actually launch
| against the other, but both having the weapon meant they
| couldn't without risking severe damage in response making
| it a losing proposition.
|
| That said, I'm sure anyone with an AGI in their pocket/on
| their side will attempt to use it as a big stick against
| those that don't, in the Teddy Roosevelt meaning.
| T-A wrote:
| The scenario usually bandied about is AGI self-improving
| at an accelerating rate: once you cross the threshold to
| self-improvement, you quickly get superintelligence with
| God-like powers beyond human comprehension (a.k.a. the
| Singularity) as AGI v1 creates a faster AGI v2 which
| creates a faster AGI v3 etc.
|
| Any AI researchers still plodding along at mere human
| speed are then doomed: they won't be able to catch up
| even if they manage to reproduce the original
| breakthrough, since the head start enjoyed by AGI #1
| guarantees that its latest iteration is always further
| along the exponential self-improvement curve and
| therefore superior to any would-be competitor. Being
| rational(ists), they give up and welcome their new AI
| overlord.
|
| And if not, the AI god will surely make them see the
| error of their ways.
| username332211 wrote:
| I think that was part of the LessWrong eschatology.
|
| It doesn't make sense with modern AI, where improvement
| (be it learning or model expansion) is separated from
| it's normal operation, but I guess some beliefs can
| persevere very well.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| Modern AI also isn't AGI. We seem to get a revolution at
| the frontier every 5 years or so; it's unlikely the
| current LLM transformer architecture will remain the
| state of the art for even a decade. Eventually something
| more capable will become the new modern.
| mikrl wrote:
| Has the US ever stated or followed a policy of neutrality
| and openness?
|
| OpenAI positioned itself like that, much the same way
| Switzerland does in global politics.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Has the US ever stated or followed a policy of
| neutrality
|
| Yes, most of the time from the founding until the First
| World War.
|
| > and openness?
|
| Not sure what sense of "openness" is relevant here.
| swatcoder wrote:
| Not at all. Prior to WWI, the US was aggressively and
| intentionally cleaning European interests out of the
| Western hemisphere. It was in frequent wars, often with
| one European power or another. It just didn't distract
| itself _too much_ with squabbles between European powers
| over matters outside its claimed dominion.
|
| Establishing a hemispheric sphere of influence was no act
| of neutrality.
| mikrl wrote:
| > Not sure what sense of "openness" is relevant
|
| It is in the name OpenAI... not that I think the Swiss
| are especially transparent, but neither are the USA.
| Jare wrote:
| Openness sure, but neutrality? I thought they had always
| been very explicitly positioned on the "ethical AGI"
| side.
| alienbeast wrote:
| Having nukes protects you from other nuclear powers through
| mutually-assured destruction. I'm not sure whether that
| principle applies to AGI, though.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| They can't stop another country developing AI they are not
| fond of.
|
| They can use their position to lobby their own government
| and maybe other governments to introduce laws to govern AI.
| nradov wrote:
| There is no particular reason to expect that OpenAI will be
| the first to build a true AGI, responsible or otherwise. So
| far they haven't made any demonstrable progress towards that
| goal. ChatGPT is an amazing accomplishment and very useful,
| but probably tangential to the ultimate goal. When a real AGI
| is eventually built it may be the result of a breakthrough
| from some totally unexpected source.
| kelipso wrote:
| I'm guessing Altman had a bunch of experienced ML researchers
| writing CRUD apps and LLM toys instead of actual AI research
| and they weren't too happy. Personally I would be pissed as a
| researcher if the company took a turn and started in on
| improved marketing blurbs LLMs or whatever.
| Solvency wrote:
| If every jackass brain dead move Elon Musk has ever made
| hasnt gotten him fired yet, then allocating too many teams
| to side projects instead of AI research should not be a
| fireable offense.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Musk was fired as CEO of X/PayPal.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Fired as the CEO of X twice, the last time right before
| it became PayPal.
| jes5199 wrote:
| okay but I personally do want new LLM toys. who is going to
| provide them, now?
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Various camelid inspired models and open source code.
| huytersd wrote:
| You may be right in many cases but if you think that's true in
| all cases, you're a low level pleb that can't see past his own
| nose.
| te_chris wrote:
| There's a whole business book about this, good to great, where
| a key facet of companies that have managed to go from average
| to excellent over a sustained period of time is servant-leader
| CEOs
| victor9000 wrote:
| This was done in the context of Dev Day. Meaning that the board
| was convinced by Ilya that users should not have access to this
| level of functionality. Or perhaps he was more concerned that
| he was not able to gatekeep its release. So presumably it was
| Altman who pushed for releasing this technology to the general
| public. If this is accurate then this shift in control is bound
| to slow down feature delivery and create a window for
| competitors.
| fullshark wrote:
| It doesn't matter in the short term (usually). Then you look in
| 2-4 years and you see the collective impact of countless
| decisions and realize how important they are.
|
| In this case, tons of people already have resigned from OpenAI.
| Sam Altman seems very likely to start a rival company. This is
| a huge decision and will have massive consequences for the
| company and their product area.
| goldinfra wrote:
| It's completely ignorant to discount all organizational leaders
| based on your extremely limited personal experience. Thousands
| of years of history proves the difference between successful
| leaders and unsuccessful leaders.
|
| Sam Altman has been an _objectively_ successful leader of
| OpenAI.
|
| Everyone has their flaws, and I'm more of a Sam Altman hater
| than a fan, but even I have to admit he led OpenAI to great
| success. He didn't do most of the actual work but he did create
| the company and he did lead it to where it is today.
|
| Personally, If I had stock in OpenAI I'd be selling it right
| now. The odds of someone else doing as good a job is low. And
| the odds of him out-competing OpenAI is high.
| cthalupa wrote:
| > Sam Altman has been an objectively successful leader of
| OpenAI.
|
| I'm not sure this is actually the case, even ignoring the
| non-profit charter and the for-profit being beholden to it.
|
| We know that OpenAI has been the talk of the town, we know
| that there is quite a bit of revenue, and that Microsoft
| invested heavily. What we don't know is if the strategy being
| pursued ever had any chance of being profitable.
|
| Decades-long runways with hope that there is a point where
| profitability will come and at a level where all the
| investment was worth it is a pretty common operating strategy
| for the type of company Altman has worked with and invested
| in, but it is less clear to me that this is viable for this
| sort of setup, or perhaps at all - money isn't nearly as
| cheap as it was a decade ago.
|
| What makes a for-profit startup successful isn't necessarily
| what makes a for-profit LLC with an operating agreement that
| makes it beholden to the charter of a non-profit parent
| organization successful.
| FergusArgyll wrote:
| If the firing was because of a difference in "vision", then it
| doesn't really matter if Altman was key to making OpenAI so
| successful. Sutskever and co, don't want it to be successful (by
| market standards at least). If they get their way (past MSFT and
| others) then OpenAI will no longer be the cutting edge.
|
| Buy GOOGL?
| layer8 wrote:
| It seems you are saying that anything that doesn't put profit
| first can't be successful.
| cwillu wrote:
| By market standards. There will be no end to intended and
| unintended equivocation about this over the coming days.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| OpenAI's median salary of engineers is $900k. So yeah AI
| companies need money to be successful. Now if there is any
| way to generate billions of dollars per year long term
| without any profit objective, I will be happy to know.
| fallingknife wrote:
| "Can't" is a strong word, but a company that does will have
| more resources and likely outcompete it.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| In the past, many on HN complained that OpenAI had abandoned its
| public good mission and had morphed into a psuedo-private for-
| profit. If that was your feeling before, what do you think now?
| Are you relieved or excited? Are you the dog who caught the car?
|
| At this point, on day 2, I am heartened that their mission was
| most important, even at the heart of the most important
| technology maybe ever or since nuclear power or writing or
| democracy. I'm heartened at the board's courage - certainly they
| could anticipate the blowback. This change could transform the
| outcome for humanity and the board's job was that stewardship,
| not Altman's career (many people in SV have lost their jobs), not
| OpenAI's sales numbers. They should be fine with the overwhelming
| volume of investment available to them.
|
| Another way to look at it: How could this be wrong, given that
| their objective was not profit, and they can raise money easily
| with or without Altman?
|
| On day 3 or day 30 or day 3,000, I'll of course come at it from a
| different outlook.
| itronitron wrote:
| It's a lesson to any investor that doesn't have a seat on the
| board, what goes around comes around, ha ha :}
| orbital-decay wrote:
| If the rumors are correct and ideological disagreement was at
| the core of this, OpenAI is not going to be open anyway, as
| Sutskever wants more safety, which implies being as closed as
| possible. Whether it's "public good" is in the eye of the
| beholder, as there are multiple mutually incompatible concerns
| about AI safety, all of which have merit. The future balance
| between those will be determined by unpredictable events, as
| always.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > Whether it's "public good" is in the eye of the beholder
|
| That's too easy an answer, used to dismiss difficult
| questions and embrace amorality. There is public good,
| sometimes easy to define and sometimes hard. If ChatGPT is
| used to cure cancer, that would be a public good. If it's
| used to create a new disease that millions, that's obviously
| bad. Obviously, some questions are harder than that, but it
| doesn't excuse us from answering them and getting it right.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| The issue with giving everyone open access to uncontrolled
| everything is obvious, it does have merit indeed. The
| terrible example of unrestricted social media as
| "information superconductor" is alive and breathing,
| supposedly it led to at least one actual physical genocide
| within the last decade. The question that is less obvious
| to some is: do these safety concerns ultimately lead us
| into the future controlled by a few, who will then
| inevitably exploit everyone to a much worse effect? That
| it's already more or less the status quo is not an excuse;
| it needs to be discussed and not dismissed blindly.
|
| It's a very political question, and HN somewhat despises
| politics. But OpenAI is not an apolitical company either,
| they are ideologically driven and have the AGI (defined as
| "capable of replacing humans in economically important
| jobs) as their stated target. Your distant ancestors
| (assuming they were from Europe) were able to escape the
| totalitarianism and feudalism, starting from the Middle
| Ages, when the margins were _mile-wide_ compared to what we
| have now. AI controlled by a few is way more efficient and
| optimized; will you even have a chance before your entire
| way of thinking is turned to the desired direction?
|
| I'm from a country that lives in your possible future
| (Russia), I've seen a remarkably similar process from the
| inside, so this question seems very natural to me.
| layer8 wrote:
| Much of the criticism was that they are not open enough. I see
| no indication that this will be changing, given the AI safety
| concerns of the remaining board.
|
| Nevertheless, I agree that the firing was probably in line with
| their stated mission.
| tfehring wrote:
| I think it was a good thing that, in hindsight, the leading AI
| research company had a strong enough safety focus that it could
| do something like this. But that's only the case as long as
| OpenAI remains the leading AI research company going forward,
| and after yesterday's events I think that's unlikely. Pushing
| for more incremental changes at OpenAI, possibly by getting the
| board to enact stronger safety governance, would have been a
| better outcome for everyone.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >OpenAI had abandoned its public good mission and had morphed
| into a psuedo-private for-profit.
|
| >They should be fine with the overwhelming volume of investment
| available to them.
|
| >Another way to look at it: How could this be wrong, given that
| their objective was not profit, and they can raise money easily
| with or without Altman?
|
| This wasn't _just_ some cultural shift. The board of OpenAI
| created a seperate for profit legal entity in 2019. The for-
| profit legal entity received overwhelming investment from
| Microsoft to make money. Microsoft, Early investors, and
| Employees all have a stake and want returns from this for
| profit company.
|
| The separate non-profit OpenAI has a major problem on its hands
| if it thinks its goals are no longer aligned with the co-owners
| of the for-profit company.
| cthalupa wrote:
| The thing here is that the structure of these companies and
| the operating agreement for the for-profit LLC all
| effectively mean that everyone is warned going in that the
| for-profit is beholden to the mission of the non-profit and
| that there might be zero return on investment and that there
| may never be profit at all.
|
| The board answers to the charter, and are legally obligated
| to act in the interest of the mission outlined in the
| charter. Their charter says "OpenAI's mission is to ensure
| that artificial general intelligence (AGI) [...] benefits all
| of humanity" - not do that "unless it'd make more money for
| our for-profit subsidiary to focus on commercializing GPT"
| deeviant wrote:
| You seem super optimistic that backstabbing power-plays will
| result improvement.
|
| I see it far more likely that openAI will lock down its tech
| even more, in the name of "safety", but also predict it will
| always be possible to pay for their services never-the-less.
|
| Nothing in this situation makes me think OpenAI will be any
| more "open."
| chancancode wrote:
| Jeremy Howard (of fast.ai):
| https://x.com/jeremyphoward/status/1725712220955586899
|
| He is not exactly an insider, but seems broadly
| aligned/sympathetic/well-connected with the Ilya/researchers
| faction, his tweet/perspective was a useful proxy into what that
| split may have felt like internally.
| gmt2027 wrote:
| https://nitter.net/jeremyphoward/status/1725712220955586899
| rafaelero wrote:
| Such a bad take. Developers (me included) loved Dev Day.
| whoknowsidont wrote:
| What did you love about it?
| rafaelero wrote:
| Cheaper, faster and longer context window would be enough
| of an advancement for me. But then we also had the
| Assistant API that makes our lives as AI devs much easier.
| victor9000 wrote:
| Seriously, the longer context window is absolutely
| amazing for opening up new use-cases. If anything, this
| shows how disconnected the board is from its user base.
| marcinzm wrote:
| He didn't say developers, he said researchers.
| rafaelero wrote:
| He said in his opinion Dev Day was an "absolute
| embarrassment".
| marcinzm wrote:
| And his second tweet explained what he meant by that.
| campbel wrote:
| Pretty insightful I thought. The people who joined to create
| AGI are going to be underwhelmed by the products made
| available on dev day.
| LightMachine wrote:
| I was underwhelmed, but I got -20 upvotes on Reddit for
| pointing it out. Yes products are cool, but I'm not
| following OpenAI for another App Store, I'm following it
| for AGI. They should be directing all resources to that. As
| Sam said himself: once it is there, it will pay for itself.
| Settling to products around GPT-4 just passes the message
| that the curve has stagnated and we aren't getting more
| impressive capabilities. Which is saddening.
| eightysixfour wrote:
| Yeah - I think this is the schism. Sam is clearly a product
| person, these are AI people. Dev day didn't meaningfully move
| the needle on AI, but for people building products it sure
| did.
| belugacat wrote:
| Thinking you can develop AGI - if such a thing actually can
| exist - in an academic vacuum, and not by having your AI
| rubber meet the road through a plethora of real world
| business use cases strikes me as extreme hubris.
|
| ... I guess that makes me a product person?
| threeseed wrote:
| Or the obvious point that if you're not interested in
| business use cases then where are you going to get the
| money for the increasingly exorbitant training costs.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| Exactly this. Where do these guys think the money to pay
| their salaries let alone fund the vast GPU farm they have
| access to comes from?
| rafaelero wrote:
| The fact that this is a schism is already weird. Why do
| they care how the company transforms the technology coming
| from the lab into products? It's what pay their salaries in
| the end of the day and, as long as they can keep doing
| their research work, it doesn't affect them. Being resented
| about a thing like this to the point of calling it a
| "absolute embarrassment" when it clearly wasn't is childish
| to say the least.
| sseagull wrote:
| > as long as they can keep doing their research work, it
| doesn't affect them
|
| That's a big question. Once stuff starts going
| "commercial" incentives can change fairly quickly.
|
| If you want to do interesting research, but the money
| wants you to figure out how AI can help sell shoes, well
| guess which is going to win in the end - the one signing
| your paycheck.
| rafaelero wrote:
| > Once stuff starts going "commercial" incentives can
| change fairly quickly.
|
| Not in this field. In AI, whoever has the most
| intelligent model is the one that is going to dominate
| the market. No company can afford not investing heavily
| in research.
| chancancode wrote:
| I think you are missing the point, this is offered for
| perspective, not as a "take".
|
| I find this tweet insightful because it offered a perspective
| that I (and it seems like you also) don't have which is
| helpful in comprehending the situation.
|
| As a developer, I am not particularly invested nor excited by
| the announcements but I thought they were fine. I think
| things may be a bit overhyped but I also enjoyed their
| products for what they are as a consumer and subscriber.
|
| With that said, to me, from the outside, things seemed to be
| going fine, maybe even great, over there. So while I
| understand the words in the reporting ("it's a disagreement
| in direction"), I think I lack the perspective to actually
| understand what that entails, and I thought this was an
| insightful viewpoint to fill in the perspectives that I
| didn't have.
|
| The way this was handled still felt iffy to me but with the
| perspective I can at least imagine what may have drove people
| to want to take such drastic actions in the first place.
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| Everyone I speak to who have have been building on top of OpenAI
| - and I don't mean just stupid chat apps - feel like the rug has
| just been pulled out from under them.
|
| If as it seems, dev day was the last straw, what does that say to
| all the devs?
| cwillu wrote:
| Company with an unusual corporate structure designed
| specifically to be able to enforce an unpopular worldview,
| enforced that unpopular worldview.
|
| I get that people feel disappointed, but I can't help but feel
| like those people were maybe being a bit wilfully blind to the
| parts of the company that they didn't understand/believe-
| in/believe-were-meant-seriously.
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| It feels like they've had plenty of time to reset the
| direction of the company if they thought it was going wrong.
|
| Allowing it to go so far off course feels like they've really
| dropped the ball.
| cwillu wrote:
| I think that's where the "not consistently candid in his
| communications with the board, hindering its ability to
| exercise its responsibilities" comes in.
| Espressosaurus wrote:
| It's almost like by wrapping someone else's service, you are at
| their mercy.
|
| So you better be planning an exit strategy in case something
| changes slowly or quickly.
|
| Nothing new here.
| chasd00 wrote:
| I work in consulting the genai hype machine is reaching
| absurdity in my firm. I can't wait until Monday :)
| pknerd wrote:
| Prolly off topic but someone on Reddit's OpenAI's chat interface
| shared his discussion screenshots with chatGPT which claims that
| AGI status was achieved a long time back. You can still go and
| read the entire series of screenshots
| Animats wrote:
| Huh. So that mixed nonprofit/profit structure came back to bite
| them.
| hughesjj wrote:
| Bite who?
| davesque wrote:
| If this was an ideological battle of some kind, the only hope I
| have is that OpenAI will now be truly more Open! However, if this
| was motivated by safety concerns, that would mean OpenAI would
| probably become more closed. And, if the only thing that really
| distinguishes OpenAI from its competition is its so called data
| moat, then slowing down for the sake of safety will only give
| competitors time to catch up. Those competitors include companies
| in China who are undoubtedly much less concerned about safety.
| tdeck wrote:
| Is anyone else suspicious of who these "insiders" are and what
| their motive is? I notice the only concrete piece of information
| we might get (what was Altman not "candid" about?) is simply
| dismissed as a "power struggle" without any real detail. This is
| an incomplete narrative that serves one person's image.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Did ChatGPT suggest a big surprise?
| g42gregory wrote:
| My feeling is the the commercial side of the OpenAI brand is
| gone. How could OpenAI customers depend on the company, when the
| non-profit board goes against their interests (by slowing down
| the development and giving them inferior product)?
|
| On the other hand, the AGI side of the OpenAI brand is just fine.
| They will continue the responsible AGI development, spearheaded
| by Ilya Sutskever. My best wishes for them to succeed.
|
| I suspect Microsoft will be filing a few lawsuits and sabotaging
| OpenAI internally. It's an almost $3Tn company and they have an
| army of lawyers. They can do a lot of damage, especially when
| there may not be much sympathy for OpenAI in Silicon Valley's VC
| circles.
| TylerE wrote:
| I wonder if this represents a shift away from the LLM being the
| headline product. Their competitors are rapidly catching up in
| that space.
| croes wrote:
| It's a bad idea to make yourself dependent on a new service
| from the outset.
|
| They could have gone bankrupt, been sued into the ground, taken
| over by Microsoft...
|
| Just look at the just because they fired their CEO.
|
| Was the success based on GPT or the CEO?
|
| The former is still their and didn't get inferior.
|
| Slower growth doesn't mean shrinking
| g42gregory wrote:
| As an AI professional, I am very interested to hear about
| OpenAI's ideas, directions, safety programs, etc...
|
| As a commercial customer, the only things I am interested in
| is the quality of the commercial product they provide to me.
| Will they have my interests in mind going forward? Will they
| devote all their energy in delivering the best, most advanced
| product to me? Will robust support and availability be there
| in the future? Given the board's publicly stated priorities
| (which I was not aware of before!), I am not so sure anymore.
| croes wrote:
| >Will they have my interests in mind going forward? Will
| they devote all their energy in delivering the best, most
| advanced product to me?
|
| Sorry to burt you bubble but the primary motivation of a
| for-profit company is ... profit.
|
| If they make more money in screwing you, they will. Amazon,
| Google, Walmart, Microsoft, Oracle etc.
|
| The customer is never a priority, just a means to an end.
| g42gregory wrote:
| Absolutely. I totally agree with the sentiment. But, at
| least make an effort to pretend that you care! Give me
| something... OpenAI does not even pretend anymore. :-)
| The board was pretty clear. That's not a good sign for
| the customers.
| mhh__ wrote:
| I am curious what happens to ChatGPT now.
|
| If it's true that this is in part over Dev day and such, and
| they may have a point, _however_ if useful stuff with AI that
| helps people is gauche is OpenAI just going to turn into
| increasingly insular cult? ClosedAI but this time you can 't
| even pay for it?
| iamleppert wrote:
| I think OpenAI made the right choice. Just look at what has
| become of many of the most successful YC companies. Do we really
| want OpenAI to turn into another Airbnb? It's clear the biggest
| priority of YC is profit.
|
| They made a deal with Microsoft, who has a long history of
| exploiting users and customers to make as much money as possible.
| Just look at the latest version of Windows; Microsoft doesn't
| care about AI only as much as it enables them to make more and
| more money till no end through their existing products. They
| rushed to integrate AI into all of their legacy products to prop
| them up rather than offer something legitimately new. And they
| did it not organically but by throwing their money around,
| attracting the type of people who are primarily motivated by
| money. Look at how the vibe of AI has changed in the past year
| --- lots of fake influencers and the mad gold rush around it. And
| we are hearing crazy stories like comp packages at OpenAI in the
| millions, turning AI into a rich man's game.
|
| For a company that has "Open" in their name, none of their best
| and most valuable GPT models are open source. It feels as
| disingenuous as the "We" in WeWork. Even Meta has them beat here.
|
| Sam Altman, while good at building highly profitable SaaS,
| consumer, & B2B tech startups and running a highly successful
| tech accelerator, before this point, didn't have any kind of real
| background in AI. One can only imagine how he must feel like an
| outsider.
|
| I think it's a hard decision to fire a CEO, but the company is
| more than the CEO, it's the people who work there. A lot of the
| time the company is structured in such a way that the CEO is
| essentially not replaceable, we should be thankful OpenAI
| fortunately had the right structure in place to not have a
| dictator (even a benevolent one).
| Nidhug wrote:
| The problem is that it might unfortunately be necessary to have
| this kind of funding to be able to develop AGI. And funding
| will not come if there are no incentives for the investors to
| fund.
|
| What would you propose instead ?
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| I have spent time thinking about who would become the next CEO
| and even without mushrooms my brain came up with a totally out of
| context idea:
|
| Bill Gates.
|
| Microsoft is after all invested in OpenAI, and Bill Gates has
| become "loved by all" (who dont remember evil Gates of the
| yesteryears.
|
| I am not saying it will happen, 99,999% it wont but still he is
| well known and may be a good face to splash on top of OpenAI.
|
| After all he is one of the biggest charity guys now right?
| Nidhug wrote:
| Is Bill Gates really loved by all ? I feel like it was the case
| before COVID, but then his reputation seemed to go from loved
| to hated
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| Will Sam and Greg now go and create NextStep? (The OpenAI
| version)
| Michelangelo11 wrote:
| I've seen some discussion on HN in which people claimed that even
| really important engineers aren't -too- important and that Ilya
| is actually replaceable, using Apple's growth after Woz'
| departure as an example. But I don't think that's the best
| situation to compare this to. I think a much better one is John
| Carmack firing Romero from id Software after the release of
| Quake.
|
| Some background: During a period of about 10 years, Carmack kept
| making massive graphics advances by pushing cutting-edge
| technology to the limit in ways nobody else had figured out,
| starting with smooth horizontal scrolling in Commander Keen,
| through Doom's pseudo-3D, through Quake's full 3D, to advances in
| the Quake sequels, Doom 3, etc. It's really no exaggeration to
| say that every new id game engine from 1991 to 1996 created a new
| gaming genre, and the engines after that pushed forward the state
| of the art. I don't think anybody who knows this history could
| argue that John Carmack was replaceable.
|
| At the time, the rest of id knew this, which gave Carmack a lot
| of clout and eventually allowed him to fire co-founder John
| Romero. Romero was considered the kinda flamboyant, and
| omnipresent, public face of id -- he regularly went to cons,
| worked the press, played deathmatch tournaments, and so on (to be
| clear, he was a really talented level designer and programmer,
| among other things, I only want to point out that he was
| synonymous with id in the public eye). And what happened after
| the firing? Romero was given a ton of money and absurd publicity
| for new games ... and a few years later, it all went up in smoke
| and his new company folded, as he didn't end up making anything
| nearly as big as Doom or Quake. Meanwhile, id under Carmack kept
| cranking out hit after hit for years, essentially shrugging off
| Romero's firing like nothing happened.
|
| The moral of the story to me is that, when your revenue massively
| grows for every bit of extra performance you extract from
| bleeding-edge technology, engineer expertise REALLY matters. In
| the '90s, every minor improvement in PC graphics quality
| translated to a giant bump in sales, and the same is true of LLM
| output quality today. So, just like Carmack ultimately turned out
| to be the absolute key driver behind id's growth, I think there's
| a pretty good chance it's going to turn out that Ilya plays the
| same role at OpenAI.
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| > Quake III's fast inverse square root algorithm
|
| Carmack did not invent that trick; it had been around more than
| a decade before he used it. I remember reading a Jim Blinn
| column about that and other dirty tricks like it in an IEEE
| magazine years before Carmack "invented" it.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_inverse_square_root
| Michelangelo11 wrote:
| Yes, you're right -- I dug around in the Wikipedia article,
| and it turns out he even confirmed in an email it definitely
| wasn't him: https://www.beyond3d.com/content/articles/8/
|
| Thanks for the correction, edited the post.
| p1esk wrote:
| Ilya might be too concerned with AI safety to make significant
| progress on model quality improvement.
| danenania wrote:
| A difference in this case is how capital intensive AI research
| is at the level OpenAI is operating. Someone who can keep the
| capital rolling in (whether through revenue, investors, or
| partners) and get access to GPUs and proprietary datasets is
| essential.
|
| Carmack could make graphics advances on his own with just a
| computer and his brain. Ilya needs a lot more for OpenAI to
| keep advancing. His giant brain isn't enough by itself.
| Michelangelo11 wrote:
| That's a really, really good point. Maybe OpenAI, at this
| level of success, can keep the money coming in though.
| __loam wrote:
| We don't even know if they're profitable right now, or how
| much runway they have left.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I think the team that became Looking Glass Studios did a lot of
| the same things in parallel so it's a little unfair to say no
| one else had figured it out
| quadcore wrote:
| Not at the same level of quality. For example, their game,
| ultima underworld if my memory doesnt fault me, didnt have
| sub-pixel precision for texturing. Their texturing was a lot
| uglier and unpolished compared to Wolf and especially Doom. I
| remember I checked, they were behind. And their game crashed.
| Never saw Doom crash, not even once.
| quadcore wrote:
| _Meanwhile, id under Carmack kept cranking out hit after hit
| for years, essentially shrugging off Romero 's firing like
| nothing happened._
|
| I believe this is absolutely wrong. Quale 2, 3 and Doom 3 were
| critical success, not commercial ones, which led ID to be
| bought.
|
| John and John were like Paul and John from the beatles, they
| never made really great games anymore after their break up.
|
| And to be clear, that's because the role of Romero in the
| success of ID is often underrated like here. He invented those
| games (Doom and Quake and Wolf) as much as Carmack did. For
| example, Romero was the guy who invented percent-based life. He
| removed the _score_. This guy invented the modern video game in
| many ways. Games that werent based on Atari or Nintendo. He
| invented Wolf, Doom and Quake setups which were considerably
| more mature than Mario and Bomberman and it was new at the
| time. Romero invented the deathmatch and its "frag". And on
| and on.
| deanCommie wrote:
| > Meanwhile, id under Carmack kept cranking out hit after hit
| for years, essentially shrugging off Romero's firing like
| nothing happened.
|
| Romero was fired in 1996
|
| Until this point, as you mentioned id had created multiple
| legendary franchises with unique lore, attributes, and each one
| groundbreaking tech breakthroughs: Commander Keen, Wolfenstein
| 3D, Doom, Quake.
|
| After Romero left, id released:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_id_Software_games
|
| * Quake 2
|
| * Quake 3
|
| * Doom 3
|
| * And absolutely nothing else of any value or cultural impact.
| The only "original" thing was Rage which again had no
| footprint.
|
| There were a lot of technical achievements, yes, but it turns
| out that memorable games need more than interesting technology.
| They were well-reviewed for their graphics at a time when that
| was the biggest thing people expected from new id games -
| interesting new advances in graphics. For a while, they were
| THE ones pushing the industry forward until arguably Crysis.
|
| But the point is for anyone experiencing or interacting with
| these games today, Quake is Quake. Nobody remembers 1, 2 or 3 -
| it's just Quake.
|
| Now, was id a successful software company and business? Yes.
| Would it have become the industry titan and shaped the future
| all of all videogames based on their post Romero output?
| Absolutely not.
|
| So, while it is definitely justifiable to claim that Carmack
| achieved more on his own than Romero did, the truth is at least
| in the video game domain they needed each other to achieve the
| real greatness that they will be remembered for.
|
| It remains to be seen what history will say about ALtman and
| Sutskever.
| mlyle wrote:
| > But the point is for anyone experiencing or interacting
| with these games today, Quake is Quake. Nobody remembers 1, 2
| or 3 - it's just Quake.
|
| Quake 3 was unquestionably the pinnacle, the real beginning
| of esports, and enormously influential on shooter design to
| this day.
| reissbaker wrote:
| Three points:
|
| 1. I don't think Ilya is equivalent to Carmack in this case --
| he's been focused on safety and alignment research, not
| building GPT-[n]. By most accounts Greg Brockman, who quit in
| disgust over the move, was more impactful than Ilya in recent
| years, as well as the senior researchers who quit yesterday.
|
| 2. I think you are underselling what happened with id: while
| they didn't blow up as fantastically as Ion Storm (Romero's
| subsequent company), they slowly faded in prominence, and while
| graphically advanced, their games no longer represented the
| pinnacles of innovation that early Carmack+Romero id games
| represented. They eventually got bought out by Zenimax. Carmack
| alone was much better than Romero alone, but seemingly not as
| good as the two combined.
|
| 3. I don't think Sam Altman is equivalent to John Romero;
| Romero's biggest issue at Ion Storm was struggling to ship
| anything instead of endlessly spinning his wheels chasing
| perfection -- for example, the endless Daikatana delays and
| rewrites. Ilya's primary issue with Altman was he was shipping
| _too fast,_ not that he was unable to motivate and push his
| teams to ship impressive products quickly.
|
| I hope Sam and Greg start a new foundational AI company, and if
| they do, I am extremely excited to see what they ship. TBH,
| much more excited than I am currently by OpenAI under a more
| alignment-and-regulation regime that Ilya and Helen seems to
| want.
| cthalupa wrote:
| Sutskever has shifted to safety and alignment research this
| year. Previously he was directly in charge of the development
| of GPT, from GPT-1 on.
|
| Brockman did an entirely different type of work than
| Sutskever. Brockman's primary focus was on the infrastructure
| side of things - by all accounts the software he wrote to
| manage the pre-training, training, etc., is all world-class
| and a large part of why they were able to be as efficient as
| they are, but that is not the same thing as being the brains
| behind the ML portion.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| You know a lot more than me on this subject but can it also be
| that starting new company and for it to not die is quite hard.
| Especially in gaming.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| Who's talking about replacing Ilya? What are you talking about?
| summerlight wrote:
| My take: in any world-class technology company, tech is above
| everything. You cannot succeed with tech alone, but you will
| never do without tech. Ilya was able to kick Sam out even with
| all his significant works and presences because Sam was
| fundamentally a business guy who lacks of tech ownership. You
| don't go against the real tech owner, this is a binary choice
| between either to build a strong tech ownership yourself or to
| delegate a significant amount of business controls to the tech
| owner.
| biofunsf wrote:
| What I'd really like to understand is why the board felt like
| they had to this as a surprise coup, and not a slower more
| dignified firing.
|
| If they gave Altman 1 weeks notice and let him save face in the
| media, what would they have lost? Is there a fear Altman would
| take all the best engineers on the way out?
| throw555chip wrote:
| As someone else commented on this page, it wasn't a coup.
| biofunsf wrote:
| This seems a pedantic point. In the "not legal" sense I agree
| since that seems part of a real coup. But it certainly was a
| "surprise ousting of the current leadership", which I mean
| when I say coup.
| meroes wrote:
| Why has no one on HN considered it has to do with sexually
| assaulting his sister when they were young?
|
| https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QDczBduZorG4dxZiW/sam-altman...
|
| My other main guess is his push for government regulation being
| seen as stifling AI growth or even collusion with unaligned
| actors by the more scienc-y side and got him ousted by them.
| Madmallard wrote:
| Social value is king.
|
| ability to do work < ability to manage others to do work <
| ability to lead managers to success < ability to convince other
| leaders that your vision is the right one and one they should
| align with
|
| The necessity of not saying the wrong thing goes up exponentially
| with each rung. The necessity of saying the right things goes up
| exponentially with each rung.
| torstenvl wrote:
| It isn't a coup. A coup is when power is taken and taken by
| force, not when your constituents decide you no longer represent
| their interests well. That's like describing voting out a
| politician as a coup.
|
| Calling it a coup falsely implies that OpenAI in some sense
| _belongs_ to Sam Altman.
|
| If anything is a coup, it's the idea that a founder can
| incorporate a company and sell parts of it off, and nevertheless
| still own it. It's the wresting of control from the actual owners
| in favor of a public facing executive.
| pdntspa wrote:
| > voting out a politician as a coup.
|
| That6 is literally a political coup
| username332211 wrote:
| It's not uncommon to describe the fall of a government as a
| "parliamentary" coup, if the relevant proceedings of a
| legislative assembly are characterized by haste and intrigue,
| rather than debate and deliberation.
|
| For example, the French revolution saw 3 such events commonly
| descried as coups - the the fall of Robespierre on 9-th of
| Thermidor and the Directory's (technically legal) annulment of
| elections on the 18-th of Fructidor and 22-nd Floreal. The last
| one was even somewhat bloodless.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Yup. The only correct governance metaphor here is the opposite.
| It's a defense of openAI's constitution. The company,
| effectively like Mozilla, was deliberately structured as a non-
| profit in which the for-profit arm exists to raise capital to
| pursue the mission of the former. Worth paying attention to
| what they have to say on their structure:
|
| https://openai.com/our-structure
|
| especially this part:
|
| https://images.openai.com/blob/142770fb-3df2-45d9-9ee3-7aa06...
| crazygringo wrote:
| No, you're confusing business with politics. You're right that
| a literal _coup d 'etat_ is the forced takeover of a state with
| the backing of its own military.
|
| But in the business and wider world, a _coup_ (without the _d
| 'etat_ part) is, by analogy, any takeover of power that is
| secretly planned and executed as a surprise. (We can similarly
| talk about a company "declaring war" which means to compete by
| mobilizing all resources towards a single purposes, not to fire
| missiles and kill people.)
|
| This is absolutely a coup. It was an action planned by a subset
| of board members in secret, taken by a secret board meeting
| missing two of its members (including the chair), where not
| even Microsoft had any knowledge or say, despite their 49%
| investment in the for-profit corporation.
|
| I'm not arguing whether it's right or wrong. But this is one of
| the great boardroom coups of all time -- one for the history
| books. There's a reason it's front-page news, not just on HN
| but in the NYT and WSJ as well.
| torstenvl wrote:
| Your post is internally inconsistent. Defining a coup as "any
| takeover of power" is inconsistent with saying that firing
| Sam Altman is a coup. CEOs _do not_ have and _should not_
| have any power vis-a-vis the board. It 's right there in the
| name.
|
| Executives do not have any right to their position. They are
| an officer, i.e., an agent of the stakeholders. The idea that
| the executive is the holder of the power and it's a "coup" if
| they aren't allowed to remain is disgustingly reminiscent of
| Trumpian stop-the-steal rhetoric.
| gfodor wrote:
| All you're saying here is that it's never possible to
| characterize a board ousting a ceo as a coup. People do,
| because it's a useful way to characterize when this happens
| in the way it did here vs many other ways that involve far
| less deception and so on.
| crazygringo wrote:
| You're ignoring the rest of the definition I provided. I
| did not say it was "any takeover of power". Please read the
| definition I gave in full.
|
| And I am not referring to the CEO status of Altman at all.
| That's not the coup part.
|
| What I'm referring to is the fact that beyond his firing as
| CEO, _he and the chairman were removed from their board
| seats, as a surprise planned and executed in secret_. That
| 's the coup. This is not a board firing a CEO who was bad
| at their job; this is two _factions_ at the company where
| one orchestrates a total takeover of the other. That 's a
| coup.
|
| Again, I'm not saying whether this is good or bad. I'm just
| saying, this is as clear-cut of a coup as there can be.
| This has nothing in common with the normal firing of a CEO
| accomplished out in the open. This is four board members
| removing the other two in secret. That's a coup if there
| ever was one.
| w10-1 wrote:
| It's hard to believe a Board that can't control itself or its
| employees could responsibly manage AI. Or that anyone could
| manage AGI.
|
| There is a long history of governance problems in nonprofits (see
| the transaction-cost economics literature on point). Their
| ambiguous goals induce politics. One benefit of profit-driven
| boards is that the goals make only well-understood risk trade-
| off's between growth now or later, and the board members are
| selected for their actual stake in that actual goal.
|
| This is the problem with religious organizations and ideological
| governments: they can't be trusted, because they will be captured
| by their internal politics.
|
| I think it would be much more rational to make AI/AGI an entirely
| for-profit enterprise, BUT reverse the liability defaults and
| require that they pay all external costs resulting from their
| products.
|
| Transaction cost economics shows that in theory that it doesn't
| matter where liability is allocated so long as the transaction
| cost of redistributing liability is near zero (i.e., contract in
| advance and tort after are cheap), because then parties just work
| it out. Government or laws are required only to make up for the
| actual non-zero dispute transaction cost by establishing settled
| expectation.
|
| The internet and software generally has been a domain where
| consumers have NO redress whatsoever for exported costs. It's
| grown (and disrupted) fantastically as a result.
|
| So to control AI/AGI, make it for-profit, but flip liability to
| require all exported costs to be paid by the developer. That
| would ensure applications are incredibly narrow AND have net-
| positive social impact.
| dividendpayee wrote:
| Yeah that's right. There's a blogger in another post on HN that
| makes the same point at the very end:
| https://loeber.substack.com/p/a-timeline-of-the-openai-board
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| From that link:
|
| >I could not find anything in the way of a source on when, or
| under what circumstances, Tasha McCauley joined the Board.
|
| I would add, "or why she's on the board or why anyone thought
| she was qualified to be on the board".
|
| At least with Helen Toner the intent was likely just to add a
| token AI Safety academic to pacify "concerned" Congressmen.
|
| I am kind of curious how Adam D'Angelo voted. If he voted
| against removing Sam that would make this even more of a
| farce.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| The solution is to replace the board members with AGI entities,
| isn't it? Just have to figure out how to do the real-time
| incorporation of current data into the model. I bet that's an
| active thing at OpenAI. Seems to have been a hot discussion
| topic lately:
|
| https://www.workbyjacob.com/thoughts/from-llm-to-rqm-real-ti...
|
| The real risk is that some government will put the result in
| charge of their national defense system, aka Skynet, not that
| kids will ask it how to make illegal drugs. The curious silence
| on military-industrial applications of LLMs makes me suspect
| this is part of the OpenAI story... Good plot for a novel, at
| least.
| ethanbond wrote:
| > The real risk is that some government will put the result
| in charge of their national defense system, aka Skynet, not
| that kids will ask it how to make illegal drugs.
|
| These cannot possibly be the most realistic failure cases you
| can imagine, are they? Who cares if "kids" "make illegal
| drugs?" But yeah, if kids can make illegal drugs with this
| tech, then actual bad actors can make actual dangerous
| substances with this tech.
|
| The real risk is manifold and totally unforeseeable the same
| way that a 400 Elo chess player has zero conception of "the
| risks" that a 2000 Elo player will exploit to beat them.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Every bad actor who wants to make dangerous substances can
| find that information in the scientific literature with
| little difficulty. An LLM, however, is probably not going
| to tell you that the mostly likely outcome of a wannabe
| chemist trying to cook up something or other from an LLM
| recipe is that they'll poison themselves.
|
| This generally fits a notion I've heard expressed
| repeatedly: today's LLMs are most useful to people who
| already have some domain expertise, it just makes things
| faster and easier. Tomorrow's LLMs, that's another
| question, as you imply.
| __loam wrote:
| I appreciate this argument, but I also think naked profit
| seeking is the cause of a lot of problems in our economy and
| there are qualities that are hard to quantify when you
| structure the organization around it. Blindly following the
| economic argument can also cause problems, and it's a big
| reason why American corporate culture moved away from building
| a good product first towards maximizing shareholder value. The
| OpenAI board certainly seems capricious and impulsive given
| this decision though.
| patcon wrote:
| > Their ambiguous goals induce politics. [...] This is the
| problem with religious organizations and ideological
| governments: they can't be trusted, because they will be
| captured by their internal politics.
|
| Yes, of course. But that's because "doing good" is by
| definition much more ambiguous than "making money". It's way
| higher dimension, and it has uncountable definitions.
|
| So nonprofits will by definition involve more politics at the
| human level. I'd say we must accept that if we want to live
| amongst the actions of nonprofits rather than just for-profits.
|
| To claim that "politics" are a reason something "can't be
| trusted" is akin to saying involvement of human affairs means
| something can't be trusted (over computers). We must imagine
| effective politics, or else we cannot imagine effective human
| affairs -- only mechanistic affairs of simple optimization
| systems (like capitalist markets)
| sheepscreek wrote:
| Here's another theory.
|
| > the ousting was likely orchestrated by Chief Scientist Ilya
| Sutskever over concerns about the safety and speed of OpenAI's
| tech deployment.
|
| Who was first to launch a marketplace for GPTs/agents? It wasn't
| OpenAI, but Poe by Quora. Guess who sits on the OpenAI non-profit
| board? Quora CEO. So at least we know where his interest lies
| with respect to the vote against Altman and Greg.
| svnt wrote:
| This is a really good point. If a non profit whose board you
| sit on releases a product that competes with a product from the
| corporation you manage, how do you manage that conflict of
| interest? Seems he should have stepped down.
| loeber wrote:
| Yeah, I just wrote about this as well on my substack. There
| were two significant conflicts of interest on the OpenAI
| board. Adam D'Angelo should've resigned once he started Poe.
| The other conflict was that both Tasha McCauley and Helen
| Toner were associated with another AI governance
| organization.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, he should have.
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| The current interim CEO also spearheaded ChatGPT's development.
| Its the biggest product, consumer market based move the
| company's ever made. I can't imagine it's simply a pure "Sam
| wanted profits and Ilya/board wanted pure research" hard line
| in the sand situation.
| nprateem wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if this is the chief scientist getting
| annoyed the CEO is taking all the credit for the work and the
| researchers aren't getting as much time in the limelight. It's
| probably the classic 'Meatloaf vs the guy who actually wrote the
| songs' thing.
| speedylight wrote:
| The real issue is that OpenAI is both a for profit and a non
| profit organization. This structure creates a very significant
| conflict of interest where maintaining balance between both of
| them is very tricky business. The non-profit board shouldn't have
| been in charge of the for-profit aspect of the company.
| naveen99 wrote:
| Balance is irrelevant. It's an accounting mechanism for irs
| rules.
| cthalupa wrote:
| The for-profit would not exist if the non-profit was not able
| to maintain control. The only reason it does exist is because
| they were able to structure it in such a way that the for-
| profit is completely beholden to the non-profit. There is no
| requirement in the charter for the non-profit or the operating
| agreement of the for-profit to maintain a balance - it
| explicitly is the opposite of that. The operating agreement
| that all investors in and employees of the for-profit _must_
| sign explicitly states that investments should be considered
| donations, no profits are obligated to be made or returned to
| anyone, all money might be dumped into AGI R &D, etc. and that
| the for-profit is specifically beholden to the charter and
| mission of the non-profit.
|
| https://openai.com/our-structure
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| >The for-profit would not exist if the non-profit was not
| able to maintain control.
|
| The non-profit will not exist at all if Microsoft walks away
| and all the other investors follow Sam and Greg. Neither GPUs
| nor researchers are free.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Thought experiment: what if Mozilla had split between its
| Corporation and Foundation years ago, when it was at its peak?
| evolve2k wrote:
| > Szymon Sidor, an open source baselines researcher
|
| What does that title even mean. As we know Open AI is ironicly
| not known for doing open source work. I'm left guessing he
| 'research the open source competition' as it were.
|
| Can anyone shed further light on the role/research?
| chaostheory wrote:
| I wonder if Altman, Brockman, and company will join Elon or
| whether they will just start a new company?
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