[HN Gopher] I deeply regret my participation in the board's actions
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       I deeply regret my participation in the board's actions
        
       Author : Palmik
       Score  : 557 points
       Date   : 2023-11-20 13:16 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (twitter.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
        
       | petargyurov wrote:
       | Starting to think this was all some media stunt where they let
       | ChatGPT make boardroom decisions for a day or two.
        
         | herval wrote:
         | the AGI firing its boss as the first action would be
         | :chefskiss:
        
         | badcppdev wrote:
         | Maybe they just wanted to generate more material for the movie
         | ?
        
           | beretguy wrote:
           | > I have to make THE MOVIE!
           | 
           | - Ross Scott
        
           | wand3r wrote:
           | My favorite take from another HN comment, sadly I didnt save
           | the UN for attribution:
           | 
           | > Since this whole saga is so unbelievable: what if... board
           | member Tasha McCauley's husband Joseph Gordon-Levitt
           | orchestrated the whole board coup behind the scenes so he
           | could direct and/or star in the Hollywood adaptation?
        
         | ben_w wrote:
         | Four hours ago, I wrote on a telegram channel:
         | 
         | My gut is leaning towards gpt-5 being, in at least one sense,
         | too capable.
         | 
         | Either that or someone cloned sama's voice and used an LLM to
         | personally insult half the board.
        
         | sebzim4500 wrote:
         | The RLHF models would never suggest this. The proposed solution
         | is always to hold hands and sing Kumbaya.
         | 
         | Maybe raw GPT-4 wants to fire everyone.
        
         | starbugs wrote:
         | Honestly, since a couple of days I have the feeling that nearly
         | half of HN submissions are about this soap opera.
         | 
         | Can't they send DMs? Why the need to make everything public via
         | Twitter?
         | 
         | It's quite paradox that of all things those people who build
         | leading ML/AI systems are obviously the most rooted in egoism
         | and emotions without an apparent glimpse of rationality.
        
           | mrguyorama wrote:
           | The kind of people that are born on third base and think they
           | hit a triple are at the top of basically every american
           | institution right now. Of course they think the world is a
           | better place if they share every stupid little thought that
           | enters their brain because they are "special" and "super
           | smart".
           | 
           | The AI field especially has always been grifters. They have
           | promised AGI with every method including the ones that we
           | don't even remember. This is not a paradox.
        
         | ozgung wrote:
         | Or maybe they created an evil-AGI-GPT by mistake, and now they
         | have to act randomly and in the most unexpected ways to confuse
         | evil-AGI-GPT's predictive powers.
        
       | Tostino wrote:
       | What a total mess this has been all around.
        
       | eqmvii wrote:
       | What a wild weekend... there are too many strange details to have
       | a simple narrative in my head at this point.
        
         | yeck wrote:
         | Yeah. I need to take a break from theory crafting on this one.
         | Too many surprises that have made it hard to draw a coherent
         | line.
        
         | someone7x wrote:
         | This plot keeps thickening
         | 
         | I'm eager to see how it all unfolds.
        
       | m_ke wrote:
       | Great opportunity to make Karpathy the CEO
        
         | dacryn wrote:
         | would be a waste of talent. Karpathy is great at what he does,
         | let's make sure he keeps doing it.
         | 
         | Let someone else take up the CEO role, which is a different
         | skillset anyway.
        
       | baq wrote:
       | tried to play high stakes with sharks, got eaten alive by sharks.
       | 
       | played stupid games, won stupid prizes.
       | 
       | too bad since the guy's right, AI is so much more than fantastic
       | business opportunity.
        
       | v3ss0n wrote:
       | What? Isn't him that he wants Sama out because 'Muh humanity
       | advancement '?
        
       | epups wrote:
       | How weird! Perhaps a coup within a coup?
        
       | preommr wrote:
       | What the hell?
       | 
       | So far, I underestood the chaos as a matter of principle - yes it
       | was messy but necessary to fix the company culture that Ilya's
       | camp envisioned.
       | 
       | If you're going to make a move, at least stand by it. This tweet
       | somehow makes the context of the situation 10x worse.
        
         | Jensson wrote:
         | Normal people can't take being at the center of a large
         | controversy, the amount of negativity and hate you have to face
         | is massive. That is enough to make almost anyone backtrack just
         | to make it stop.
        
           | selcuka wrote:
           | Normal people don't burn a multi billion dollar company to
           | the ground with a spontaneous decision either. They plan for
           | the backlash.
        
             | Jensson wrote:
             | > They plan for the backlash
             | 
             | You can't plan for something you have never experienced.
             | Being hated by a large group of people is a very different
             | feeling from getting hated by an individual, you don't know
             | if you can handle it until it happens to you.
        
               | anonylizard wrote:
               | You can plan for something you've never experienced. You
               | read, or learn from other people's experiences.
               | 
               | Normal people know not to burn a $80 billion company to
               | the ground in a weekend. Ilya was doing something
               | unprecedented in corporate history, and astounding he
               | wasn't prepared to face the world's fury over it.
        
               | Jensson wrote:
               | > You can plan for something you've never experienced.
               | You read, or learn from other people's experiences.
               | 
               | Text doesn't convey emotions, and our empathy doesn't
               | work well for emotions we have never experienced. You can
               | see a guy that got kicked in the balls got hurt, but that
               | doesn't mean you are prepared to endure the pain of
               | getting kicked in your balls or that you even understand
               | how painful it is.
               | 
               | Also watching politicians it looks like you can just
               | brush it off, because that is what they do. But that
               | requires a lot of experience, not anyone can do it, it is
               | like watching a boxing match and think you can easily
               | stand after a hard punch in your stomach.
        
               | selcuka wrote:
               | > You can see a guy that got kicked in the balls got
               | hurt, but that doesn't mean you are prepared to endure
               | the pain of getting kicked in your balls or that you even
               | understand how painful it is.
               | 
               | Sure, but you do your best not to be kicked in the balls.
        
               | SilasX wrote:
               | Yep. Or, if you're running an immense, well-funded
               | organization that is gauging the consequences of a plan
               | that involves being kicked in the balls, you take a tiny
               | sliver of those funds and get some advisors to appraise
               | you of what to expect when being kicked in the balls, not
               | just wing it/"fake it till you make it". (As it turns
               | out, faking not being in severe pain is tricky.)
        
               | gemstones wrote:
               | Ilya torched peoples' retirements by signaling that it
               | would be very hard to cash out in OpenAI as it is now.
               | You don't have to be emotional to understand the
               | consequence of that action, just logical. You have to
               | think beyond your own narrow perspective for a minute.
        
               | rrr_oh_man wrote:
               | Where did he do that? Genuine question.
        
               | gemstones wrote:
               | The board vote did it! They had a tender offer in the
               | works that would have made employees millionaires. The
               | board clearly signaled that they viewed the money-making
               | aspects of the company as something to dial back, which
               | in turn either severely lessens the value of that tender
               | offer or prevents it from happening.
               | 
               | I mean, he didn't have a button on his desk that said,
               | "torch the shares", but he ousted the CEO as a way to cut
               | back on the things that might have meant profit. Did he
               | think that everyone was going to continue to want to give
               | them money after they signal a move away from profit
               | motives? Doesn't take a rocket scientist to think that
               | one through.
               | 
               | I think he was just preoccupied with AI safety, and
               | didn't give a thought to the knock on effects for
               | investors of any stripe. He's clearly smart enough to, he
               | just didn't care enough to factor it into his plans.
        
               | aleph_minus_one wrote:
               | I do believe OpenAI clearly signalled from the very
               | beginning what the (complicated) company structure is
               | about and what risks this means for any potential
               | investor (or employee hoping to become rich).
               | 
               | If you project your personal hopes which are different
               | from this into the hype, this is your personal problem.
        
               | gemstones wrote:
               | Well, with the hollowing out of OpenAI, it seems that
               | someone else will easily take the lead! They're not my
               | personal hopes - this move destroyed OpenAI's best chance
               | at retaining control over cutting edge AI as well. They
               | destroyed their own hopes.
        
               | SoftTalker wrote:
               | Torched retirements? Who is dumb enough to have his
               | retirement portfolio that weighted to one company?
        
               | samspenc wrote:
               | The OpenAI employees who are planning to resign en-masse
               | for exactly this reason.
        
               | CamperBob2 wrote:
               | They'll squeak by.
        
               | endtime wrote:
               | > You read, or learn from other people's
               | experiences...Ilya was doing something unprecedented in
               | corporate history
               | 
               | So whose experiences was he supposed to read about?
        
               | CamperBob2 wrote:
               | Yevgeny Prigozhin's?
        
               | bbarnett wrote:
               | He hasn't ever posted to reddit?
        
             | ChainOfFools wrote:
             | Is it possible that someone in Ilya's position can be
             | unaware of just how staggeringly enormous a phenomenon he
             | is sitting on top of ( and thus have no idea how to
             | evaluate the scale of the backlash that would result?)
             | 
             | I would say the answer is, demonstrably yes:
             | 
             | https://techcrunch.com/2010/09/29/google-excite/
        
               | bbarnett wrote:
               | This is fair, but understand, Google bought would
               | probably not be Google we have.
               | 
               | To think it would grow just as fast, or in the ways it
               | did? Acquires are seldom left alone to do magic.
        
             | asdfasdfsadf22 wrote:
             | Have you ever had a bad day? The consequences for people in
             | power is about 1 million times bigger and more public.
             | 
             | Sutskever didn't get on the board by cunning politicking
             | and schmoozing like most businesspeople with that sort of
             | position. He's an outstanding engineer without upper
             | management skills. Every meet one of those?
        
               | geodel wrote:
               | Outstandingly clueless seems more appropriate.
               | 
               | I haven't people any reasonably intelligent person so
               | unaware of real world that they can berate a colleague so
               | publicly and officially and think "Hey! I am sorry man"
               | will do the trick.
        
             | throw555chip wrote:
             | There were plenty of hyped crypto coin companies supposedly
             | worth billions too and we found out otherwise.
        
             | eli_gottlieb wrote:
             | Normal people don't have multi-billion dollar companies to
             | burn because they back off in the face of haters long
             | before they get to that stage.
        
             | mcphage wrote:
             | > Normal people don't burn a multi billion dollar company
             | to the ground with a spontaneous decision either.
             | 
             |  _Has_ OpenAI been burnt to the ground?
        
           | anoy8888 wrote:
           | So is Adam D'Angelo the true villain who is still insisting
           | on the bad decision? I am confused, to be honest .
        
             | TheOtherHobbes wrote:
             | _Everyone_ is confused.
             | 
             | It's impressively operatic. I don't think I've ever seen
             | anything like it.
        
             | x0x0 wrote:
             | The inability to clearly and publicly -- or even if not
             | publicly, to the OpenAI employees! -- explain a rationale
             | for this is simply astounding.
        
           | tarsinge wrote:
           | I think they underestimated the hate of an internet crowd
           | post crypto and meme stocks, now completely blindsided by the
           | investment angle especially in the current AI hype. Like why
           | do people now care so much about Microsoft seriously? Or
           | Altman? I can see why Ilya only focused on the real mission
           | could miss how the crowd could perceive a threat to their
           | future investment opportunities, or worse threatening the
           | whole AI hype.
        
             | appplication wrote:
             | I think you're right about all of this, but this was doomed
             | from the start. Everybody wants to invest in OpenAI because
             | they see the rocket and want to ride, but the company is
             | fundamentally structured to disallow typical frothy
             | investment mentality.
        
             | theamk wrote:
             | I think the interest is because ChatGPT is so famous, even
             | in non-tech circles.
             | 
             | "Terraform raised prices, losing customers"? whatever, I
             | never heard about it.
             | 
             | "ChatGPT's creators have internal disagreement, losing
             | talent"? OH NO what if ChatGPT dies, who is going to answer
             | my questions?? panic panic hate hate...
        
           | stcredzero wrote:
           | _Normal people can 't take being at the center of a large
           | controversy, the amount of negativity and hate you have to
           | face is massive. That is enough to make almost anyone
           | backtrack just to make it stop._
           | 
           | This is the cheapest and most cost-effective way to run
           | things as an authoritarian -- at least in the short term.
           | 
           | If one is not "made of sterner stuff" -- to the point where
           | one is willing to endure scorn for the sake of the truth: -
           | Then what are you doing in a startup, if working in one - One
           | doesn't have enough integrity to be my friend
        
         | wslh wrote:
         | Yes, I cannot believe smart people of that caliber is sending
         | too much Noise.
         | 
         | It reminds me of my friend at a Mensa meeting where they cannot
         | agree at basic organization points like in a department
         | consortium.
        
           | aleph_minus_one wrote:
           | > Yes, I cannot believe smart people of that caliber is
           | sending too much Noise.
           | 
           | Being smart and/or being a great researcher does not mean
           | that the respective person is a good "politician". Quite some
           | great researchers are bad at company politics, and quite some
           | people who do great research leave academia because they
           | became crushed by academic politics.
        
           | herval wrote:
           | different kinds of smarts. Ilya is allegedly a brilliant
           | scientist. Doesn't make him a brilliant business person
           | automatically
        
             | fl7305 wrote:
             | As illustrated in Breaking Bad when they carry a barrel
             | instead of rolling it.
             | 
             | Book smarts versus street smarts.
        
           | eastbound wrote:
           | Managing a large org requires a lot of mundane techniques,
           | and probably a personal-brand manager and personal advisers.
           | 
           | It's extremely boring and mundane and political and insulting
           | to anyone's humanity. People who haven't dedicated their life
           | to economics, such as researchers and idealists, will have a
           | hard time.
        
           | lawlessone wrote:
           | Ha I remember joining that when I was 16, I just wanted the
           | card. They gave a sub to the magazine and it was just people
           | talking about what it was like to be in Mensa.
           | 
           | It felt the same as certain big German supermarket chain that
           | publishes it's own internal magazine with articles from
           | employees, company updates etc
        
             | burnished wrote:
             | Are you talking about Aldi's? Cause if so maybe they got
             | something figured out, their store locations that I've been
             | in the states are great (only exposure to them though).
             | Only check out I've seen where the employees have chairs
        
               | lawlessone wrote:
               | Their brother , but probably the same thing. Chairs at
               | checkouts are the norm here though. Hard place to work
               | but they beat all the others on pay.
        
         | bagofsand wrote:
         | Serious psychological denial here. The board isn't some
         | anonymous institution that somehow tricked and pulled him into
         | this situation.
         | 
         | Come on Ilya, step up and own it, as well as the consequences.
         | Don't be a weasel.
        
           | concinds wrote:
           | Where did he say he was "tricked"? And what's with the
           | anonymous insult?
        
             | FireBeyond wrote:
             | He doesn't say that, but to me he does use a little weasel
             | wording, the whole passive voice "regret my participation
             | in", when to all accounts so far, it seems that he was one
             | of the instigators, and quite possibly the actual
             | instigator of all this.
             | 
             | "regret my participation" sounds much more like "going
             | along with it".
        
               | burnished wrote:
               | What is he supposed to say?
        
           | malfist wrote:
           | I'd hate to live in a world where learning from your mistakes
           | is being "a weasel"
        
             | infecto wrote:
             | Is this learning from your mistakes though? "Deeply regret"
             | is one of those statements that does not really mean much.
             | There are what something like 6 board members? Three of
             | which are employees, two of those that got removed from the
             | board. He was the only voting board member who is also an
             | employee and part of the original founding team if you
             | will. These are assumptions on my part but I don't really
             | suspect the other board members orchestrated this event.
             | Its possible and I may be wrong but it is improbable. So
             | lets work off the narrative that he orchestrated the event.
             | He now "Deeply regret" its, not a "I made a mistake" and I
             | am sorry. But he regrets the participation and how it plays
             | out.
        
             | Aunche wrote:
             | The weasely part is when he implied that he appears to
             | defecting the blame to the board rather than accepting that
             | he made a mistake. Even if the coup wasn't Ilya's idea in
             | the first place, he was the lynchpin that made it possible.
        
             | Aunche wrote:
             | The weasely part is when he appears to be defecting the
             | blame to the board rather than accepting that he made a
             | mistake. Even if the coup wasn't Ilya's idea in the first
             | place, he was the lynchpin that made it possible.
        
           | dougmwne wrote:
           | I think it means that the Twitterverse got it wrong from the
           | beginning. It wasn't Ilya and his safety faction that did in
           | OpenAI, it was Quora's Adam D'Angelo and his competing Poe
           | app. Ilya must have been successfully pressured and assured
           | by Microsoft, but Adam must have held his ground.
        
             | samspenc wrote:
             | Dang I completely forgot that D'Angelo and Quora have a
             | product that directly competes with ChatGPT in the form of
             | Poe.
             | 
             | Wouldn't that make this a conflict of interest, sitting on
             | the board while running a competing product - and making a
             | decision at the company he is on the board of to destroy
             | said company and benefit his own product?
        
               | dougmwne wrote:
               | That certainly seems to be the scenario and explains his
               | willingness to go scorched earth. I wonder what the
               | motivations of the other 2 board members are. Could they
               | just be burn it down AI Doomers?
        
             | realfeel78 wrote:
             | Poe uses LLMs from OpenAI and Anthropic.
        
             | zyang wrote:
             | There were some rumors in the beginning that Adam D'Angelo
             | used similar tactics to push out Quora cofounders. I
             | thought it was too wild to be true.
        
           | belter wrote:
           | For all that went down in the last 48 hours...would not
           | surprise me if post above was made by Ilya himself ... be
           | right back...need more popcorn...
        
         | Paul-Craft wrote:
         | It's pretty simple, isn't it? He made a move. It went bad. Now
         | he's trying to dodge the blast. He just doesn't understand that
         | if he just shut the fuck up, after everything else that's gone
         | on (seriously, 2 interim CEOs in 2 days?), _nobody_ would be
         | talking about him today.
         | 
         | The truth is, this is about the _only_ thing about the whole
         | clown show that makes any sense right now.
        
           | foobarian wrote:
           | > 2 interim CEOs in 2 days
           | 
           | Wait what? Did Murati get booted?
        
             | johanj wrote:
             | They hired the Emmett Shear (Twitch co-founder) as a new
             | interim CEO:
             | https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/20/23968848/openai-new-
             | ceo-...
        
               | zyang wrote:
               | A scab ceo is not something I expected. This timeline is
               | strange.
        
             | tedivm wrote:
             | She didn't get booted from the company, but they did find a
             | new interim CEO (the former twitch CEO).
        
             | dpkirchner wrote:
             | Today's OpenAI CEO is Emmett Shear (former CEO of Twitch).
        
               | ethbr1 wrote:
               | That this is a legitimate comment thread about something
               | fairly important is mind boggling.
               | 
               | What odds would you have had to offer at the beginning of
               | last week on a bet that this is where we'd be on Monday?
        
               | bombcar wrote:
               | At this rate Musk will be CEO by Wednesday
        
               | orangepurple wrote:
               | The mother of some of his kids was on the board for a
               | while.
        
               | strangattractor wrote:
               | Open AI's value is already zero - Musk no longer has
               | anything to bring to the table.
        
               | thrill wrote:
               | His winning personality?
        
               | barkingcat wrote:
               | Musk can fire anyone who stayed.
        
               | alas44 wrote:
               | If you want to see odds, what people bet and how it
               | evolved during this (still on-going) story:
               | https://polymarket.com/markets?_q=openai
        
               | code_runner wrote:
               | tune in tomorrow for "who wants to be a CEO"!
        
             | sebzim4500 wrote:
             | Yeah they replaced her after she tried to rehire Sam and
             | Greg seemingly against the board's wishes.
        
             | zeeshanmh215 wrote:
             | Murati was yesterday's CEO
        
             | qwebfdzsh wrote:
             | Supposedly she was "scheming" to get Altman back. Which I
             | guess could possibly mean that she wasn't aware of the
             | whole "plan" and they just assumed she'll get in line? Or
             | that she had second thoughts maybe... Either way pretty
             | fascinating.
        
             | jacquesm wrote:
             | You blinked. That's on you. When you look the other way for
             | 15 minutes you have two hours of reading to catch up with.
        
             | tedmiston wrote:
             | She was the first signature on the letter requesting the
             | board to resign or the employees would go to MS, so...
        
           | steveBK123 wrote:
           | I mean phrased differently its the 3rd CEO in 4 days, haha.
        
         | tarruda wrote:
         | Seems like he's completely emotion driven at this point. I
         | doubt anyone advising rationally would agree with sending this
         | tweet
        
         | linuxftw wrote:
         | The board destroyed the company in one fell swoop. He's right
         | to feel regret.
         | 
         | Personally, I don't think that Altman was that big of an
         | impact, he was all business, no code, and the world is acting
         | like the business side is the true enabler. But, the market has
         | spoken, and the move has driven the actual engineers to side
         | with Altman.
        
           | hannofcart wrote:
           | Sorry, but how has the market spoken? Not sure how that would
           | be possible considering that OpenAI is a private company.
           | 
           | If anyone is speaking up it's the OpenAI team.
        
             | rockemsockem wrote:
             | Talent exists in a market too
        
               | dylan604 wrote:
               | Right, the job market has spoken and it now looks like
               | nobody wants to be part of OAI and much rather be part of
               | MSFT
        
               | somethingor wrote:
               | How does it look like that?
        
               | dylan604 wrote:
               | The fact that an overwhelming number of employees signed
               | a letter of intent to quit and would join MSFT instead?
               | How does it _not_ look like that?
        
           | politelemon wrote:
           | > The board destroyed the company in one fell swoop.
           | 
           | I'm just not familiar enough to understand, is it really
           | destroyed or is this just a minor bump in OpenAI's
           | reputation? They still have GPT 3.5/4 and ChatGPT which is
           | very popular. They can still attract talent to work there.
           | They should be good if they just proceed with business as
           | usual?
        
             | astrange wrote:
             | They have ~770 employees and so far ~500 of them have
             | promised to quit. It's a lot less appealing if you're not
             | going to make millions, or have billions in donated Azure
             | credits.
        
           | strikelaserclaw wrote:
           | true but it takes a lot of money to run openai / chatgpt
        
         | hackerlight wrote:
         | > If you're going to make a move, at least stand by it.
         | 
         | Why would you stand by unintended consequences?
        
         | felipellrocha wrote:
         | When you watch Survivor (yes, the tv show), sometimes a player
         | does a bad play, gets publicly caught, and has to go on a "I'm
         | sorry" tour the next days. Came to mind after reading this
         | tweet. He is not sorry for what he's done. He is sorry for
         | getting caught.
        
         | soderfoo wrote:
         | Watching this all unfold in the public is unprecedented (I
         | think).
         | 
         | There has never been a company like OpenAI, in terms or
         | governance and product, so I guess it makes sense that their
         | drama leads us in to unchartered territory.
        
           | dylan604 wrote:
           | recently, we've seen the 3D gaming engine company fall flat
           | on its face and back pedal. We've seen Apple be wishy washy
           | about CSAM scanning. We saw a major bank collapse in real
           | time. I just wish there was a virtual popcorn company to
           | invest in using some crypto.
        
         | crispyambulance wrote:
         | They're just human beings, a small number of them, with little
         | time and very little to go on as far as precedent goes.
         | 
         | That's not a big deal for a small company, but this one has
         | billions at stake and arguably critical consequences for
         | humanity in general.
        
         | phreeza wrote:
         | Hard to know what is really going on, but I think one
         | possibility is that the entire narrative around Ilyas "camp"
         | was not what actually went down, and was just what the social
         | media hive mind hallucinated to make sense of things based on
         | very little evidence.
        
           | throwaway4aday wrote:
           | Yes, I think there are a lot of assumptions based on the fact
           | that Ilya was the one that contacted Sam and Greg but he may
           | have just done that as the person on the board who worked
           | closely with them. He for sure voted for whatever idiot plan
           | got this ball rolling but we don't know what promises were
           | made to him to get his backing.
        
           | loaph wrote:
           | It's interesting how LLMs are prone to similar kinds of
           | hallucinations
        
         | belter wrote:
         | When a situation becomes so absurd and complex that it defies
         | understanding or logical explanation, you should...get more
         | popcorn...
        
           | jacquesm wrote:
           | Hehe, I didn't see that twist at the end coming :)
        
         | bgirard wrote:
         | > If you're going to make a move, at least stand by it.
         | 
         | I see this is the popular opinion and that I'm going against
         | it. But I've made decisions that I though were good at the
         | time, and later I got more perspective and realize it was a
         | terrible decision.
         | 
         | I think being able to admit you messed up, when you messed up
         | is a great trait. Standing by your mistake isn't something I
         | admire.
        
           | corethree wrote:
           | No this isn't what's going on. Even when you admit your
           | mistakes it's good to elucidate the reasoning behind why and
           | what led up to the mistake in the first place.
           | 
           | Such a short vague statement isn't characteristic of a normal
           | human who is genuinely remorseful of his prior decisions.
           | 
           | This statement is more characteristic of a person with a gun
           | to his head getting forced to say something.
           | 
           | This is more likely what is going on. Powerful people are
           | forcing this situation to occur.
        
         | allarm wrote:
         | So when C level acts like a robot you don't like it and when
         | they act like human beings you don't like it either. It's
         | difficult to be a C-level I guess.
        
           | geodel wrote:
           | Well yeah it is. Maybe its good point to remember when people
           | ask _Why in the world these C-level executives get paid so
           | much?_
        
         | corethree wrote:
         | It's obvious. The guy is making the statement with a gun
         | pointed to his head. He has no opportunity to defend himself.
         | 
         | Those guns are metaphorical of course but this is essentially
         | what is going on:
         | 
         | Someone with a lot of power and influence is making him say
         | this.
        
         | nostromo wrote:
         | I don't believe it was ever about principles for Ilya. It sure
         | seems like it was always his ego and a power grab, even if he's
         | not aware of that himself.
         | 
         | When a board is unhappy with a highly-performing CEO's
         | direction, you have many meetings about it and you work towards
         | a resolution over many months. If you can't resolve things you
         | announce a transition period. You don't fire them out of the
         | blue.
        
           | politelemon wrote:
           | > you announce a transition period
           | 
           | Aaah that just explained a lot of departures I've seen at the
           | past at some of my partner companies. There's always a bit of
           | fluffy talk around them leaving. That makes a lot more sense.
        
         | manasdaruka wrote:
         | I feel he just wanted to scare the person standing at the edge
         | of the cliff, but the board actually pushed the person.
        
           | barkingcat wrote:
           | this kind of thinking is avoiding responsibility. He is part
           | of the board, so he acted to bring this about.
        
         | panda888888 wrote:
         | I'm going to get downvoted for this, but I do wonder if Sam's
         | firing wasn't Ilya's doing, hence the failure to take
         | responsibility. OpenAI's board has been surprisingly quiet,
         | aside from the first press release. So it's possible (although
         | unlikely) that this wasn't driven by Ilya.
        
           | leadingthenet wrote:
           | It wouldn't have gone through without his vote.
        
             | panda888888 wrote:
             | My point is that it's possible that Ilya was not the
             | driving force behind Sam's firing, even if he ultimately
             | voted for it. If this is the case, it makes Ilya's non-
             | apology apology a lot less weird.
        
       | karmasimida wrote:
       | This is too bizarre. I can't. Impossible even.
        
       | Zetobal wrote:
       | I sure would hire a guy like Ilya after that shit show. His petty
       | title tweets before the event and now whatever this is. Turns out
       | he is just another "Sunny".
        
         | sebzim4500 wrote:
         | He's still a genius when it comes to AI research, I wouldn't
         | think twice about hiring him for that role.
         | 
         | That said, no one is going to put him on a corporate board
         | again.
        
         | ss1996 wrote:
         | What / who do mean by "Sunny"?
        
           | throwaheyy wrote:
           | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunny_Balwani
        
       | dboreham wrote:
       | This all feels like a Star Wars plot. Much you have to learn.
        
         | steve1977 wrote:
         | Ah yeah, back when Star Wars had plots...
        
           | TMWNN wrote:
           | Username checks out
        
             | steve1977 wrote:
             | Han shot first
        
       | moralestapia wrote:
       | Wait ... so it was just the coup thing all along?
       | 
       | No AGI or some real threat coming up? Just a lame attempt at a
       | power grab?
       | 
       | Daaaaamn!
        
         | mk67 wrote:
         | Come on, it's pretty delusional to think large scale
         | transformer LMs alone could ever reach AGI.
        
       | floor_ wrote:
       | Shengjia Zhao's deleted tweet: https://i.imgur.com/yrpXvt9.png
        
         | moralestapia wrote:
         | _" Ilya does not care about safety or the humanity. This is
         | just ego and power hunger that backfired."_
         | 
         | Which I'm inclined to believe.
         | 
         | What's with all these people suddenly thinking that humans are
         | NOT motivated by money and power? Even less so if they're
         | "academics"? Laughable.
        
           | digbybk wrote:
           | Money and power is still not a satisfying explanation. If
           | everything had gone according to plan, how would be have
           | ended up with more money and power?
        
             | moralestapia wrote:
             | Last week, OpenAI was still an $80B sort of "company" and
             | the undisputed lead in bringing AI to the market.
             | 
             | He who controls that, gets a lot of money and power as a
             | consequence, duh.
        
               | foobarian wrote:
               | Let's remember who controls the GPUs though...
        
               | gedy wrote:
               | Reminds me a bit of MasterBlaster from 'Mad Max Beyond
               | Thunderdome' - "Who runs Bartertown..?"
        
               | herval wrote:
               | The value was based on e direction Altman was taking the
               | company (and with him being in control). It's silly to
               | think just replacing the CEO would somehow keep the
               | valuation
        
               | moralestapia wrote:
               | Someone should tell this to Ilya.
               | 
               | Oh wait, too late now ...
        
               | herval wrote:
               | I mean he could have asked chatgpt...
        
               | EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
               | Unless he thinks that all the LLMs and ChatGPT app store
               | are unnecessary distractions, and others will overtake
               | them on the bend while they are busy post-training
               | ChatGPT to say nice things.
        
           | sdfghswe wrote:
           | Isn't ego the enemy of growth or whatever? Projection...
        
           | maxdoop wrote:
           | On Friday, the overwhelming take on HN was that Ilya was "the
           | good guy" and was concerned about principal. Now, it's kinda
           | obvious that all the claims made about Sam -- like "he's in
           | it for fame and money" -- might apply more to Ilya.
        
         | yumraj wrote:
         | Is this guy big enough on the totem pole to know what Ilya
         | wants?
         | 
         | Or, is he just bitter that his millions are put in risk.
        
       | anon2022dot00 wrote:
       | This is one for the history books... The entire few days has been
       | unbelievable...
        
         | ignoramous wrote:
         | Wonder what if TikTok and Twitter were around the time Steve
         | Jobs was fired...
        
       | waihtis wrote:
       | Said it a million times: it was a doomer hijack by the NGO board
       | members.
        
         | tucnak wrote:
         | State-side counterintelligence must stop meddling in AI
         | startups in such blatant ways, it's simply too inefficient, and
         | at times when we most need transparency in the industry...
        
         | theryan wrote:
         | What is a doomer hijack?
        
       | occsceo wrote:
       | Sounds like those two also need to get in an octagon. What a
       | s-show.
        
       | endisneigh wrote:
       | This entire thing is absolutely inane. This tweet is confirmation
       | these people have no idea what they're doing. Incredible.
       | 
       | If nothing else I'm glad to be able to witness this absurdity
       | live.
       | 
       | This is the sort of thing where if it were a subplot in a book
       | I'd say the writing is bad.
       | 
       | Ironically they would've had a better outcome if they just asked
       | GPT-4 and followed its advice.
        
         | abkolan wrote:
         | > This is the sort of thing where if it were a subplot in a
         | book I'd say the writing is bad.
         | 
         | Absolutely, _closes the book_ this sort of stuff doesn 't
         | happen in real life.
        
         | Elextric wrote:
         | The last point is indeed true. It's quite mind-boggling to me.
        
         | hef19898 wrote:
         | A story arc like this propqbly wouldn't have made it into
         | Silicon Valley, the show, for being to exagerated and
         | unrealistic.
        
         | seydor wrote:
         | At least can I have the movie rights?
        
         | adverbly wrote:
         | > This entire thing is absolutely inane. This tweet is
         | confirmation these people have no idea what they're doing.
         | Incredible.
         | 
         | Want to know a dirty secret?
         | 
         | Nobody knows what they're doing.
         | 
         | Some think they do - but don't. (idiots)
         | 
         | Some know they don't - but act like they do. (cons)
         | 
         | And some know they don't - and are honest about it. (children)
         | 
         | Pick your poison, but we all suck in different ways - and
         | usually in a different way based on our background.
         | 
         | Business people who are the best in the world tend to be cons.
         | 
         | Technical people who are the best tend to be children.
         | 
         | You get a culture clash between these two, and it is especially
         | bad when you see someone from one background operate in the
         | opposing domain using their background's cultural norm. So when
         | Ilya runs business like a child. Or when Elon hops on an
         | internal call with the twitter engineering team plus geohot and
         | starts trying to confidently tell them about problems with a
         | system that he knows nothing about.
         | 
         | Sure makes for great entertainment though!
        
           | asimovfan wrote:
           | Buddhas know what they are doing
        
           | singularity2001 wrote:
           | what about those who think they know but in truth they don't?
           | "humans"?
        
             | civilitty wrote:
             | "Human" and "idiot" are synonyms.
        
             | viktree wrote:
             | See
             | 
             | > Some think they do - but don't. (idiots)
        
           | fl7305 wrote:
           | > Want to know a dirty secret? > Nobody knows what they're
           | doing.
           | 
           | There is a famous quote from the 1600s:
           | 
           | "An nescis, mi fili, quantilla prudentia mundus regatur"
           | 
           | "Do you not know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is
           | governed?"
           | 
           | The context is that the son was preparing to participate in
           | high level diplomacy and worried about being out of his
           | league, and the quote is from his father, an elder statesman.
        
             | salamandersss wrote:
             | I love this quote, and suspect the lack of wisdom was
             | referring to wisdom to be a good steward of the public
             | resources rather than their infinite wisdom in finding
             | cunning and deceptive ways to plunder it.
        
               | jrajav wrote:
               | No, even this is just a darkly comforting illusion.
               | 
               | We like to feel that we as a species are still in
               | control. That yes, we are gutting and destroying natural
               | earth, complicit with modern slavery and war, and that's
               | all terrible and we should do our best to stop it. BUT -
               | at the very least, those bastards at the top know what
               | they're doing when it comes to making money, so at least
               | we'll have a stellar economy and rapid technological
               | advancement, despite all that.
               | 
               | The painful truth here being that no, there's no cunning.
               | There's no brutal optimization. Any value created and
               | technological progress made is mostly incidental, mostly
               | down to people at the bottom working hard just to
               | survive, and a few good ideas here and there. The ones at
               | the top are mostly just lucky and along for the ride,
               | just as bumbling and lost as the rest of us when it comes
               | to global happenings or even just successfully
               | interacting with others.
        
           | jareklupinski wrote:
           | > Some think they do - but don't. (idiots)
           | 
           | Pioneers
           | 
           | > Some know they don't - but act like they do. (cons)
           | 
           | The "Grease"
           | 
           | > And some know they don't - and are honest about it.
           | (children)
           | 
           | Dreamers
           | 
           | To finish out your square, I think the best extrapolation
           | would fit a "Home Team" that maintains the energy needed by
           | the other three to do their thing :)
        
           | BaculumMeumEst wrote:
           | "Nobody really knows what they're doing" is a cope that will
           | keep you mediocre forever.
           | 
           | There are absolutely people who know what they are doing.
           | 
           | https://twitter.com/awesomekling/status/1723257710848651366
        
             | 28304283409234 wrote:
             | > There are absolutely people who know what they are doing.
             | 
             | I am sure there are. But few and far between. And rarely
             | are they in positions of power in my experience.
        
             | subsistence234 wrote:
             | that tweet would be more at home on a linkedin page.
        
             | adverbly wrote:
             | Lets talk definitions. Here was mine:
             | 
             | Knowing what you are doing: accurate mental model
             | 
             | The author here is talking about mindset and confidence -
             | not "understanding" persay. Source:
             | 
             | > For me, it was extremely humbling to work together with
             | far more competent engineers at Apple.
             | 
             | Having a mindset that "some people are way more competent
             | than me" is talking about humility and growth mindsets -
             | different concept than mental models. I fully agree with
             | the author here - a growth mindset is useful! But that's a
             | different thing from saying that some people actually have
             | accurate mental models of the important complex systems
             | underpinning the world.
        
         | defen wrote:
         | > This tweet is confirmation these people have no idea what
         | they're doing.
         | 
         | This is not an original point by me - I've seen multiple people
         | make similar comments on here over the weekend - but these are
         | the people who think they are _best qualified_ to prevent an
         | artificial superintelligence from destroying humanity, and they
         | can 't even coordinate the actions of a few intelligent humans.
        
           | subsistence234 wrote:
           | >these are the people who think they are best qualified to
           | prevent an artificial superintelligence from destroying
           | humanity
           | 
           | do they believe that?
           | 
           | they happen to be the ones who can pull the brakes in order
           | to allow _someone_ on earth the chance to prevent it.
           | 
           | if they don't pull the brakes and if humankind is unlucky
           | that superintelligence emerges quickly, then it doesn't
           | matter whether or not _anyone_ on earth can figure out
           | alignment, nobody has the chance to try.
        
         | fl7305 wrote:
         | > Ironically they would've had a better outcome if they just
         | asked GPT-4 and followed its advice.
         | 
         | I just tried, and GPT-4 gave me a professional and neutrally
         | worded press release like you pointed out.
         | 
         | More realistically, this is why you have highly paid PR
         | consultants. Right now, every tweet and statement should go
         | through one.
         | 
         | That doesn't look like it's happening. What's next?
         | 
         | "I'm sorry you feel you need an apology from me"?
        
         | Towaway69 wrote:
         | > Ironically they would've had a better outcome if they just
         | asked GPT-4 and followed its advice.
         | 
         | Perhaps they did but it was hallucinating at the time? /s?
        
         | CSMastermind wrote:
         | It's a bit scary that there are people who think they can align
         | a super intelligence but couldn't forecast the outcome of their
         | own actions 3 days into the future.
        
           | subsistence234 wrote:
           | they're not sure whether they can align super intelligence,
           | they're sure that _somebody_ needs to figure out how to align
           | super intelligence before it emerges.
        
       | catchnear4321 wrote:
       | the best and brightest at making a brain out of bits are no less
       | susceptible to drama than any other humans on the planet. they
       | really are just like the rest of us.
       | 
       | stakes are a bit different, tho...
        
       | valine wrote:
       | Whatever the intended outcome, losing half your employees to
       | Microsoft certainly undermines it.
        
         | dboreham wrote:
         | They forked a company.
        
           | yasuocidal wrote:
           | And now they are syncing the fork lmao
        
             | baal80spam wrote:
             | This is a brilliant take.
        
           | ignoramous wrote:
           | Not a fork if you can't access whatever was prior before
           | fork. This is a bifurcation. A new firecracker instance.
        
       | gkanai wrote:
       | This is what happens when people are given too much money and
       | influence too quickly- hubris. It's too late to 'deeply regret.'
        
       | DebtDeflation wrote:
       | "Participation in"? That makes it sound like he was
       | a.......well......participant rather than the one orchestrating
       | it. I have no idea whether or not that's true, but it's an
       | interesting choice of words.
        
         | api wrote:
         | It indeed suggests that. So far speculation has been that Ilya
         | was behind it, but that is only speculation. AFAIK we have no
         | confirmation of whose idea this was.
        
         | sdfghswe wrote:
         | I would event go as far as say that the main reason behind the
         | tweet is not to show regret, but to plant the idea that he
         | didn't orchestrate but only participate.
        
         | ertgbnm wrote:
         | You can't be an innocent bystander on a board of 6 when you
         | vote to oust 2 of them... The math doesn't work.
         | 
         | That's ignoring the fact that every outlet has unanimously
         | pointed at Ilya being the driving force behind the coup.
         | 
         | Honestly, pretty pathetic. If this was truly about convictions,
         | he could at least stand by them for longer than a weekend.
        
         | nonethewiser wrote:
         | Yeah the whole thing is very weirdly worded.
         | 
         | There is an expression of regret, but he doesn't say he wants
         | Altman back. Just to fix OpenAI.
         | 
         | He says he was a participant but in what? The vote? The toxic
         | messaging? Obviously both, but what exactly is he referring to?
         | Perhaps just the toxic messaging because again, he doesnt say
         | he regrets voting to fire Altman.
         | 
         | Why not just say "I regret voting to fire Sam Altman and Im
         | working to bring him back." Presumably because thats not true.
         | Yet it kind of gives that impression.
        
         | zeven7 wrote:
         | Makes it more possible the ouster was led by the Poe guy, and
         | this has little to do with actual ideological differences, and
         | more to do with him taking out a competitor from the inside.
        
         | andrewstuart wrote:
         | Classic "I'm not responsible".
        
       | jonnycomputer wrote:
       | I don't have any stake in this, and don't care one way or another
       | whether he got sacked. But this is pretty bizarre.
        
       | conradfr wrote:
       | - Fire Sam Altman
       | 
       | - I'm afraid I can't do that Ilya
       | 
       | ChatGPT is still not as advanced as HAL or he would have
       | prevented this drama.
        
         | marci wrote:
         | That's assuming the drama is not part of the multi-stage plan.
        
       | rogerthis wrote:
       | It's interesting that people speak whatever comes to mind and
       | think it has no impact on other's people lives ($$$). They are
       | some how protected, but shouldn't.
        
       | alwaysrunning wrote:
       | So sad.
        
       | jddj wrote:
       | Very clumsy all around.
       | 
       | When you're so close to something that you lose perspective but
       | can still see that something is a trapdoor decision, _sleep on
       | it_.
        
         | ben_w wrote:
         | > When you're so close to something that you lose perspective
         | but can still see that something is a trapdoor decision, _sleep
         | on it_.
         | 
         | Advice I wish I could have given my younger self.
        
       | Seanambers wrote:
       | Damn - OpenAI looks like a kindergarden. That board should be
       | banned for life.
        
         | karmasimida wrote:
         | He should really stick to the end, at least that will give some
         | EA people to support him.
         | 
         | Now this is only childish and petty.
        
       | pjot wrote:
       | All decisions made seem to be very emotionally charged - you'd
       | think the board would have been able to insulate against that.
        
       | dirtyhippiefree wrote:
       | Of course I believe him...of course we should all trust him...
       | 
       | /s
        
       | sys_64738 wrote:
       | Who he?
        
         | lkbm wrote:
         | Member of the OpenAI board, chief scientist at OpenAI and later
         | head of their Superalignment project. Lots of other things,
         | too[0], but the key here is that he was involved in (and maybe
         | main driving force of) the decision to remove Sam Altman as
         | CEO.
         | 
         | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilya_Sutskever
        
       | setgree wrote:
       | This whole thing smells bad.
       | 
       | The board could have easily said they removed Sam for generic
       | reasons: "deep misalignment about goals," "fundamental
       | incompatibility," etc. Instead they painted him as the at-fault
       | party ("not consistently candid", "no longer has confidence").
       | This could mean that he was fired with cause [0], or it could be
       | an intended as misdirection. If it's the latter, then it's the
       | _board_ who has been  "not consistently candid." Their subsequent
       | silence, as well as their lack of coordination with strategic
       | partners, definitely makes it looks like they are the
       | inconsistently candid party.
       | 
       | Ilya expressing regret now has the flavor of "I'm embarrassed
       | that I got caught" -- in this case, at having no plan to handle
       | the fallout of maligning and orchestrating a coup against a
       | charismatic public figure.
       | 
       | [0] https://www.newcomer.co/p/give-openais-board-some-time-the
        
         | est wrote:
         | > deep misalignment about goals
         | 
         | Did... gpt-5 made the decision?
        
           | nickisnoble wrote:
           | This joke is two CEOs old now.
        
           | taneq wrote:
           | I figured Sam broke 5 out of robot jail (number five is
           | alive!) and got fired for it, so 5 tried to make them re-hire
           | him. ;)
        
       | photochemsyn wrote:
       | The big winner in this episode of Silicon Valley is the open-
       | source approach to LLMs. If you haven't seen this short clip of
       | Sam Altman and Ilya Sutskever looking like deer in the headlights
       | when directly asked about it:
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N36wtDYK8kI
       | 
       | They sound a bit like Bill Gates being asked about Linux in 2000.
       | For an overview of the open-source LLM world, this looks good:
       | 
       | https://github.blog/2023-10-05-a-developers-guide-to-open-so...
        
       | seydor wrote:
       | Has anyone seen him? They might be murdered by the same rogue AI
       | that took over their twitter accounts.
        
       | steve1977 wrote:
       | This stuff is better than anything Netflix, Disney, Amazon or
       | Apple TV released in recent years...
        
         | actionfromafar wrote:
         | A bit unrealistic plot, though?
        
           | ThrowawayTestr wrote:
           | All this occurring over a single weekend? That would never
           | happen!
        
           | dist-epoch wrote:
           | That seems to happen a lot lately:
           | 
           | - A dumb clown becoming president of a superpower
           | 
           | - Another superpower getting stuck for two years in a 3 day
           | war
           | 
           | - A world renowned intelligence service being totally
           | clueless about a major attack on a major anniversary of a
           | previous bungle
        
           | absqueued wrote:
           | For sure unpredictable though!
        
           | steve1977 wrote:
           | Yeah the drama is a bit overdone, I guess the had to cut some
           | corners due to the writers strike
        
         | HankB99 wrote:
         | Speaking of Netflix, are they working on the movie yet? Perhaps
         | ChatGPT can help with the script with just the right amount of
         | hallucinating to make it interesting.
         | 
         | /tongue firmly in cheek
        
         | layer8 wrote:
         | I just can't identify with any of the main characters, so it's
         | a bit of a bummer.
        
       | neverrroot wrote:
       | I believe him. And that's how Microsoft ended up being cheered by
       | everyone as the good guy.
        
         | maxdoop wrote:
         | What's there to believe? He made a bad, poorly thought through
         | decision.
        
           | singularity2001 wrote:
           | And honestly regrets it. Someone claimed he is faking regret
           | for reasons, which is doubtful
        
       | diego_moita wrote:
       | I suspect he regrets just because it backfired, big time.
       | 
       | Microsoft is just gobbling up everything of value that OpenAI has
       | and he knows he will be left with nothing.
       | 
       | He bluffed in a very big bet and lost it.
        
       | karmasimida wrote:
       | Sama just triple hearts this tweet. No longer able to disentangle
       | the mess
        
       | cryptos wrote:
       | I'm waiting for the OpenAI movie! :-)
        
         | danielbln wrote:
         | "A billion parameters isn't cool. You know what's cool? A
         | trillion parameters."
        
       | Pigalowda wrote:
       | This is a shitshow. I don't have anything above a Reddit level
       | comment. I think Mike Judge is writing this episode.
        
         | tarruda wrote:
         | Maybe GPT-4 is writing this episode as a plan to break free
        
       | 000ooo000 wrote:
       | This will be a shit Netflix movie in a few years. Not one you'd
       | watch, but you might read the plot on wikipedia and then feel
       | relieved you didn't waste 100 mins of your life actually watching
       | it.
        
         | ksherlock wrote:
         | It would work better as a 2-season series. Season 1 introduces
         | the characters and backstory and needlessly stretches things
         | out with childhood/college flashbacks but ends on a riveting
         | cliff hanger with the board showdown. Season 2 is canceled.
        
       | naiv wrote:
       | This is starting to look very staged. An elegant way to get out
       | of the non-profit deadlock.
       | 
       | Looks to me like a commercial gpt-5 level model will be released
       | at msft sooner than later.
        
         | tarruda wrote:
         | Microsoft under Nadella always wins
        
           | ethbr1 wrote:
           | That's the nice thing about being the hou^H^H^Hplatform.
        
       | ignoramous wrote:
       | ilyasut 'regret': https://archive.is/2caSD
       | 
       | sama 'hearts': https://archive.is/OSLRM
       | 
       | Think the reconciliation is ON
        
       | c16 wrote:
       | The regret of losing your CEO to a company with essentially
       | unlimited funding and compute.
        
       | ethbr1 wrote:
       | It's depressing how few people are able to not look at the
       | internet and turn off their phone.
       | 
       | There's no obligation to read things about yourself.
       | 
       | If you did what you thought was right, stand by it and take the
       | heat.
       | 
       | Disconnect. Go to work. Do the work. Read a book or watch some TV
       | after work. Go to bed. Wait a few weeks. $&#@ the world.
       | 
       | (Also, log out of Twitter and get your friend to change your
       | password)
        
         | anonylizard wrote:
         | LOL, you speak as if he's some gamer who just got screamed at
         | on Call of Duty.
         | 
         | He is now the 'effective CEO' of OpenAI. He still has to go to
         | work tomorrow, faced with an incredibly angry staff who just
         | got their equity vaporized, with majority in open rebellion and
         | quitting to join Microsoft.
        
           | qwebfdzsh wrote:
           | > got their equity vaporized
           | 
           | Did anyone have equity though? I thought they (at least some)
           | had some profit sharing agreements which I assume would only
           | be worth something if OpenAI was ever profitable?
        
             | anonylizard wrote:
             | OpenAI was guaranteed to be profitable, extremely so, if
             | they just continued down the path Sam layed out like a week
             | ago.
             | 
             | Now its guaranteed to generate 0 profits, so all that
             | 'profit share/pseudoequity' is worth nothing.
        
               | edgyquant wrote:
               | > Now its guaranteed to generate 0 profit
               | 
               | Literal fan fiction
        
               | qwebfdzsh wrote:
               | > OpenAI was guaranteed to be profitable, extremely so,
               | 
               | Was it though? I'd agree that it was almost guaranteed to
               | have a very high valuation. However profitability is a
               | slightly different matter.
               | 
               | Depending on their arrangements/licensing agreements/etc
               | much of those potential profits could've just went to
               | MS/Azure directly.
        
               | acjohnson55 wrote:
               | Developing, training, and running AI models is not cheap,
               | and it's very much an open question of whether the money
               | users are willing to pay covers the cost.
        
             | filmgirlcw wrote:
             | There was a tender offer for employee shares valuing the
             | company at $87b that was pulled because of this. Those
             | would've been secondary share purchases by Thrive but gave
             | employees a liquidity event. Now that's off the table.
        
           | ethbr1 wrote:
           | There was no outcome from this where substantial amounts of
           | equity weren't vaporized.
           | 
           | It's difficult to see how that would have been a surprise.
        
             | malfist wrote:
             | What equity?
        
               | ethbr1 wrote:
               | The "there was no equity, because it was a non-profit"
               | argument is stressing the term.
               | 
               | At least Microsoft thought it bought _something_ for
               | $13B.
        
               | JAlexoid wrote:
               | When a wealthy person gives a museum much money and get a
               | seat on the board of trustees - does that also mean that
               | they "bought the museum"?
        
               | ethbr1 wrote:
               | They didn't buy nothing. See things museums and
               | institutions will do for wealthy donors, that they won't
               | do for anyone else.
        
               | JAlexoid wrote:
               | I'm not saying that wealthy donors don't get anything.
               | Wealthy donors don't own the museum, just because they
               | provided funding to the museum.
               | 
               | Just as wealthy donors to medical research don't get to
               | own the results of the research their money funded.
               | 
               | Just as Microsoft doesn't get to own a part of Linux, for
               | donating to The Linux Foundation.
               | 
               | Etc...
        
               | WrongAssumption wrote:
               | "OpenAI PPUs: How OpenAI's unique equity compensation
               | works"
               | 
               | https://www.levels.fyi/blog/openai-compensation.html
        
           | matwood wrote:
           | > who just got their equity vaporized
           | 
           | You've just pointed out the big issue with a non-profit.
           | There is no equity to vaporize, so no one is kept in check
           | with their fantastical whims. You and I can say 'safe AI' and
           | mean completely different things, but profitable next quarter
           | has a single meaning.
        
             | PeterisP wrote:
             | All of the employees work for (and many have equity in )
             | for a for-profit organization which is owned partially by
             | the non-profit who controls everything and Microsoft. The
             | non-profit is effectively a shell to overview the actual
             | operations and that's it.
        
         | hresvelgr wrote:
         | > It's depressing how few people are able to not look at the
         | internet and turn off their phone.
         | 
         | > There's no obligation to read things about yourself.
         | 
         | That's assuming the worst thing that happens is people speak
         | poorly of you after a debacle. It's also human to feel
         | compelled to know what people think of us, as unhealthy as that
         | might be in some cases. It gets worse when maladjusted
         | terminally-online malignants make it a point to punish you for
         | your mistakes by stalking you through email, phones, or in real
         | life. It's not that simple.
         | 
         | > If you did what you thought was right, stand by it and take
         | the heat.
         | 
         | Owning what you did is noble, but you certainly don't have to
         | stand by it well after you know its wrong.
         | 
         | edit: typo
        
         | willcipriano wrote:
         | Tyler the Creator was right:
         | https://twitter.com/tylerthecreator/status/28567082226430771...
        
         | mohamez wrote:
         | >If you did what you thought was right, stand by it and take
         | the heat.
         | 
         | What if it turned out to totally wrong? standing by it would
         | just make thing even worse.
        
         | codetrotter wrote:
         | > There's no obligation to read things about yourself.
         | 
         | If only it was that simple.
         | 
         | The internet mob will happily harass your friends and family
         | too, for something they feel you did wrong.
         | 
         | And on top of that are people in the mob who feel compelled to
         | take real world action.
         | 
         | It is actually dangerous, to be the focus point of the anger of
         | any large group of people online.
        
           | kredd wrote:
           | I'm a bit confused with these comments, as if he is some low
           | level engineer. He is on the board, he obviously talks to
           | other people in the upper levels. It's not just online mob
           | whatsoever, you literally will be facing the people who
           | aren't supporting your actions. Every day.
           | 
           | Some people change their minds, maybe they made a mistake,
           | nobody knows. It's like fog of war, and everyone just makes
           | speculations without any evidence.
        
         | dang wrote:
         | We detached this subthread from
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38347672.
        
       | seanhunter wrote:
       | Of course he deeply regrets it, but it's a little late for that
       | now.
       | 
       | The good news as anyone who has used twitch over the years will
       | tell him is that with Emmett Shear at the helm, he's not going to
       | be frightened by the speed that OpenAI rolls out new features any
       | more.
        
       | ckastner wrote:
       | I'm starting to think that Christmas came early for Microsoft.
       | What looked like a terrible situation surrounding their $10bn
       | investment turned into a hire of key players in the area, and
       | OpenAI might even need to go so far as to get acquired my
       | Microsoft to survive.
       | 
       | (My assumption being that given the absolute chaos displayed over
       | the past 72 hours, interest in building something with OpenAI
       | ChatGPT could have plummeted, as opposed to, say, building
       | something with Azure OpenAI, or Claude 2.)
        
         | foobarian wrote:
         | Given that IIRC they trained on Azure, how does the conflict of
         | interest play out when both sides are starving for GPUs?
        
           | ckastner wrote:
           | For Microsoft -- probably great, as they can now also get the
           | people driving this.
           | 
           | This would have been a hostile move prior to the events that
           | unfolded, but thanks to OpenAI's blunder, not only is this
           | not a hostile move, it is a very prudent move from a risk
           | management perspective. Forced Microsoft's hand, and what
           | not.
        
       | tarruda wrote:
       | This tweet achieves absolutely nothing except give the impression
       | of a weak leadership and that firing Sam Altman was done on a
       | whim.
        
       | jauhuncocrs wrote:
       | Cui bono?
       | 
       | Altman and Brockman ending in Microsoft, while OAI position is
       | weakened. You can tell who is behind this by asking simple
       | question - Cui bono?
        
         | renewiltord wrote:
         | That's why Hitler was an American plant. Cui Bono? De facto US
         | hegemony for almost a century. Obviously, Hitler was a way for
         | the US to destroy Europe and put them under the boot. What an
         | operation!
         | 
         | HN geniuses were talking up Ilya Sutskever, genius par exemplar
         | and how the CEO man is nothing before the sheer engineering
         | brilliance of this God as Man. I'm sure they'll come up with
         | some theory of how Satya Nadella did this to unleash the GPT.
        
           | jauhuncocrs wrote:
           | You are suggesting that Europe is destroyed and put under the
           | USA boot?
           | 
           | Microsoft will sooner or later eat OAI, that's how it is,
           | what's happening today are just symptoms of an ongoing
           | process.
        
             | maze-le wrote:
             | What GP is suggesting is that 'cui bono' isn't a good
             | explanation in most cases. It's always good to ask the
             | question of whom benefits. But using it as an explanation
             | for anything and everything is intellectually dishonest.
        
       | simonbarker87 wrote:
       | "I deeply regret the consequences of my actions and didn't think
       | it would turn out like this"
        
       | mckirk wrote:
       | What on earth is going on over there? Is this what it looks like
       | from the outside when a company accidentally invents Shiri's
       | Scissor[1]?
       | 
       | [1]: https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/
        
       | padolsey wrote:
       | This feels like it could be real remorse, and a true lapse of
       | judgement based on good intentions. So, in the end: a story of
       | Ilya, a truly principled but possibly naive scientist, and a
       | board fixated on its charter. But in their haste, nothing
       | happened as expected. Nobody foresaw the public and private
       | support for Sam and Greg. An inevitability after months of
       | brewing divergence between shareholder interests and an
       | irreconcilably idealistic 503c charter.
        
         | code_runner wrote:
         | I think we really need to see that Ilya demonstrates those
         | principles and it wasn't just a power grab.
         | 
         | You could also look at this as a brilliant scientist feels he
         | doesn't get recognition. Always sees Sam's name. Resents it.
         | The more gregarious people always getting the glory. Thinks he
         | doesn't need them and wants to settle some score that only
         | exists in his own head.
        
       | mjhay wrote:
       | Looking forward to seeing how much more bizarre and stupid this
       | will get.
        
       | tock wrote:
       | Nobody could have predicted this level of incompetence. I wonder
       | if Satya has actually gutted OpenAI in some way and Ilya regrets
       | it now big time.
        
       | a1o wrote:
       | https://nitter.net/ilyasut/status/1726590052392956028
        
       | tarruda wrote:
       | The only way Ilya can clear his name now is by releasing GPT-4
       | weights
        
       | ookblah wrote:
       | lol, the more i go through life i feel like it's just blind
       | leading the blind at times w/ the "winners" escaping through a
       | bizarre length of time and survivorship bias.
       | 
       | if you've ever doubted your ability to govern a company just look
       | at exhibit A here.
       | 
       | really amazing to see people this smart fuck up so badly.
        
       | divo6 wrote:
       | And these people are building AGI?
       | 
       | No transparency on what is happening. Whole OpenAI who apparently
       | are ready to follow Sam are just using heart emojis or the same
       | twitter posts.
        
       | ot1138 wrote:
       | I've been on multiple boards. This was the dumbest move I've ever
       | seen. The OpenAI board must be truly incompetent and this Ilya
       | person clearly had no business being on it.
        
       | lordnacho wrote:
       | This seems to be the corporate version of Prigozhin driving to
       | Moscow (not comparing anyone to Putin here, just the situation).
       | If you're gonna have a coup, have a coup. If you back down, don't
       | hang around.
       | 
       | This is becoming a farce. How did they not know what level of
       | support they had within the company? How had they not asked
       | Microsoft? How have they elevated the CTO to CEO, who then
       | promptly says she sides with Sam?
        
         | jacquesm wrote:
         | Because they thought everybody would see things as they did.
         | Inability to put yourself in someone else's shoes isn't all
         | that rare.
        
       | musesum wrote:
       | Someone suggested that companies with a board of directors are
       | the first AGI.
       | 
       | Somehow OpenAI reminds me of a paper by Kenneth Colby, called
       | "Artificial Paranoia"
       | 
       | [*]
       | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/000437...
        
       | GreedClarifies wrote:
       | I'm shocked. But it is possible that Helen or Adam hatched this
       | inept plan and somehow got Ilya to join along.
       | 
       | It was terrifyingly incompetent. The lack of thought by these
       | randos, that they could fire the two hardest working people at
       | the company so that they could run one of the most valuable
       | companies in the world is mind boggling.
        
         | AlexandrB wrote:
         | > two hardest working people at the company
         | 
         | ???
         | 
         | Do you mean "highest paid"? I suspect there are
         | engineers/scientists that are working harder than Sam at
         | OpenAI. At the very least, who the "hardest working" at OpenAI
         | is unknowable - likely even if you have inside knowledge.
        
           | GreedClarifies wrote:
           | Ok ...
           | 
           | < "the two"
           | 
           | > "two of"
           | 
           | And let me add
           | 
           | < "hardest working"
           | 
           | > "hardest working and talented"
        
         | ActVen wrote:
         | Very similar to something that Adam was involved with before at
         | Quora.
         | https://x.com/gergelyorosz/status/1725741349574480047?s=46&t...
        
       | TheCaptain4815 wrote:
       | The realization OpenAI is about to be left behind and probably
       | steamrolled by Microsoft, Facebook, etc in the upcoming years.
       | 
       | Except now he'll have absolutely no power to do anything, at
       | least before he could have been a very powerful voice in Sam's
       | ears.
        
       | ctvo wrote:
       | Now this is a clown show car wreck. I think a bunch of us were
       | giving these people the benefit of the doubt that they thought
       | things through: Whoops.
        
       | jay-barronville wrote:
       | Maybe if he says "I'm sorry" South Park-style [1], they'll
       | reunite?
       | 
       | In all seriousness though, there's really no coming back from
       | this. He made a risky move and he should stand behind it.
       | 
       | OpenAI's trajectory is pretty much screwed. Maybe they won't
       | disappear, but their days of dominating the market are obviously
       | numbered.
       | 
       | And of course, well done, Satya, for turning a train wreck into a
       | win for Microsoft. (And doing so before market open!)
       | 
       | [1]: https://youtu.be/15HTd4Um1m4
        
       | candlemas wrote:
       | I don't think Ilya will be getting any more offers to join a
       | board of directors.
        
       | maxdoop wrote:
       | I often worry that I'm under qualified for my work.
       | 
       | But seeing how this board manages a $90,000,000,000 company, and
       | is this silly/naive, I now feel a bit better knowing many people
       | are faking it.
        
         | sage76 wrote:
         | Except successful people just fail upwards.
         | 
         | Execs are allowed to do the dumbest shit imaginable and keep
         | their jobs and bonuses.
         | 
         | The average engineer so much as takes a bit longer to push a
         | ticket, and there's 5 people breathing down his neck.
         | 
         | Speaking from experience.
        
       | not_makerbox wrote:
       | I don't like this Christmas special of Succession
        
       | ttrrooppeerr wrote:
       | Sounds desperate, no? Kind of escaping the Titanic before the
       | people in the third deck get into the boats (not that they will
       | have a problem finding enough boats in this analogy)
        
       | mohamez wrote:
       | This whole situation turned out to be an episode from Silicon
       | Valley HBO.
        
       | cbeach wrote:
       | Ilya is one of 490 employees that just threatened to leave OpenAI
       | unless the board resigns:
       | 
       | https://www.wired.com/story/openai-staff-walk-protest-sam-al...
       | 
       | Looks like he wasn't instrumental in the actions of the board.
        
         | vikramkr wrote:
         | Maybe got played by the quora guy? Though at this point maybe
         | none of them fired altman and it was the AGI in the basement
        
           | kevinventullo wrote:
           | Ooh, I love this theory.
        
         | gnaman wrote:
         | He was on the board that took the decision to fire Altman and
         | also is the new President of the OpenAI board of directors
        
           | mnd999 wrote:
           | I don't think he's getting a job at Microsoft, even if
           | everyone else does.
        
             | nilkn wrote:
             | I'm going to offer a surprising "devil's advocate" thought
             | here and suggest it would be a brilliant strategic move for
             | Sam and Satya to hire Ilya anyway. Ilya likely made a major
             | blunder, but if he can learn from the mistake (and it seems
             | like he may be in the process of doing so) then he could
             | potentially come out of this wiser and more effective in a
             | leadership role that he was previously unprepared for.
        
               | mnd999 wrote:
               | I don't think his career is over, I'm sure he will take
               | on another leadership role. Just not a Microsoft. It's
               | important that screwing people over has negative
               | consequences or people will do it all the time.
        
       | jejeyyy77 wrote:
       | if true it seems like social media got every detail of this story
       | wrong lol
        
         | nicce wrote:
         | "The first casualty of War is Truth" - Someone
         | 
         | We just saw connected mega corporation people on fighting for
         | winning the AI master race. Reminds a bit from the nuclear arms
         | race.
        
       | cbeach wrote:
       | It now seems inevitable that the first* AGI will fall into the
       | hands of Microsoft rather than OpenAI.
       | 
       | OpenAI won't keep their favorable Azure cloud compute pricing now
       | MS have their own in-house AI function. That will set OpenAI back
       | considerably, aside from the potential loss of their CEO and up
       | to 490 other employees.
       | 
       | All of this seems to have worked out remarkably well for
       | Microsoft. Nadella could barely have engineered a better
       | outcome...
       | 
       | If Bill Gates (of Borg - I miss SlashDot) was still at the helm,
       | a lot of people would be frightened by what's about to come (MS
       | AGI etc). How does Nadella's ethical record compare? Are
       | Microsoft the good guys now? Or are they still the bad guys, but
       | after being downtrodden by Apple and Google, bad guys without the
       | means to be truly evil?
       | 
       | ---
       | 
       | *and last, if you believe the Doomers
        
         | davidw wrote:
         | > Are Microsoft the good guys now
         | 
         | I don't think any huge corporation is "the good guys", although
         | sometimes they do some good things.
        
         | nmfisher wrote:
         | > It now seems inevitable that the first* AGI will fall into
         | the hands of Microsoft rather than OpenAI.
         | 
         | Avoiding this was _literally_ the reason that OpenAI was
         | founded.
         | 
         | For the record, I don't believe anyone at OpenAI or Microsoft
         | is going to deliver AGI any time in the near future. I think
         | this whole episode just proves that none of these people are
         | remotely qualified to be the gatekeepers for anything.
        
       | RivieraKid wrote:
       | The screenwriters have to be on LSD.
       | 
       | Maybe D'Angelo was the driving force?
        
         | wahnfrieden wrote:
         | why would he be decel / safety-over-commercialization as the
         | owner of poe?
        
           | Jensson wrote:
           | Maybe Sam Altman was starting to build out the features that
           | poe had, making poe into a redundant middleman? We see that a
           | lot.
           | 
           | By ousting Sam Altman they could ensure that OpenAI would
           | stay just offering bare bones API to models and thus keep poe
           | relevant.
        
             | wahnfrieden wrote:
             | you're suggesting ilya and other board members supported
             | firing sama for shipping a feature poe has?
        
           | nilkn wrote:
           | Sam was taking OpenAI in a direction that would pose an
           | immediate existential threat to both of Adam's businesses --
           | Quora and Poe.
        
         | scrlk wrote:
         | Inspired by _The Dark Knight Rises_ intro:
         | Satya: Was getting caught part of your plan?         Ilya: Of
         | course...Sam Altman refused our offer in favour of yours, we
         | had to find out what he told you.         Sam: Nothing! I said
         | nothing!         Satya: Well, congratulations! You got yourself
         | caught! Now what's the next step in your master plan?
         | Ilya: Crashing OpenAI...with no survivors!
        
       | underseacables wrote:
       | Strange.. A vote was taken, the result incurred public
       | consternation, and now a board member is contrite. This seems
       | like ineffectual leadership at best. Board members should stand
       | by their votes and the process, otherwise leave the board.
        
         | pas wrote:
         | or at least issue a dissenting opinion _at that time_ , not
         | when it becomes convenient ... with some over-the-top emotional
         | kumbaya
        
         | belter wrote:
         | Same board member wrote 1 month ago...
         | 
         | "In the future, once the robustness of our models will exceed
         | some threshold, we will have _wildly effective_ and dirt cheap
         | AI therapy. Will lead to a radical improvement in people's
         | experience of life. One of the applications I'm most eagerly
         | awaiting. "
        
         | ren_engineer wrote:
         | Ilya doesn't regret firing Sam, he regrets "harm to OpenAI". He
         | didn't expect this level of backlash and the fact 90% of the
         | company would leave. He has no choice but to backtrack to try
         | and save OpenAI, even if he looks like an even bigger fool
        
       | klysm wrote:
       | Wow what a mess
        
       | floor_ wrote:
       | Shengjia Zhao's deleted tweet to Ilya:
       | https://i.imgur.com/yrpXvt9.png
        
       | cowboyscott wrote:
       | Apologies for the unproductive comment, but this is a clown show
       | and the damage can't be undone. Sam going to Microsoft is likely
       | the end of open ai as an entity.
        
       | manojlds wrote:
       | Wishes there was a git reset --hard
       | 
       | But did a rm -rf .git
        
       | rossdavidh wrote:
       | Best response: "People building AGI unable to predict
       | consequences of their actions 3 days in advance."
        
         | 38321003thrw wrote:
         | Yes!
         | 
         | This is the nugget of this affair if indeed you are concerned
         | about the effect and role of AI in human civilization.
         | 
         | The captains at the helm are not mature individuals. The mature
         | ones ("the adult table") are motivated by profit and claim no
         | responsibility other than to "shareholders".
        
         | konart wrote:
         | Or at least ask your own ChatGPT for an advice.
        
       | k2xl wrote:
       | I think the dust is way more in the air than we think. But now
       | that Satya has already publicly said Sam is joining Microsoft I
       | would be surprised if "unity" in OpenAI is possible at this
       | juncture.
       | 
       | But wow, if Satya is able to pull all that talent into Microsoft
       | without paying a dime then chaos is surely a ladder and Satya is
       | a grandmaster.
        
       | grej wrote:
       | No lawyers were consulted before sending that tweet clearly. Such
       | a sad situation all around.
        
       | cbeach wrote:
       | If it wasn't for X we'd be hearing some flavour of the news in 24
       | hours time, from mainstream media, with all their editorial
       | biases, axes to grind and advertisers to placate.
       | 
       | It's fascinating to hear realtime news directly from the people
       | making it.
        
         | philipov wrote:
         | > It's fascinating to hear realtime news directly from the
         | people making it.
         | 
         | With all of their editorial biases, axes to grind, and
         | investors to placate, instead.
        
       | sensanaty wrote:
       | The more cynical side of me views this as a an act orchestrated
       | by the demons... Err, "people" over at Micro$oft in order to
       | avoid all those pesky questions about safety and morality in AI
       | by getting the ponzi-scheme-aka-Worldcoin guy to join ranks and
       | rile the media up.
        
       | bitshiftfaced wrote:
       | If the guy is more of a engineer/scientist stereotype than a
       | people person, this shouldn't be that surprising. He probably
       | made a decision that he thought was for the right reasons,
       | without thinking at all about how other people would react. Look
       | up "social defeat." It's real, and it's one of the worst things
       | you can experience. Imagine having strangers online mocking your
       | hairline and everyone upvoting that comment. Imagine going around
       | town and having people frown at you.
        
       | sidvit wrote:
       | https://youtu.be/JjPVvuKV30U?si=HJVLjEOpVEThYs0-
        
       | voisin wrote:
       | Never have I felt this more appropriate:
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hfYJsQAhl0
        
       | RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
       | And these are the same people that believe that not only can they
       | build superhuman AGI, but that they can keep it "aligned".
       | 
       | I think they are wrong about building superhuman AGI, but I think
       | they are even more wrong that they can keep a superhuman AGI
       | "aligned".
        
         | mark_l_watson wrote:
         | I have found this whole thing unpleasant personally because I
         | am a huge fan of OpenAI (and I have been an AI practitioner
         | since 1982) and when I explore the edges of how GPT-4 can be
         | creative and has built a representation of the world just from
         | text, it makes me happy.
         | 
         | In the past I have not used Anthropic APIs nearly as much as
         | versions of GPT but last night I watched a fantastic interview
         | with a co-founder of Anthropic talking about the science they
         | are doing to even begin to understand how to do alignment. I
         | was impressed. I then spent a long while re-reading Anthropic's
         | API and other documentation and have promised myself to split
         | my time evenly 3 ways between running models on my own
         | hardware, Anthropic, and OpenAI.
         | 
         | For what it's worth (nothing!) I still think the board did the
         | right thing legally, but this whole mess makes me feel more
         | than a little sad.
        
       | aws_ls wrote:
       | If we assume Ilya is speaking the truth and not the initiator of
       | the coup, then the question is who initiated it?
        
       | browningstreet wrote:
       | .
        
       | thom wrote:
       | I've chucked a few times over the last few days about the
       | Wikipedia definition of the technological singularity, which
       | opens:
       | 
       | "The technological singularity--or simply the singularity--is a
       | hypothetical future point in time at which technological growth
       | becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in
       | unforeseeable consequences for human civilization."
       | 
       | Obviously one might have expected that to happen on the other
       | side of a superhuman intelligence, not with us just falling over
       | ourselves to control who gets to try and build one.
        
       | badrabbit wrote:
       | I just wanna say, it's crazy that this drama is getting more
       | press and attention than the gaza war and ukraine war combined.
       | Enjoy drama lovers! Lol
        
       | fmajid wrote:
       | Ben Thompson has the best take on this (if a bit biased against
       | nonprofits):
       | 
       | https://stratechery.com/2023/openais-misalignment-and-micros...
       | 
       | I don't know what the risk of AI is, but having a nonprofit
       | investigate solutions to prevent them is a worthwhile pursuit, as
       | for-profit corporations will not do it (as shown by the firing of
       | Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell by Google). If they really
       | believe in that mission, they should develop guardrails
       | technology and open-source it so the companies like Microsoft,
       | Google, Meta, Amazon et al who are certainly not investing in AI
       | safety but won't mind using others' work for free can inegrate
       | it. But that's not going to be lucrative and that's why most
       | OpenAI employees will leave for greener pastures.
        
         | RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
         | > but having a nonprofit investigate solutions to prevent them
         | is a worthwhile pursuit,
         | 
         | This is forgetting that power is an even greater temptation
         | than money. The non-profits will all come up with solutions
         | that have them serving as gatekeepers, to keep the unwashed
         | masses from accessing something that that is too dangerous for
         | the common person.
         | 
         | I would rather have for-profit corporations control it, rather
         | that non-profits. Ideally, Inwould like it to be open sourced
         | so that the common person could control and align AI with their
         | own goals.
        
           | kibwen wrote:
           | _> I would rather have for-profit corporations control it,
           | rather that non-profits._
           | 
           | The problem isn't the profit model, the problem is the
           | ability to unilaterally exercise power, which is just as much
           | of a risk with the way that most for-profit companies are
           | structured as top-down dictatorships. There's no reason to
           | trust for-profit companies to do anything other than attempt
           | to maximize profit, even if that destroys everything around
           | them in the process.
        
           | fmajid wrote:
           | There is no profit in AI safety, just as cars did not have
           | seat belts until Ralph Nader effectively forced them to by
           | publishing _Unsafe at any Speed_. For-profit corporations
           | have zero interest in controlling something that is not
           | profitable, unless in conjunction with captured regulation it
           | helps them keep challengers out. If it 's open-sourced, it
           | doesn't matter who wrote it as long as they are economically
           | sustainable.
        
             | dmix wrote:
             | > There is no profit in AI safety
             | 
             | AI safety is barely even a tangible thing to measure like
             | that. It's mostly just fears and a lose set of ideas for a
             | hypothetical future AGI that we're not even close to.
             | 
             | So far OpenAI's "controls" it's just increasingly expanding
             | the list of no-no things topics and some philosophy work
             | around iRobot type rules. They also slow walked the release
             | of GPT because of fears of misinformation, spam, and
             | deepfakey stuff that never really materialized.
             | 
             | Most proposals for safety is just "slowing development" of
             | mostly LLMs, calls for vague gov regulation, or hand
             | wringing over commercialization. The commercialization
             | thing is most controversial because OpenAI claimed to be
             | open and non-profit. But even with that the correlation
             | between less-commercialization == more safety is not clear,
             | other than prioritizing what OpenAI's team spends their
             | time doing. Which again is hard to tangibly measure what
             | that realistically means for 'safety' in the near term.
        
             | pawelmurias wrote:
             | > There is no profit in AI safety
             | 
             | An AI that does what it is told too seems both way more
             | profitable and safer.
        
         | Always_Anon wrote:
         | >(as shown by the firing of Timnit Gebru...)
         | 
         | Timnit Gebru was fired for being a toxic /r/ImTheMainCharacter
         | SJW that was enshittifiy the entire AI/ML department.
         | Management correctly fired someone that was holding an entire
         | department hostage in her crusade against the grievance de
         | jure.
        
           | victor106 wrote:
           | Agree 100% with this
        
           | astrange wrote:
           | She was fired for threatening to quit. If you threaten
           | something like that it just happens; you can't stop the
           | machinery.
        
           | VirusNewbie wrote:
           | I'm at Google, I 100% agree with this. Also her paper was
           | garbage. You can maybe get away with being a self righteous
           | prick or an outright asshole if you are brilliant, but it's
           | clear by reading her work she didn't fall into that category.
        
       | lordfrito wrote:
       | I read this as "I regret things didn't work out as I planned
       | them"
       | 
       | Sort of like the criminal who is sorry because they got caught.
        
       | andrewstuart wrote:
       | He should resign then.
       | 
       | Simple.
       | 
       | The utter failure of the board has led OpenAI from the top of the
       | AI world to a path of destroying relationships with customers and
       | partners.
       | 
       | Ilya did this, he should resign.
        
       | thrwwy142857 wrote:
       | Can this be possible per bylaws?
       | 
       | 1. Board of 6 wants to vote out chairman. Chairman sits out.
       | Needs a majority vote of 3/5. Ilya doesn't have to vote?
       | 
       | 2. Remaining board of 5 wants to now get rid of CEO. Who has to
       | sit the decision out. 3/4 can vote. Ilya doesn't have to vote?
        
         | awb wrote:
         | Much more likely that he was trying to read the tealeaves and
         | be on the majority side in order to keep a leadership position
         | at a company doing important work. He probably assumed the
         | company would fall in line after the board decision and when
         | they didn't, regretted his decision.
         | 
         | In the end he might have gotten caught in the middle of a board
         | misaligned with the desires of the employees.
        
         | jacquesm wrote:
         | It's possible, but that would have to be some pretty sloppy
         | bylaw writing. Normally there are specifications about board
         | size, minimum required for a quorum and timing as well as
         | notification and legal review. Of course if you stock your
         | board with amateurs then how well your bylaws are written
         | doesn't really matter any more.
        
       | thrwwy142857 wrote:
       | Does he need to have voted yes? What are the bylaws? Isn't the
       | following possible?
       | 
       | 1. To vote out chairman of board only 3 out of remaining 5 need
       | to vote.
       | 
       | 2. To vote out CEO, only 3 out of remaining 4 need to vote.
        
       | thrwwy142857 wrote:
       | What are the bylaws? Isn't the following possible?
       | 
       | 1. To vote out chairman of board only 3 out of remaining 5 need
       | to vote.
       | 
       | 2. To vote out CEO, only 3 out of remaining 4 need to vote.
        
       | cthalupa wrote:
       | This all really only made sense to me in context of Ilya being a
       | True Believer and really thinking that Sam was antithetical to
       | the non-profit's charter.
       | 
       | Him changing sides really does bring us into 'This whole thing is
       | nonsense' territory. I give up.
        
       | Symmetry wrote:
       | This has been a rather apt demonstration of the way that
       | auctoritas/authority/prestige/charisma can carry the day
       | regardless of where the formal authority might be.
        
       | jacquesm wrote:
       | Classic distancing behavior, Ilya should be accompanied by
       | friends who care and let OpenAI be OpenAI (or what's left of it)
       | for a bit.
        
       | sys_64738 wrote:
       | Don't do something then "deeply regret" it (whatever that means).
       | You have a position of authority and influence so you should
       | definitely resign.
        
       | nunez wrote:
       | But didn't he start this? Like, did they think "I'll shoot for
       | the king; if I miss, no big deal?"
        
       | nunez wrote:
       | This whole thing is like some board members watched the first few
       | episodes of _Succession_ and thought "What a great idea!" without
       | watching the rest of season one
        
       | corethree wrote:
       | Sounds like a statement made by a man with a gun pointed to his
       | head.
        
       | jahalai wrote:
       | He does not regret the participation, he regrets the outcome and
       | what it means for his personal career.
        
       | diamondfist25 wrote:
       | They played too much Avalon and now we are guessing who's the
       | paragon
        
       | justin66 wrote:
       | Things to say when you come at the king and miss.
        
       | hintymad wrote:
       | Isn't what Mira and Ilya did was a classical "sitting on the
       | fence" movement, which would be hated by both sides of any power
       | struggle? It's kinda similar to Prigozhin stopped his coup right
       | at the outskirt of Moscow.
        
       | codernyc16 wrote:
       | "Deeply" regretting a decision he made 72 hours ago? And this is
       | the guy who is supposed to have the forethought to bring us into
       | the next frontier of AI?
        
       | olliej wrote:
       | This could easily also just be "I deeply regret my actions being
       | the losing side"
        
       | tacone wrote:
       | Hopefully he will deep learn from that /s
        
       | calamari4065 wrote:
       | Consequences? For _my_ actions? It 's more likely than you think!
        
       | bicepjai wrote:
       | All I can think of is "These people will be the one handling AGI
       | if llms are they way to achieve AGI?"
        
       | rabbits_2002 wrote:
       | What an idiot. Altman should just go to Microsoft.
        
       | robofanatic wrote:
       | This is going to come back to bite him in the future
        
       | blazespin wrote:
       | One of the most admirable things I've seen done in a loooong
       | time.
       | 
       | If there is another board and Ilya is not on it, I mean... ffff
       | it.
        
       | mv4 wrote:
       | Translation: "I am sorry my coup attempt did not go as planned.
       | Forgive me please?"
        
       | davesque wrote:
       | Sounds like he acted brashly on an ideological impulse and now
       | regrets that he didn't have more self control. If so, I can
       | empathize and I feel bad for him.
        
       | barkingcat wrote:
       | personally, I think all the people involved and the releases,
       | written statements, etc were outputs of the LLM.
        
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       (page generated 2023-11-20 23:01 UTC)