[HN Gopher] OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag ove...
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OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role
Author : himaraya
Score : 105 points
Date : 2023-11-19 20:35 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| jimsimmons wrote:
| Paywall
| promiseofbeans wrote:
| https://archive.ph/hLl2l
| erikgahner wrote:
| https://archive.is/hLl2l
| d_sem wrote:
| It's worth knowing the specific reasons why the board fired Sam
| before assessing the value of this news. Too much rumor and not
| enough evidence.
| brookst wrote:
| It seems clear that there weren't specific reasons, just a kind
| of final straw in the product announcements that made the board
| realize how far from the original mission the company had
| drifted.
|
| Turning it into an emergency and surprise coup with innuendo of
| wrongdoing looks to have been a huge mistake, and may result in
| total loss of control where a more measured course correction
| could have succeeded.
| manyoso wrote:
| Whatever the case all involved look terrible.
| itchy_spider44 wrote:
| Ilya is the stereotypical genius mind that is extremely
| passionate yet disconnected from the real world. He got way
| too worked up about abstract issues, failed to see the bigger
| picture and had a meltdown that other board members took
| seriously because he's a cofounder. He is instrumental in the
| research but he shouldn't be running the business.
| kranke155 wrote:
| Is there any way he can even stay if Altman returns? Seems
| like one of them is out and making their own AI venture
| soon.
| cft wrote:
| If Steve can make him stay and remain productive, he's a
| real business genius
| romanhn wrote:
| He could possibly stay in a pure Chief Scientist role
| while abdicating his board seat. But if I were a CEO, I'd
| have a hard time trusting a C-level role to someone whose
| vision is diametrically opposed to my own.
| bossyTeacher wrote:
| He won't. In a company, you want all employees to share
| the same vision. Ylia and Altman clearly don't. There is
| no point pretending
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| Make him the same offer he made Brockman - you can stay
| on as an employee but you're off the board.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| He'd probably be better off going to Meta or HuggingFace
| and working on getting open source as close to OpenAI's
| offerings as possible. I expect that real innovation (vs.
| commercialization) is now fully dead at OpenAI, with them
| instead focusing on ROI for Microsoft.
| letmevoteplease wrote:
| Ilya is not a champion of open source: "We were wrong.
| Flat out, we were wrong. If you believe, as we do, that
| at some point, AI -- AGI -- is going to be extremely,
| unbelievably potent, then it just does not make sense to
| open-source. It is a bad idea... I fully expect that in a
| few years it's going to be completely obvious to everyone
| that open-sourcing AI is just not wise."
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/15/23640180/openai-
| gpt-4-lau...
| imjonse wrote:
| He's opposed to making powerful models open source,
| unfortunately.
| shmerl wrote:
| If "bigger picture" means making more money with less
| safety concerns, then I think he is totally right to oppose
| that.
| kuchenbecker wrote:
| My pure speculation is this was a legal coup, in that yes
| the board has the authority to fire Sam, but
| overestimated the blowback.
|
| Msft, for example, could threaten to take their GPUs and
| go home; the sudden firing cost MSFT 50B in market cap
| which is 50% the estimated Market cap of OpenAI and 5x
| their 10B investment.
| shrimpx wrote:
| > He is instrumental in the research but he shouldn't be
| running the business.
|
| To push back on this a bit. If two yet unknown people, "an
| Altman" and "an Ilya", both applied to YC to start a
| company that builds and sells AI models, guess who would
| get funded. Not the guy who can't build AI models.
|
| I find it bizarre that the guy who can build is suddenly
| the villain-nerd who can't be trusted, and the salesman is
| the hero, in this community.
| fidotron wrote:
| There has been a huge cultural shift in tech towards
| devaluing builders and (excessively) emphasising the
| roles of operations and sales.
|
| In reality you need all of them, and they are all
| separate talents, but things are clearly unbalanced.
| shrimpx wrote:
| It's how whole industrial sectors become enshittified.
| WalterSear wrote:
| IMHE at YC, I'd put my money on whichever talked a more
| monetizable game.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| Yeah, it looks like Sutskever was too late in realizing how
| far down the path of "embrace, extend, extinguish" OpenAI had
| gone and made a last ditch effort to stop it.
| hotnfresh wrote:
| Purely outside perspective, but people've been complaining
| for quite a while that OpenAI seems to have bailed on their
| original mission. Sure looks like Altman was capitalism'ing
| the whole thing--maybe not on purpose, but because it's just
| the only way he knows to operate--and had kinda half-sold it
| to Microsoft, which sure is corroborated by folks posting on
| here expecting MS to now be in a position to forcibly
| override the nonprofit board's decisions, and by rumors that
| in fact that's what's going on.
|
| Looks like they were right to boot him, but may have done it
| way too late, having already _de facto_ lost control due to
| the direction he'd guided the organization. If he comes out
| on top, it'll mean the original OpenAI and its mission is
| dead, looks like to me, and the board was already cut out
| months ago but didn't realize it yet.
| bossyTeacher wrote:
| OpenAI was ideologically dead when when they sold it to MS
| imo
| Davidzheng wrote:
| Can we use more precise language please
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| Yeah it's interesting to me how many here on HN seem to be
| taking Sam's side -- I feel like I've noticed HN users in
| OpenAI threads mentioning how dishonest Sam is.
|
| Sam seems to have a "move fast and break things" approach
| which would be appropriate for a less critical industry
| jmckib wrote:
| Does the board not have final control? Why have they agreed
| (in principle) to step down? I wish more of the reporting
| around this was specific about who has the power to do what.
| ISL wrote:
| If enough employees quit or Microsoft throws some weight
| around, the enterprise could implode, making board-control
| moot.
| cwillu wrote:
| My understanding is that, fundamentally, the only power the
| board _has_ is to fire the CEO. The CEO, not wanting to be
| fired, is therefore incentivized to manage the board's
| expectations, which looks a lot like being willing to take
| direction from the board if you squint a bit.
|
| The problem comes when the situations starts to resemble
| the line about how, if you owe a bank a billion dollars,
| you own the bank: if the direction the CEO has taken the
| company differs enough from the vision of the board, and
| they've had enough time to develop the company in that
| direction, they can kinda hold the organization hostage.
| Yes, the company isn't what the board really wanted it to
| be, but it's still worth a bajillion dollars: completely
| unwinding it and starting over is unthinkable, but all the
| options that include firing the CEO (the only real lever
| the board has, the foundation of all the decision-making
| weight that they have, remember) end up looking like that.
| Davidzheng wrote:
| If you really believe in the ideology and believe that
| the continuation of openai is dangerous--shutting down
| the company completely should be an option you consider
| cwillu wrote:
| Oh, absolutely, although you'd have to consider what
| happens to the tech and the people who developed it: it
| may be better to have the out-of-control genie at least
| nominally under your control than not.
| zeven7 wrote:
| My guess is it's hard to say exactly who has the power and
| where the power comes from. I bet Sam and his side don't
| have any direct power, but their power in the negotiation
| comes from other sources, like the ability of more Sam
| loyalists to resign, and Microsoft legal threats which
| don't have to be legitimate to be effective since they have
| such powerful lawyers. So on paper the board has all the
| power, but that doesn't necessarily translate to the real
| world.
| pjc50 wrote:
| I'm surprised nobody's leaked the minutes. It all seems very
| amateurish. I had thought it was secret news of big misconduct,
| but instead it's sub-amongus plotting.
| techterrier wrote:
| seems he had a side hustle:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-19/altman-so...
| nostrademons wrote:
| Also its likely that a large number of the news stories coming
| out right now are PR "plants" by one side or the other to make
| the firing seem justified or the return a fait accompli. In a
| coup one of the first tasks is to get public opinion on your
| side and build momentum for the outcome you want to see.
|
| I'm curious where the rank & file OpenAI employees stand on
| this, as it seems to me like they will be the ultimate
| kingmakers. The Reddit thread on Friday made it seem like they
| supported Ilya - but for all we know, the anonymous Reddit
| poster might have been Ilya himself.
| eightysixfour wrote:
| The board lost this whole gambit from the initial press
| release and never recovered.
| skwirl wrote:
| It indeed did seem like something Ilya would post himself, or
| at least someone cosplaying as him. Based on what we've seen
| on Twitter from employees it looks like a significant chunk
| supports Sam.
| dontupvoteme wrote:
| They're dreaming of being the next version of early
| googlers, i guess that is inevitable once people start
| doing math equations that include eleven digit numbers in
| them
| nostrademons wrote:
| OpenAI's been offering $800K+ compensation for mid-level
| AI engineers, roughly double what Google offers them, so
| yeah I suspect a large portion of the recent staff is
| probably late-stage Googlers who have dreams of being
| like early Googlers.
| Davidzheng wrote:
| All this talk of talent, they just end up with a company
| full of people driven only by monetary pursuits. How
| could it ever have worked with the non profit mission
| fidotron wrote:
| This is anything involving Effective Altruists. It is a
| facade of respectability to justify chasing money at all
| costs.
| medler wrote:
| In the current controversy, the Effective Altruists made
| a move to put safety over profits and are being demonized
| for it
| alecco wrote:
| I've only seen support for Altman from the press. (guess who
| spends ads on the press and has more political connections)
|
| The board was naive, to say the least.
| chucke1992 wrote:
| Well, he is basically the face of OpenAI and ChatGPT and
| the whole AI push. And at the same time he is not unlikable
| either.
| throw555chip wrote:
| Which is unusual since it's been around since 1956:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_artificial_intel
| lig...
|
| "The field of AI research was founded at a workshop held
| on the campus of Dartmouth College, USA during the summer
| of 1956."
| skwirl wrote:
| It's pretty clearly just a power play by four of the board
| members. Keep in mind Sam was part of the board and Greg
| Brockman was chairman of the board, so this was 4 board members
| ousting 2 other board members. OpenAI execs have already said
| it wasn't for wrongdoing.
| cedws wrote:
| The only power MS has is soft power as a backer. Will that win
| over the board's actual power? If MS pulls investment it will be
| a catastrophic blow.
| bilal4hmed wrote:
| pulling investment would be a hard power. Imagine if Microsoft
| says the change in leadership and idiotic board means the
| contract is done, no more compute for openAI and then goes on
| to back Sam Altmans new company
|
| openai will be writing papers and asking for donations within a
| weeks time at that point as the rest of openAI quits
| dontupvoteme wrote:
| .. and MS takes a massive hit financially as they're
| hardpdroven as an unreliable cloud service.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| No one is going to leave Microsoft because of some amateur
| hour non profit board fuckery that had Microsoft stepping
| in as the adult. You don't tell your partner investing
| billions of dollars of value you're about to fire a CEO
| over perspective differences in a very public way, coloring
| it as malfeasance or dishonesty, and you think someone is
| ever going to take you seriously again?
|
| Anyone with even a basic level of business sense isn't
| going to hold Microsoft responsible in a negative light for
| prudent reactions to volatile partner behaviors. These are
| not just startup cloud credits being given to OpenAI.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > No one is going to leave Microsoft because of some
| amateur hour non profit board fuckery that had Microsoft
| stepping in as the adult.
|
| But will they leave Microsoft (or, at least, be less
| inclined to rely on Microsoft in the future where
| competitors exsit) because of Microsoft terminating a
| relationship on which their access to a technology at the
| core of an enterprise service that enterprise customers
| rely on is based?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Microsoft will make the case that those customers should
| onboard to Microsoft offerings when at parity due to the
| unreliability of OpenAIs governance. And they won't be
| wrong. Enterprise customers don't want to hear about a
| critical vendor staging a board coup on Bloomberg, with a
| bunch of key employees quitting in solidarity, and then
| reading only a day or two later "on second thought, we
| were wrong, CEO is coming back." This will make your
| vendor/third party risk team very twitchy. This will make
| executive leadership give the command down the chain to
| constantly explore alternatives.
|
| OpenAI's actions do not give people who approve tens or
| hundreds of millions of dollars in spend the warm fuzzy
| feeling. Microsoft knows exactly the consistency and
| stability these customers desire. They are the conduit by
| which value flows from OpenAI to Microsoft customers
| until Microsoft can deliver the value themselves.
|
| (also why people get fed Teams vs Slack; because of who
| is making the purchasing decision, and why it's being
| made)
| dontupvoteme wrote:
| "Sorry, I don't have to worry about this sort of thing
| with AWS"
|
| They get hacked by foreign governments due to their utter
| incompetence a lot less, too.
| tempnow987 wrote:
| Uh, you have a nonprofit board firing a CEO at a board
| meeting that doesn't even sound like was properly noticed.
| Was the board president even given time to attend?
|
| And Microsoft has total rights to the models and weights,
| so they can CONTINUE their services and then spin up with
| Sam's new company.
| staticman2 wrote:
| * _Uh, you have a nonprofit board firing a CEO at a board
| meeting that doesn 't even sound like was properly
| noticed. Was the board president even given time to
| attend?*_
|
| I think it's reasonable to assume that even a
| controversial board checked with their lawyer and did
| what was legally required. Especially as nobody involved
| seems to be claiming otherwise.
| kranke155 wrote:
| In this imaginary hypothesis you don't think some other giant
| will fund them?
| bilal4hmed wrote:
| without altman who would want to come in and fund the folks
| who made this decision ? Fire youre CEO on friday, hire him
| back on Saturday ??
|
| esp if Altman takes the majority of the folks from money
| making side
| bossyTeacher wrote:
| This. The OpenAI board as of now looks incompetent by
| sacking and then trying to rehire their most public
| figure in the span of a few days. Lacks determination,
| confidence and commitment
| gizmondo wrote:
| I don't think the board is trying to rehire him though,
| more like being pressured to do so against their wishes.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > pulling investment would be a hard power. Imagine if
| Microsoft says the change in leadership and idiotic board
| means the contract is done, no more compute for openAI and
| then goes on to back Sam Altmans new company
|
| ...losing their licenses to OpenAI's technology and thus the
| Azure OpenAI service offering for which they have enterprise
| customers who went with them because Microsoft is the secure,
| enterprise vendor whose reliability they have learned to
| count on.
|
| Good way to make the "Nobody got fired for hiring Microsoft"
| that followed the same thing for IBM a thing of the past.
|
| Yeah, with the right people, Sam's company might eventually
| give Microsoft a technically-adequate replacement technology,
| but Microsoft's enterprise position isn't founded on
| technical adequacy alone.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Unless sam Altman is actually GPT4 and is typing like mad at
| all times I don't see how this impacts OpenAI in the least.
| There are plenty of suitors waiting for a chance to back
| OpenAI and forge such close partnerships. Sam is a talking
| head, backing his venture is backing vaporware until it's
| not. OpenAI is here and now, and even if he churns senior
| leadership and line people, their advantage is so extreme at
| the present it'll be a few years of disruption before anyone
| has caught up, it's when that happens it's more likely to be
| Claude than some new venture.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Yeah, MS leaving is the absolute end of OpenAI (and for all
| practical purposes the end of Ilya's career). It's Satya's call
| now, he's not happy and wants @sama back.
|
| Next week is going to be interesting!
| kranke155 wrote:
| What a wild idea. You actually think of the most esteemed AI
| researchers will have trouble finding funding after this?
| Someone somewhere will give him money.
|
| We're in an arms race. Ilya is Otto Hahn.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Are you even following this?
|
| >You actually think of the most esteemed AI researchers
| will have trouble finding funding after this?
|
| Plenty of those actually left already ...
|
| Ilya is good but is one of many, and by many I mean there's
| 100s of equally capable researchers, many of those with
| more flexible morals. Note: I'm being generous to Ilya and
| taking him at face value on being the self-proclaimed AI
| messiah that is keeping us from the destruction of the
| world.
|
| Thanks Ilya, but money is money and investors would
| definitely prefer to put their money in a for-profit than a
| non-profit. This is even more true after this whole fiasco.
| malfist wrote:
| Plenty haven't left. Depending on which article you read
| it's between 3 and 5. Which is nothing for a company the
| size of OpenAI
| JoeCortopassi wrote:
| OpenAI will absolutely be able to raise money again, but it
| will likely never be on the same scale and will also likely
| have some serious safeguards in the contract language.
|
| Whether you agree with investors agreeing with firing Sam
| or not, future investors will absolutely be nervous about
| sinking serious money in a company that split it's board
| without talking to key partners/investors first
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Why would I not believe that Meta or Google or anyone really
| come in or replace Microsoft?
|
| You don't think they're kicking themselves that Microsoft got
| the deal?
| moralestapia wrote:
| >Why would I not believe that Meta or Google or anyone
| really come in or replace Microsoft?
|
| Because they already do well on their own, Meta is doing
| exceptionally well actually.
|
| It's better business for them if OpenAI just burns into the
| ground and leaves the cake up for grabs again. It doesn't
| take a lot of brain power to see that.
|
| The _only_ thing that has sent Google into "Code Red" in
| it's whole history has been OpenAI. They'd love to see it
| evaporate, and now they're not even spending a dime!
| fzzzy wrote:
| This isn't true, Facebook put google into code red and
| they wasted years on Google+.
| pyb wrote:
| Or, even more likely, Apple.
| unix_fan wrote:
| They would want a lot of control over the company
| jug wrote:
| MS leaving would also be a disaster for subsequent
| development of Bing, Windows Copilot, Office Copilot, Teams
| AI, various strategically important Azure service like
| Semantic Search etc. They've gone all in on OpenAI LLM's,
| support nothing else and have coupled all their AI to them.
| mannerheim wrote:
| > Microsoft has certain rights to OpenAI's intellectual
| property so if their relationship were to break down,
| Microsoft would still be able to run OpenAI's current
| models on its servers.
|
| https://archive.is/jUJEH
| manyoso wrote:
| Would be a catastrophic blow to MS too.
| Simon_ORourke wrote:
| That's the choice isn't it. Either reinstall Sam Altman and
| sack the board, or move the funding to whatever entity he goes
| and sets up next.
| staticman2 wrote:
| I've seen people say this but why would Microsoft fund a new
| Altman startup instead of spending that money on developing
| their own AI owned by Microsoft?
| siva7 wrote:
| Like Google did?
| staticman2 wrote:
| Google is at best only partially funding Anthropic,
| Amazon committed "up to 4 billion" in funding. They have
| their own competing technology in development.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| Or set off a new bidding war for both the researchers that
| quit and the pile of new startups... There's no rule that
| stays M$ would have to be the only bidder for the new
| venture(s).
| bossyTeacher wrote:
| That's actually hard power. MS is in a position to destroy
| OpenAI
| alecco wrote:
| Any other FAANG would happily fill that position if MS drops
| the ball.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Bingo. Compute is fungible.
|
| It would be ironic if everyone killed OpenAI by denying
| them compute though.
|
| Still, OpenAI is a peacock feather in Microsoft's cap.
| They're either bluffing, foolish, or prescient to let it
| go.
| indecisive_user wrote:
| Does any other cloud provider have the extra compute
| necessary to run ChatGPT just lying around?
|
| With the current shortage of hardware, it's not as simple
| as "scaling up" if the resources literally don't exist.
| unix_fan wrote:
| I doubt anybody else would take the same risk, not with the
| board still in power.
| chasd00 wrote:
| "Bret Taylor, the former co-CEO of Salesforce Inc., will be on
| the new board, several people said. Another possible addition is
| an executive from Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft, OpenAI's
| largest shareholder -- but Microsoft hasn't decided whether it
| wants board representation, some people said."
|
| hah, Microsoft will be in control from here on out whether they
| have someone technically on the board or not. They did the
| embrace and extend now we're on to extinguish.
| cedws wrote:
| AI doomers will say this is the beginning of the end.
| kromem wrote:
| Not the beginning of the end of humanity.
|
| But maybe the beginning of the end of OpenAI.
|
| A week ago I was saying that it's likely the leading AI
| company in 5 years time hasn't been founded yet.
|
| After the news Friday and looking more at how Ilya sees the
| future of neural networks, I actually thought there's a
| decent chance OpenAI might correct course to continue to
| lead.
|
| If it becomes too productized under a strengthened Altman,
| it's back on the list of companies building into their own
| obsolescence.
|
| The right way to the future is adapting alignment to the
| increasing complexity of the model. It's not just about
| 'safety' but about performance and avoiding Goodhart's Law.
|
| The way all major players, OpenAI included, are handling that
| step is by carrying forward the techniques that were
| appropriate for less complex models. Which is a huge step
| back from the approach reflected very early on pre-release
| for GPT-4's chat model. An approach that seemed to reflect
| Ilya's vision.
|
| As long as OpenAI keeps fine tuning to try to meet the low
| hanging fruit product demand they've created and screwing up
| their pretrained model on measures that haven't become the
| industry target, they aren't going to be competitive against
| yet to exist companies that don't take such naive approaches
| with the fine tuning step. Right now they have an advantage
| in Ilya being ahead of the trend, but if Altman returning is
| at the cost of Ilya's influence, they are going to continue
| to dig their long term grave in the pursuit of short term
| success.
| resource0x wrote:
| > A week ago I was saying that it's likely the leading AI
| company in 5 years time hasn't been founded yet.
|
| I bet that in 5 years, we won't be talking about AI at all.
| Whatever can be squeezed from current technologies, will be
| squeezed much sooner.
|
| Real AI will eventually be based on totally different
| principles. Maybe by utilizing the natural intelligence of
| living organisms (e.g. bacteria).
| itchy_spider44 wrote:
| Don't need to cooperate with other board members when you can
| just start declining their Venmo requests
| toyg wrote:
| What? EEE is meant for competitors, OpenAI is very much not a
| competitor - they're effectively Microsoft's outsourced R&D.
| chasd00 wrote:
| EEE is for anything between Microsoft and its goals. period.
| This "board" is now in between Microsoft and its goals.
| riffic wrote:
| oh I recognize Taylor, he was on the former Twitter, Inc.
| board.
| anonfromsomewhe wrote:
| He was also in upper level in FB and had a work in Google. I
| expect him to be part in Amazon and Apple in this decade. He
| touchhes every big company, lol
| naveen99 wrote:
| Oh man, Bret knows how's to use the power of the board. He
| successfully twisted Elon's arm into buying twitter. If the
| board is choosing him, sounds like they are going all oracle
| on microsoft / google again , Java style.
|
| If Sam beats Ilya + Bret, I will be even more impressed than
| I already am.
|
| Can't wait for Matt Levine's play by play if they hire the
| same legal team Bret used in the last days of twitter.
|
| Or it'll be over in 2 hrs and Sam will win now. Let's see.
| dontupvoteme wrote:
| Salesforce is part of the microsoft borg now too?
| riazrizvi wrote:
| Hard to see how embrace, extend, extinguish fits here. There's
| no standards-based app ecosystem that depends on some community
| standard for interplay that they can break by getting market-
| wide adoption of their proprietary standard. ChatGPT's IO is
| natural language text prompts/answers. Can MS really create a
| proprietary extension to natural language, that the world
| recognizes?
| estebarb wrote:
| It seems that some people embraced the concept of "embrace,
| extend, extinguish", and now they are extending it too far.
| Eventually the usage of the phrase will be so diluted that it
| will become extinguished.
| lgkk wrote:
| Who wants to own ~search~ gpts? (updated 2023)
| manyoso wrote:
| Whole thing is proving what a monumental lie OpenAI is. Was
| founded by grifters by all available evidence.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| OK dude, I might agree with that if it didn't just nail my
| revisions to a CMake file in one try.
| manyoso wrote:
| Both can be true.
| dang wrote:
| Related ongoing thread:
|
| _OpenAI investors try to get Sam Altman back as CEO after sudden
| firing_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38326834 - Nov
| 2023 (73 comments)
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Fired on a Friday just to be back in the office Monday with a new
| boss lol
| janejeon wrote:
| So the discussions are definitely happening it seems:
| https://twitter.com/sama/status/1726345564059832609
| jessenaser wrote:
| Bonus perspective:
| https://twitter.com/jasonkwon/status/1726348678116548979
| neilv wrote:
| I don't have enough info to take a position on the current
| situation there, but I think that's a brilliant selfie. (Pained
| reaction to having to wear an OpenAI guest ID.)
| jessenaser wrote:
| Is it so hard to find good people to put on the board? Sam was
| the CEO OF Y COMBINATOR. Shouldn't he know who is best to put on
| the board? Find them out?
|
| Apparently not?
|
| Please say they are not going to put a board just as bad as
| before.
|
| There are no checks and balances. Should Open AI employees be
| allowed to veto a board decision vote if they have 50% or 67% of
| the vote? Should Open AI employees be allowed to vote for at
| least some members to be allowed on the board? Like the Senate
| voting to confirm a Supreme Court Justice?
|
| No matter how good the next board will be, the power rules still
| apply as before, and the same thing could happen again if no
| other changes are put in place...
| layer8 wrote:
| The issue is that the old board has to agree to the new board.
| ytoawwhra92 wrote:
| > Please say they are not going to put a board just as bad as
| before.
|
| Altman had a massive influence on the makeup of the board that
| ultimately fired him.
| nothrowaways wrote:
| Altman is more powerful than I thought.
| dontupvoteme wrote:
| It's not Altman per se, it's the hypercapitalism interests that
| he represents and serves.
| layer8 wrote:
| I think he's lucky that apparently many OpenAI employees
| support him, as otherwise there would be less leverage over the
| board. Investors can threaten the board, but where would they
| go if the brainpower stays with OpenAI?
| alecco wrote:
| > I think he's lucky that apparently many OpenAI employees
| support him
|
| This claim on the press had zero substance. It could well be,
| but there were no wide resignations or anything. Just 4
| execs.
|
| OTOH, Altman going for the high score _could_ bump employee
| TCO 10x. So who knows. Passion vs greed.
| Dudester230602 wrote:
| _> Passion vs greed._
|
| In a city where a normal person cannot buy a house and
| employer wants 25% office time? Give me a break, they just
| want to live like people could in 1950s.
| medler wrote:
| I'm old enough to remember when all the employees who
| supported him were going to resign at 5 pm Saturday
| Davidzheng wrote:
| I think the hearts on Twitter was supposed to be a show
| of power on Sam's side. I wouldn't be surprised if that
| number is >20% of employees
| mannerheim wrote:
| > Passion vs greed.
|
| What's there to be passionate about in a doomed business?
| Where is OpenAI going to get compute from? What work are
| they going to get done if everybody else follows Altman?
| Davidzheng wrote:
| You can also have principles which would rather do no
| work than harmful work
| mannerheim wrote:
| I would not call sitting at a cubicle and collecting a
| paycheck while doing no work 'passion'. And probably not
| even collecting the paycheck.
| nothrowaways wrote:
| It's not luck
| ren_engineer wrote:
| they've been on a hiring spree, so majority of employees
| probably joined within the last 1-2 years and more about
| making sure they get their equity(or profit units) get cashed
| out than the original mission of OpenAI. I doubt all the
| enterprise sales reps they've brought in care about AI
| alignment or making sure the profit from AGI helps humanity
| hotnfresh wrote:
| If he wins in this, it'll mean he'd maneuvered himself into a
| position of controlling the whole thing--in fact, if not on
| paper--some time back. The "coup" people've been writing about
| will have been his actions over the last year or so, not the
| board's.
|
| Big money on the line. Insane, life-changing payouts in the
| cards. Altman and MS on the side of those, the board on the
| side of the mission. Money's likely to win.
| tempnow987 wrote:
| If the board has the support of all the staff the board will
| be absolutely fine.
|
| That said, not clear to me that board is supported by the
| staff.
|
| So if Sam goes, and many of the key staff go... will be
| interesting.
|
| And the boards style in all this, if that is the "mission" -
| is wild. You have partners, staff, businesses - doing a VC
| round and you blow it all up without it sounds like even
| talking to your board president? Normally this type of ouster
| requires a properly noticed meeting!
| Davidzheng wrote:
| Because a lot of the staff is there for the high
| compensation and they view the mission as an inconvenience
| shrimpx wrote:
| I think some of the staff definitely supports Altman, and
| are down to quit and follow him. Personally I hope that's
| what happens. Separate the altruistic-mission guys from the
| big-profit guys and let them go to town in their respective
| spheres.
| pwb25 wrote:
| can't those people just relax? You aren't running some computer
| club in high school and debate if you should run freebsd or linux
|
| Just give him some seat or what he wants, stop acting like some
| series like Suits
| breadwinner wrote:
| The key question in my mind is not who is going to be on the new
| board, but whether Ilya Sutskever will stay if Altman comes back.
| I worry that OpenAI without Ilya is not going to produce
| groundbreaking innovations at the same pace. Hopefully Sam Altman
| and Ilya Sutskever can patch things up. That's more important
| than who they add or remove to the board.
| trashtester wrote:
| A rough guess is that Elon will pick up Ilya, with a promise to
| _really_ aim for safe AGI.
| appplication wrote:
| If Ilya's problem with Sam was that he was acting out on his
| own and deviating from founding principles, he's not going to
| have a good time under Elon.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| From everything I can piece together the underlying problem
| is that Sam defunded Ilya's alignment research because they
| only have so much compute and they needed all of it to keep
| up with the demand for ChatGPT and the APIs, especially
| after dev day.
|
| Ilya losing access to the GPUs he needs to do his research
| so that the company can service a few more customers seemed
| like a fundamental betrayal to him and a sign that Sam was
| ignoring safety in order to grow marketshare.
|
| If Elon is able to promise him the resources he needs to do
| his research then I think it could work out.
| dchichkov wrote:
| More likely that the WorldCoin project is doing poorly.
| With crypto and NFTs going down it could be a house of
| cards. And in a need of an urgent injection of money.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| The worldcoin thing really bugs me too. Any time there is
| crypto, somebody is scamming somebody else. Worldcoin is
| no different in this regard.
| capableweb wrote:
| Did you figure out the motives behind Bitcoin too while
| doing your research?
| tw04 wrote:
| > If Elon is able to promise him the resources he needs
| to do his research then I think it could work out.
|
| Who on earth would ever trust an Elon promise at this
| point? The guy literally can't open his mouth without
| making a promise he can't keep.
|
| Unless Ilya is getting something in a bulletproof
| contract and is willing to spend a decade fighting for it
| in court, he's an idiot doing anything with Elon.
| staticautomatic wrote:
| Contract wherein Musk pays all legal fees would be pretty
| trustworthy
| someperson wrote:
| Elon Musk has been very critical of OpenAI's switch from a
| non-profit focused on AI safety to a for-profit competing
| with Tesla.
|
| It's why he fell out and left OpenAI despite investing $100
| million to start it.
|
| I'd say he's well aligned with Ilya's position. Early on I
| wondered if he was an instigator of the entire board coup.
| RivieraKid wrote:
| He left because they didn't allow him to be in charge.
| icelancer wrote:
| Ilya has worked for Elon in the past without incident. I
| doubt it would be a problem.
| alecco wrote:
| I'm starting to suspect this was all orchestrated by Google.
| Win-win. Google has the hardware, the data, and the models.
| Google only lacks OpenAI's secret refining sauce. Getting
| back Ilya would be the best outcome for them.
| mcmcmc wrote:
| Ah yes, Elon who famously keeps all his promises without
| needing a court order.
| sashank_1509 wrote:
| I don't know if Ilya contributed anything technically to OpenAI
| in the recent 2-3 years. He is broadly thanked along with Sam
| in GPT4 List of contributors, he is not mentioned in ChatGPT
| list of contributors, he is again thanked for advice in the
| GPT-3 list of contributors. The folks who resigned upon Sams
| ouster, Jacub Pachocki is credited as lead of GPT-4 , Greg
| Brockmann is credited for multiple things in GPT-4 ( he was the
| lead for training infra setup).
|
| All of them would have left if Sam left, if anything letting
| Sam go would significantly hamstring OpenAI than letting Ilya
| go.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Currently, it's very unclear who operates under what motives.
| How much is it about ego? How much is it about money and how
| much is it due to intellectual positions? Maybe there're are no
| heroes and maybe there're no antiheroes? With the recent news
| about other investments and deals, the facade doesn't seem to
| even resemble the OpenAI's reality.
|
| I can't wait to read the autobiography of involved parties.
| jessenaser wrote:
| Sam Altman by Walter Isaacson
|
| Releasing 2037...
| spking wrote:
| Shouldn't it be written by ChatGPT?
| dboreham wrote:
| ChatGPT "with Walter Isaacson".
| resource0x wrote:
| Are you sure they will be "consistently candid" in their
| autobiographies? :-)
| thepasswordis wrote:
| >Ego
|
| I can absolutely empathize with Ilya here, though. As far as
| I know the tech making openai function is largely his life's
| work. It would be extremely frustrating to have Sam be the
| face of it, and be given the credit for it.
|
| Sam is clearly a very accomplished businessman and networker.
| Those people are super important, I wish I had a person like
| him on my team.
|
| I've had the experience of other people tacitly taking credit
| for my work. Giving talks about it, receiving praise for
| their vision. It's incredibly demoralizing.
|
| I'm not necessarily saying Sam did this, since I don't know
| any of these people. Just speculating on how it might feel to
| ge Ilya watching Sam go on a world tour meeting heads of
| state to talk about what is largely _Ilya's_ work.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| ...and yet a very familiar story in the industry.
| kwant_kiddo wrote:
| What makes you think it is 'his' work and not theirs? I
| remember when OpenAI was just a joke compared to Deepmind.
| The turning point (as I remember) was when they used [1]
| deep reinforcement learning on dota2. clearly iyla (also
| one of the authors) contributed, but so did many others on
| the team I assume?
|
| [1]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1912.06680.pdf
| slavetologic wrote:
| I can personally understand this, and am currently
| struggling with it. It's hard that the world works this
| way.
| ioulaum wrote:
| Given that nothing criminal happened, canning Sam with no
| chance for discussion was just overkill.
|
| It's probably more of an intellectual / philosophical
| position, given that they just did not think through the real
| impact on the business (and thus the mission itself)
|
| I'm inclined to assume that something stupid was done. It
| happens. They should resolve it, fix the rules for how the
| board can behave, and move on.
|
| Despite the bungling, Ilya is probably still a good voice to
| have on the board. His key responsibility (super-alignment),
| is a key part of OpenAI's mission.
| cmdli wrote:
| While we don't know the whole story, I don't think Sam is
| innocent in this matter. It seems likely that this was a
| recurring disagreement, and perhaps this was simply a step
| too far where the board had to act. When you fire somebody,
| typically you don't give them a heads up.
| zyang wrote:
| Musk recruited Ilya from Google to start OpenAI. Musk was
| ousted by Altman. Now Altman is ousted by Ilya.
| foobarqux wrote:
| The other question is what happens to the pretense of "safety".
| The CEO explicitly said multiple times that he does not have
| unilateral control, that he is subordinate to the board and
| that the board's job was to remove him if it he was pursuing an
| unsafe course. Assuming he gets re-instated that would all be
| shown to be false.
| siva7 wrote:
| Ilya will do just fine after openai but there is zero chance
| that he will stay there as too many bridges are burned.
| ioulaum wrote:
| Just because he acted like a goofball, doesn't mean that
| everyone needs to.
|
| Plus, the other board members supported him, so decent blame
| to go around for this embarrassment.
| ioulaum wrote:
| I think Sam could "potentially" be the bigger man in this.
|
| Ilya may still be someone who should be on the board...
| Especially given his role as head of alignment research. He
| deserves a say on key issues related to OpenAI.
|
| People get excited. Stupid things happen. Especially in
| startups.
|
| ChatGPT having become so successful doesn't change the fact
| that the company as a whole, is fairly immature still.
|
| They should seriously just laugh about it and move on.
|
| Let's just say that Ilya had a bad couple of days, and probably
| needs a couple of weeks of vacation.
| gizmo wrote:
| I agree. As long as Sam has total control over the board it's
| fine if Iiya doesn't approve of everything Sam does. Not
| worth losing a top AI researcher over this.
| BryantD wrote:
| That defeats the purpose of having a board. Which is
| sometimes the desired outcome, of course, but if I were
| Microsoft I am not sure I'd want Sam in there with zero
| checks and balances.
|
| I also wouldn't want Ilya in there without checks and
| balances, to be clear. So the challenge is identifying the
| right adults.
|
| I don't think it's realistic to expect that negotiation to
| complete successfully in the eyes of all parties by 5 PM
| today. It's possible that Ilya will give up on having his
| requirements satisfied and leave.
| Solvency wrote:
| Why doesn't Sam Altman and his buddies team up with John
| Carmack, who has publicly declared he's fully invested in AGI
| now, and has a proven legacy for getting shit done?
| yumraj wrote:
| It seems somewhat clear that at the end of the day there are
| two camps, Ilya and Sam.
|
| Sam is backed by investors who are looking for returns, and are
| not sure if Ilya will get them the same juicy 100X.
|
| So, if Sam comes back, then I'm pretty sure Ilya will go on his
| own. Whether he will focus on GPT or AGI or ?, is anyone's
| guess, as is how many from OpenAI will follow him as everyone
| loves money.
|
| EDIT: Ilya should have no trouble finding benefactors of his
| own, whether they are one of the FAANGs or VCs is TBD.
| mgiannopoulos wrote:
| So any bets on who will play Sam on the Netflix movie/miniseries?
| :)
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Lee Pace, of course.
| kylecazar wrote:
| Simon Helberg was born for this
| teacpde wrote:
| Thank you! I have always thought Sam reminds me some actor,
| but was never able to make the connection.
| blastro wrote:
| Reload the "Social Network" cast
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Soap opera
|
| At this point we should only post if something happens to the
| consumer product or API
| jasonhansel wrote:
| This is why, when you claim to be running a non-profit to
| "benefit humankind," you shouldn't put all your resources into a
| for-profit subsidiary. Eventually, the for-profit arm, and its
| investors, will find its nonprofit parent a hindrance, and an
| insular board of directors won't stand a chance against corporate
| titans.
| dnissley wrote:
| Interestingly it was the other way around this time, at least
| to start...
| jasonhansel wrote:
| This was pretty clearly an attempt by the board to reassert
| control, which was slowly slipping away as the company became
| more enmeshed with Microsoft.
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| Honestly, who cares? CEOs are just for marketing and hobnobbing.
| The researchers and engineers are what really matters.
| g42gregory wrote:
| From the article: "...but Microsoft hasn't decided whether it
| wants board representation..."
|
| This is not a good sign. Microsoft the largest $10Bn investor,
| who is in the middle of pushing through the restructuring of the
| company, hasn't decided if they want board representation? The
| only reason you would do that if they want to keep their options
| open, in the future, to hit OpenAI hard (legally and/or to raid
| the personnel).
|
| Board representation would come with a fiduciary responsibility
| and it looks like they may not want that. I could only imagine
| the intensity of Microsoft senior engineers screaming that they
| could replicate all of this in-house (not saying whether it's
| justified or not).
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