[HN Gopher] We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to...
___________________________________________________________________
We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to
OpenAI as CEO
Author : staranjeet
Score : 1953 points
Date : 2023-11-22 06:01 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| jahsome wrote:
| That is one hot potato.
| siva7 wrote:
| Interesting that Adam is still on Board. This hints to Helen
| being the main perpetrator of the drama?
| avereveard wrote:
| Well I don't see Greg back on the list and he was a loyalist so
| there may be a few adjustments moving forward
| fatbird wrote:
| Or it was recognized that Adam was the instigator and the real
| power player, and the force that Sam needed to come to an
| accommodation with. From everything I've heard about Toner,
| she's a very principled person who lent academic credibility to
| the board, and was a great figurehead for the non-profit's
| conscience. Once the veneer was ripped from the non-profit's
| "controlling" role, she was deadweight and useful only as a
| scapegoat.
|
| It looks to me like the real victim here is the "for humanity"
| corporate structure. At some point, the money decided it needed
| to be free.
| notfed wrote:
| Nah, anyone who voted Sam out is in timeout.
| fatbird wrote:
| Adam D'Angelo is on the new board with Brett Taylor and
| Larry Summers. Tasha, Ilya and Helen are out.
|
| Still think D'Angelo wasn't the power player in the room?
| GreedClarifies wrote:
| Yes, quite clearly.
| AaronNewcomer wrote:
| What a wild ride. I have used X more the past few days than in a
| long time; that's for sure!
| stingraycharles wrote:
| Yes. I, too, read a whole three tweets in the past few days,
| which is more than I did the entire year before that.
| adlpz wrote:
| Good, was out of popcorn already.
|
| Somebody make a Netflix documentary please.
| colmvp wrote:
| So, is he still going to lead some team at Microsoft?
| wilg wrote:
| No https://twitter.com/sama/status/1727207458324848883
| turndown wrote:
| From the outside none of this makes much sense. So the old board
| just disliked him enough to oust him but apparently didn't have a
| good pulse on the company and overplayed their hand?
| fruit2020 wrote:
| It's about money and power. Not AI safety or people disliking
| each other.
| jychang wrote:
| What money? None of them had equity
| consp wrote:
| Not having money while everyone becomes filthy rich is also
| a money motivator.
| MVissers wrote:
| They'll all be filthy rich if they can keep doing this.
| Altman was already side-hussling to get funding for other
| AI companies.
|
| Same with employees and their stock comp. Same with
| microsoft.
| ravst3s wrote:
| The had some equity after 2019.
|
| Thrive was about to buy employee shares at a $86 bn
| valuation. The Information said that those units had 12x
| since 2021.
|
| https://www.theinformation.com/articles/thrive-capital-to-
| le...
| Davidzheng wrote:
| There's no proof on either side. Just as likely to be
| ideological disputes from Helen and Ilya.
| yosame wrote:
| As far as I can tell, Sam did something? to get fired by the
| board, who are meant to be driven by non-profit ideals instead
| of corporate profits (probably from Sam pushing profit over
| safety, but there's no real way to know). From that, basically
| the whole company threatened to quit and move to Microsoft,
| showing the board that their power is purely ornamental. To
| retain any sort of power or say over decision making
| whatsoever, the board made concessions and got Sam back.
|
| Really it just shows the whole non-profit arm of the company
| was even more of a lie then it appeared.
| maxdoop wrote:
| Where is this blind trust for the board coming from? The
| board provided zero rationale for firing Sam.
| evantbyrne wrote:
| They did give reasons they were just vague. Reading between
| the lines, it seems the board was implying that Sam was
| trying to manipulate the board members individually. Was it
| true? Who knows. And as an outside observer, who cares?
| This is a fight between rich people about who gets to be
| richer. AI is so much larger than one cultish startup.
| nbanks wrote:
| They wanted a new CEO and didn't expect Sam to take 95% of the
| company with him when he left.
|
| Sam also played his hand extremely well; he's likely learned
| from watching hundreds of founder blowups over the years. He
| never really seemed angry publicly as he gained support from
| all the staff including Ilya & Mira. I had little doubt Emmett
| Shear would also welcome Sam's return since they were both in
| the first YC batch together.
| eganist wrote:
| Any analysis on how Satya Nadella comes out on all of this? Or
| what impact this might have at all within Microsoft?
| nothrowaways wrote:
| Satya is still a winner, grabs less now though.
| polyomino wrote:
| Satya wants to be able to book the OpenAI money as revenue.
| This is better for him.
| Racing0461 wrote:
| Satya's pay is about 100 million dollars. Ide say he has earned
| every penny for protecting MSFTs 10B investment in OpenAI. A 1%
| insurance policy is great value.
| Finbarr wrote:
| Hopefully Sam and Greg get restored to the board also.
| robbiet480 wrote:
| The most recent reporting I saw from Bloomberg said sama would
| return as CEO only.
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| The new board only has 3 people to start with, but hopefully
| easier to add more members soon. Tonight's NYT story
| mentioned the board member attrition and the prolonged
| gridlock in adding new ones, which probably led to the
| current saga.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Why would he agree to this? He holds all the cards now.
| Uhhrrr wrote:
| Sure, why not.
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| "In principle" has me less than 100% assured. Hopefully no more
| plot twists in this. Everyone, inside and outside, has probably
| had enough.
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| I'm down for the next season of this hot drama.
| koito17 wrote:
| What a wild ride these past few days have been. Friday already
| feels like a very long time ago given all of the information and
| controversy that's come out.
| rvz wrote:
| Once again the source is directly from Twitter / X and the news
| was announced from there.
|
| Dispelling the complete nonsense that the platform is 'dying'.
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| The problem is none of the alternatives offered a smooth UX
| transition. Mastodon is fragmented by design and Bluesky is
| gated to this day. There was never a true Digg-like event that
| caused user migration to reach critical mass. So people simply
| trickled back once the most volatile periods of post-Elon
| Twitter passed.
|
| That doesn't change the fact post-Elon Twitter has severely
| degraded in terms of user experience (rate limits, blue check
| spam, API pay-wall, etc.) and Elon isn't doing the platform any
| favours by continuing to participate in detrimental ways (seen
| in the recent advertiser exodus).
| mastazi wrote:
| FWIW I've just read the tweet on Nitter, haven't had a Twitter
| account in more than 2 years.
| wilg wrote:
| Well that's got very little to do with their point (which
| isn't very relevant anyway)
| mastazi wrote:
| Their point is that whether or not the platform is "dying"
| would depend on whether or not Twitter is still the best
| way to "get news".
|
| But the most common metrics for whether or not a social
| media platform is dying, are things like ad revenue and
| MAU.
|
| I contribute to neither, since I'm not a user nor an ad
| viewer, and yet I'm still able to "get the news".
|
| So my point is this: the fact that important news are still
| there, won't guarantee that the platform stays successfull
| metabagel wrote:
| Twitter isn't dying. It's just finding its core audience of
| white supremacists.
| 0xpgm wrote:
| Your comment sounds very weird to people outside
| America/Europe
| mlazos wrote:
| Looks like Satya will have all of the leverage after this. He
| kind of always did though, but the board has almost entirely been
| replaced.
|
| I don't see any point to the non profit umbrella now.
| baking wrote:
| Sure, you can dissolve it if you hand over all the assets to
| another 501(c)3 organization. Otherwise, you are stuck with it.
| xyst wrote:
| This ordeal reminds me of the Silicon Valley episode where
| Richard is replaced by an empty chair, temporarily.
| tomohelix wrote:
| So, Ilya is out of the board, but Adam is still on it. I know
| this will raise some eyebrows but whatever.
|
| Still though, this isn't something that will just go away with
| Sam back. OAI will undergo serious changes now that Sam has shown
| himself to be irreplaceable. Future will tell but in the long
| terms, I doubt we will see OAI as one of the megacorps like
| Facebook or Uber. They lost the trust.
| wilg wrote:
| I mean he's not irreplaceable so much as booting him suddenly
| for no good reason creates problems.
| ayakang31415 wrote:
| "I doubt we will see OAI as one of the megacorps like Facebook
| or Uber. They lost the trust." How is this the case?
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Scandal a minute Uber lol
| jatins wrote:
| > I doubt we will see OAI as one of the megacorps like Facebook
| or Uber. They lost the trust
|
| Whose trust?
| sverhagen wrote:
| Ah, yes, Facebook and Uber, brands known for consistent
| trustworthiness throughout their existences /s
| ilikehurdles wrote:
| OAI looks stronger than ever. The untrustworthy bits that
| caused all this instability over the last 5 days have been
| ditched into the sea. Care to expand on your claim?
| neta1337 wrote:
| Please explain your claim as well. I don't see how this
| company looks stronger than ever, more like a clown company
| TapWaterBandit wrote:
| They got rid of the clowns though. They went from having a
| board with lightweights and insiders to what at least
| initially is a strong initial 3.
| ilikehurdles wrote:
| I may have been overly eager in my comment because the big
| bad downside of the new board is none of the founders are
| on it. I hope the current membership sees reason and fixes
| this issue.
|
| But I said this because: They've retained the entire
| company, reinstated its founder as CEO, and replaced an
| activist clown board with a professional, experienced, and
| possibly* unified one. Still remains to be seen how the
| board membership and overall org structure changes, but I
| have much more trust in the current 3 members steering
| OpenAI toward long-term success.
| MVissers wrote:
| If by "long-term-success" you mean a capitalistic lap-dog
| of microsoft, I'll agree.
|
| It seems that the safety team within OpenAI lost. My
| biggest fear with this whole AI thing is hostile
| takeover, and openAI was best positioned to at least do
| an effort to prevent that. Now, I'm not so sure anymore.
| GreedClarifies wrote:
| It was a clown board running an awesome company.
|
| They fixed the glitch.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| > The untrustworthy bits that caused all this instability
| over the last 5 days have been ditched into the sea
|
| This whole thing started with Altman pushing a safety
| oriented non-profit into a tense contradiction (edit: I mean
| the 2019-2022 gpt3/chatgpt for-profit stuff that led to all
| the Anthropic people leaving). The most recent timeline was
|
| - Altman tries to push out another board member
|
| - That board member escalates by pushing Altman out (and
| Brockman off the board)
|
| - Altman's side escalates by saying they'll nuke the company
|
| Altman's side won, but how can we say that his side didn't
| cause any of this instability?
| ilikehurdles wrote:
| > Altman tries to push out another board member
|
| That event wasn't some unprovoked start of this history.
|
| > That board member escalates by pushing Altman out (and
| Brockman off the board)
|
| and the entire company retaliated. Then this board member
| tried to sell the company to a competitor who refused. In
| the meantime the board went through two interim CEOs who
| refused to play along with this scheme. In the meantime one
| of the people who voted to fire the CEO regretted it
| publicly within 24 hours. That's a clown car of a board. It
| reflects the quality of most non-profit boards but not of
| organizations that actually execute well.
| emptysongglass wrote:
| Something that's been fairly consistent here on HN
| throughout the debacle has been an almost fanatical
| defense of the board's actions as justified.
|
| The board was incompetent. It will go down in the history
| books as one of the biggest blunders of a board in
| history.
|
| If you want to take drastic action, you _consult with
| your biggest partner_ keeping the lights on before you do
| so. Helen Toner and Tasha McCauley had no business being
| on this board. Even if you had safety concerns in mind,
| you don 't bypass everyone else with a stake in the
| future of your business because you're feeling petulant.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| By recognizing that it didn't "start" with Altman trying to
| push out another board member, it started when that board
| member published a paper trashing the company she's on the
| board of, without speaking to the CEO of that company
| first, or trying in any way to affect change first.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| I edited my comment to clarify what I meant. The start
| was him pushing to move fast and break things in the
| classic YC kind of way. And it's BS to say that she
| didn't speak to the CEO or try to affect change first.
| The safety camp inside openai has been unsuccessfully
| trying to push him to slow down for years.
|
| See this article for all that context
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38341399) because
| it sure didn't start with the paper you referred to
| either.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| Your "most recent" timeline is still wrong, and while yes
| the entire history of OpenAI did not begin with the paper
| I'm referencing, it _is_ what started this specific
| fracas, the one where the board voted to oust Sam Altman.
|
| It was a classic antisocial academic move; all she needed
| to do was _talk_ to Altman, both before _and_ after
| writing the paper. It 's incredibly easy to do that, and
| her not doing it is what began the insanity.
|
| She's gone now, and Altman remains, substantially because
| she didn't know how to pick up a phone and interact with
| another human being. Who knows, she might have even been
| successful at her stated goal, of protecting AI, had she
| done even the most basic amount of problem solving first.
| She should not have been on this board, and I hope she's
| learned literally anything from this about interacting
| with people, though frankly I doubt it.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| Honestly, I just don't believe that she didn't talk to
| Altman about her concerns. I'd believe that she didn't
| say "I'm publishing a paper about it now" but I can't
| believe she didn't talk to him about her concerns during
| the last 4+ years that it's been a core tension at the
| company.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| That's what I mean; she should have discussed the paper
| and its contents specifically with Altman, and easily
| could have. It's a hugely damaging thing to have your
| _own_ board member come out critically against your
| company. It 's doubly so when it blindsides the CEO.
|
| She had many, many other options available to her that
| she did not take. That was a grave mistake and she paid
| for it.
|
| "But what about academic integrity?" Yes! That's why this
| whole idea was problematic from the beginning. She can't
| be objective and fulfill her role as board member. Her
| role at Georgetown was in _direct_ conflict with her role
| on the OpenAI board.
| croes wrote:
| >trashing the company
|
| So pointing out risks is trashing the company.
| gordon_freeman wrote:
| Facebook has lost trust so many times that I can't even count
| but it's still a Megacorp, isn't it?
| TerrifiedMouse wrote:
| The OpenAI of the past, that dabbled in random AI stuff
| (remember their DotA 2 bot?), is gone.
|
| OpenAI is now just a vehicle to commercialize their LLM - and
| everything is subservient to that goal. Discover a major flaw
| in GPT4? You shut your mouth. Doesn't matter if society at
| large suffers for it.
|
| Altman's/Microsoft's takeover of the former non-profit is now
| complete.
|
| Edit: Let this be a lesson to us all. Just because something
| claims to be non-profit doesn't mean it will always remain that
| way. With enough political maneuvering and money, a megacorp
| can takeover almost any organization. Non-profit status and
| whatever the organization's charter says is temporary.
| karmasimida wrote:
| > now just a vehicle to commercialize their LLM
|
| I mean it is what they want isn't it. They did some random
| stuff like, playing dota2 or robot arms, even the Dalle
| stuff. Now they finally find that one golden goose, of course
| they are going to keep it.
|
| I don't think the company has changed at all. It succeeded
| after all.
| nextaccountic wrote:
| But it's not exactly a company. It's a nonprofit structured
| in a way to wholly own a company. In that sense it's like
| Mozilla.
| karmasimida wrote:
| Nonprofit is a just a facade, it was convenient for them
| to appear as ethnical under that disguise, but they get
| rid of it when it is inconvenient in a week. 95% of them
| would rather join MSFT, than being in a non-profit.
|
| Did they company change? I am not convinced.
| ravst3s wrote:
| Agree that it's a facade.
|
| Iirc, the NP structure was implemented to attract top AI
| talent from FAANG. Then they needed investors to fund the
| infrastructure and hence gave the employees shares or
| profit units (whatever the hell that is). The NP now
| shields MSFT from regulatory issues.
|
| I do wonder how many of those employees would actually go
| to MSFT. It feels more like a gambit to get Altman back
| in since they were about to cash out with the tender
| offer.
| dizzydes wrote:
| Does it actually prevent regulators going after them?
| hadlock wrote:
| There's no moat in giant LLMs. Anyone on a long enough
| timeline can scrape/digitize 99.9X% of all human knowledge
| and build an LLM or LXX from it. Monetizing that idea and
| staying the market leader over a period longer than 10
| years will take a herculean amount of effort. Facebook
| releasing similar models for free definitely took the wind
| out of their sails, even a tiny bit; right now the moat is
| access to A100 boards. That will change as eventually even
| the Raspberry Pi 9 will have LLM capabilities
| moralestapia wrote:
| OpenAI (ChatGPT) is already a HUGE brand all around the
| world. No doubt they're the most valuable startup in the
| AI space. That's their moat.
|
| Unfortunately, in the past few days, the only thing
| they've accomplished is significantly damaging their
| brand.
| hadlock wrote:
| Branding counts for a lot, but LLM are already a
| commodity. As soon as someone releases an LLM equivalent
| to GPT4 or GPT5, most cloud providers will offer it
| locally for a fraction of what openAI is charging, and
| the heaviest users will simply self-host. Go look at the
| company Docker. I can build a container on almost any
| device with a prompt these days using open source
| tooling. The company (or brand, at this point?) offers
| "professional services" I suppose but who is paying for
| it? Or go look at Redis or Elasti-anything. Or memcached.
| Or postgres. Or whatever. Industrial-grade underpinnings
| of the internet, but it's all just commodity stuff you
| can lease from any cloud provider.
|
| It doesn't matter if OpenAI or AWS or GCP encoded the
| entire works of Shakespeare in their LLM, they can all
| write/complete a valid limerick about "There once was a
| man from Nantucket".
|
| I seriously doubt AWS is going to license OpenAI's
| technology when they can just copy the functionality,
| royalty free, and charge users for it. Maybe they will?
| But I doubt it. To the end user it's just another locally
| hosted API. Like DNS.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| I think yuou're assuming that OpenAI is charging a
| $/compute price equal to what it costs them.
|
| More likely, they're a loss-leader and generating
| publicity by making it as cheap as possible.
|
| _Everything_ we've seen come out of silicon valley does
| this, so why would they suddenly be charging the right
| price?
| worldsayshi wrote:
| > offer it locally for a fraction of what openAI is
| charging
|
| I thought the was a somewhat clear agreement that openAI
| is currently running inference at a loss?
| hadlock wrote:
| Moore's law seems to have failed on CPUs finally, but
| we've seen the pattern over and over. LLM specific
| hardware will undoubtedly bring down the cost. $10,000
| A100 GPU will not be the last GPU NVidia ever makes, nor
| will their competitors stand by and let them hold the
| market hostage.
|
| Quake and Counter-Strike in the 1990s ran like garbage in
| software-rendering mode. I remember having to run
| Counter-Strike on my Pentium 90 at the lowest resolution,
| and then disable upscaling to get 15fps, and even then
| smoke grenades and other effects would drop the framerate
| into the single digits. Almost two years after Quake's
| release did dedicated 3d video cards (voodoo 1 and 2 were
| accelerators, depended on a seperate 2d VGA graphics card
| to feed it) begin to hit the market.
|
| Nowadays you can run those games (and their sequels) in
| the thousands (tens of thousands?) of frames per second
| on a top end modern card. I would imagine similar events
| with hardware will transpire with LLM. OpenAI is already
| prototyping their own hardware to train and run LLMs. I
| would imagine NVidia hasn't been sitting on their hands
| either.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| > I seriously doubt AWS is going to license OpenAI's
| technology when they can just copy the functionality,
| royalty free, and charge users for it. Maybe they will?
| But I doubt it.
|
| You mean like they already do on Amazon Bedrock?
| hadlock wrote:
| Yeah and looks like they're going to offer Llama as well.
| They offer Redhat linux EC2 instances at a premium, and
| other paid per hour AMIs. I can't imagine why they
| wouldn't offer various LLMs at a premium, but not also
| offer a home-grown LLM at a lower rate once it's ready.
| rolisz wrote:
| Why do you think cloud providers can undercut OpenAI?
| From what I know, Llama 70b is more expensive to run than
| GPT-3.5, unless you can get 70+% utilization rate for
| your GPUs, which is hard to do.
|
| So far we don't have any open source models that are
| close to GPT4, so we don't know what it takes to run them
| for similar speeds.
| karmasimida wrote:
| The damage remains to be seen
|
| They still have gpt4 and rumored gpt4.5 to offer, so
| people have no choice but to use them. The internet has
| such short an attention span, this news will get
| forgotten in 2 months
| denlekke wrote:
| i don't think that's really any brand loyalty for OpenAI.
| people will use whatever is cheapest and best. in the
| longer run people will use whatever has the best access
| and integration.
|
| what's keeping people with OpenAI for now is that chatGPT
| is free and GPT3.5 and GPT4 are the best. over time I
| expect the gap in performance to get smaller and the cost
| to run these to get cheaper.
|
| if google gives me something close to as good as OpenAI's
| offering for the same price and it pull data from my
| gmail or my calendar or my google drive then i'll switch
| to that.
| dontupvoteme wrote:
| This, if anything people really don't like the verbose
| moralizing and anti-terseness of it.
|
| Ok, the first few times you use it maybe it's good to
| know it doesn't think it's a person, but short and sweet
| answers just save time, especially when the result is
| streamed.
| moralestapia wrote:
| I do think there is some brand loyalty.
|
| People use "the chatbot from OpenAI" because that's what
| became famous and got all the world a taste of AI (my dad
| is on that bandwagon, for instance). There is absolutely
| no way my dad is going to sign up for an Anthropic
| account and start making API calls to their LLM.
|
| But I agree that it's a weak moat, if OpenAI were to
| disappear, I could just tell my dad to use "this same
| thing but from Google" and he'd switch without thinking
| much about it.
| denlekke wrote:
| good points. on second thought, i should give them due
| credit for building a brand reputation as being "best"
| that will continue even if they aren't the best at some
| point, which will keep a lot of people with them. that's
| in addition to their other advantages that people will
| stay because it's easier than learning a new platform and
| there might be lock-in in terms of it being hard to move
| a trained gpt, or your chat history to another platform.
| cft wrote:
| You are forgetting about the end of the Moore's law. The
| costs for running a large scale AI won't drop
| dramatically. Any optimizations will require non-trivial
| expensive PhD Bell Labs level research. Running
| intelligent LLMs will be financially accessible only to a
| few mega corps in the US and China (and perhaps to the
| European government). The AI "safety" teams will control
| the public discourse. Traditional search engines that
| blacklist websites with dissenting opinions will be
| viewed as the benevolent free speech dinosaurs of the
| past.
| dontupvoteme wrote:
| This assumes the only way to use LLMs effectively is to
| have a monolith model that does everything from
| translation (from ANY language to ANY language) to
| creative writing to coding to what have you. And
| supposedly GPT4 is a mixture of experts (maybe 8-cross)
|
| The efficiency of finetuned models is quite, quite a bit
| improved at the cost of giving up the rest of the world
| to do specific things, and disk space to have a few dozen
| local finetunes (or even hundreds+ for SaaS services) is
| peanuts compared to acquiring 80GB of VRAM on a single
| device for monomodels
| cft wrote:
| Sutskever says there's a "phase transition" at the order
| of 9 bn neurons, after which LLMs begin to become really
| useful. I don't know much here, but wouldn't the
| monomodels become overfit, because they don't have enough
| data for 9+bn parameters?
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| They won't stand still while others are scraping and
| digitizing. It's like saying there is no moat in search.
| Scale is a thing. Learning effects are a thing. It's not
| the worlds widest moat for sure, but it's a moat.
| g42gregory wrote:
| Why would society at large suffer from a major flaw in GPT-4,
| if it's even there? If GPT-4 spits out some nonsense to your
| customers, just put a filter on it, as you should anyway. We
| can't seriously expect OpenAI to babysit every company out
| there, can we? Why would we even want to?
| TerrifiedMouse wrote:
| For example, and I'm not saying such flaws exist, GPT4
| output is bias in some way, encourages radicalization (see
| Twitter's, YouTube's, and Facebook's news feed algorithm),
| create self-esteem issues in children (see Instagram), ...
| etc.
|
| If you worked for old OpenAI, you would be free to talk
| about it - since old OpenAI didn't give a crap about
| profit.
|
| Altman's OpenAI? He will want you to "go to him first".
| g42gregory wrote:
| We can't expect GPT-4 not to have bias in some way, or
| not to have all these things that you mentioned. I read
| in multiple places that GPT products have "progressive"
| bias. If that's Ok with you, then you just use it with
| that bias. If not, you fix it by pre-prompting, etc... If
| you can't fix it, use LLAMA or something else. That's the
| entrepreneur's problem, not OpenAI's. OpenAI needs to
| make it intelligent and capable. The entrepreneurs and
| business users will do the rest. That's how they get
| paid. If OpenAI to solve all these problems, what
| business users are going to do themselves? I just don't
| see the societal harm here.
| nearbuy wrote:
| Concerns about bias and racism in ChatGPT would feel more
| valid if ChatGPT were even one tenth as bias as anything
| else in life. Twitter, Facebook, the media, friends and
| family, etc. are all more bias and radicalized (though I
| mean "radicalized" in a mild sense) than ChatGPT. Talk to
| anyone on any side about the war in Gaza and you'll get a
| bunch of opinions that the opposite side will say are
| blatantly racist. ChatGPT will just say something
| inoffensive like it's a complex and sensitive issue and
| that it's not programmed to have political opinions.
| kgeist wrote:
| GPT3/GPT4 currently moralize about anything slightly
| controversial. Sure you can construct a long elaborate
| prompt to "jailbreak" it, but it's so much effort it's
| easier to just write something by yourself.
| dontupvoteme wrote:
| >Encourages radicalization (see Twitter's, YouTube's, and
| Facebook's news feed algorithm)
|
| What do you mean? It recommends things that it thinks
| people will like.
|
| Also I highly suspect "Altman's OpenAI" is dead
| regardless. They are now Copilot(tm) Research.
|
| They may have delusions of grandeur regarding being able
| to resist the MicroBorg or change it from the inside, but
| that simply does not happen.
|
| The best they can hope for as an org is to live as long
| as they can as best as they can.
|
| I think Sam's 100B silicon gambit in the middle east
| (quite curious because this is probably something the
| United State Federal Government Is Likely Not Super Fond
| Of) is him realizing that, while he is influential and
| powerful, he's nowhere near MSFT level.
| dontupvoteme wrote:
| >If GPT-4 spits out some nonsense to your customers, just
| put a filter on it, as you should anyway.
|
| Languages other than English exist, and RLHF at least does
| work in any language you make the request in. regex/nlp,
| not so much.
| g42gregory wrote:
| No regex, you would use another copy of few-shot prompted
| GPT-4 as a filter for the first GPT-4!
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Because real people are using it to make decisions.
| Decisions that could be entirely skewed in some direction,
| and often that causes damage.
| robbomacrae wrote:
| I'm still waiting for an optimized version of that bot that
| can run locally...
| krisoft wrote:
| > With enough political maneuvering and money, a megacorp can
| takeover almost any organization.
|
| In fact this observation is pertinent to the original stated
| goals of openAI. In some sense companies and organisations
| are superinteligences. That is they have goals, they are
| acting in the real world to achieve those goals and they are
| more capable in some measures than a single human. (They are
| not AGI, because they are not artificial, they are composed
| of meaty parts, the individuals forming the company.)
|
| In fact what we are seeing is that when the superinteligence
| OpenAI was set up there was an attempt to align the goals of
| the initial founders with the then new organisation. They
| tried to "bind" their "golem" to make it pursue certain goals
| by giving it an unconventional governance structure and a
| charter.
|
| Did they succeed? Too early to tell for sure, but there are
| at least question marks around it.
|
| How would one argue against? OpenAI appears to have given up
| the lofty goals of AI safety and preventing the concentration
| of AI provess. In their pursuit of economic success the
| forces wishing to enrich themselves overpowered the forces
| wishing to concentrate on the goals. Safety will be still a
| figleaf for them, if nothing else to achieve regulatory
| capture to keep out upstart competition.
|
| How would one argue for? OpenAI is still around. The charter
| is still around. To be able to achieve the lofty goals
| contained in it one needs a lot of resources. Money in
| particular is a resource which enables one greater powers in
| shaping the world. Achieving the original goals will require
| a lot of money. The "golem" is now in the "gain resources"
| phase of its operation. To achieve that it commercialises the
| relatively benign, safe and simple LLMs it has access to.
| This serves the original goal in three ways: gains further
| resources, estabilishes the organisation as a pre-eminent
| expert on AI and thus AI safety, provides it with a
| relatively safe sandbox where adversarial forces are trying
| its safety concepts. In other words all is well with the
| original goals, the "golem" that is OpenAI is still well
| aligned. It will achieve the original goals once it has
| gained enough resources to do so.
|
| The fact that we can't tell which is happening is in fact the
| worry and problem with superinteligence/AI safety.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| They let the fox in. But they didn't have to. They could have
| try to raise money without such a sweet deal to MS. They gave
| away power for cloud credits.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > They let the fox in. But they didn't have to. They could
| have try to raise money without such a sweet deal to MS.
|
| They did, and fell, IIRC, vastly short (IIRC, an order of
| magnitude, maybe more) short of their minimum short-term
| target. The commercial subsidiary thing was a risk taken to
| support the mission because it was clear it was going to
| fail from lack of funding otherwise.
| doikor wrote:
| They tried but it did not work. They needed billions for
| the compute time and top tier talent but were only able to
| collect millions.
| Havoc wrote:
| Don't think the dota bot was random. It's the perfect mix
| between complicated yet controllable environment, good data
| availability and good PR angle.
| dontupvoteme wrote:
| It was a clever parallel to deep blue, especially as they
| picked DotA which was always the "harder" game in its
| genre.
|
| Next up would be an EVE corp run entirely by LLMs
| 3cats-in-a-coat wrote:
| Do we need to false dichotomy. DotA 2 bot was a successful
| technology preview. You need both research and development in
| a healthy organisation. Let's call this... hmm I don't know
| "R&D" for short. Might catch on.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Non-profit is just a poorly thought out government-ish thing.
|
| If it's really valuable to society, it needs to be a
| government entity, full stop.
| nathanasmith wrote:
| On the contrary, this saga has shown that a huge number of
| people are extremely passionate about the existence of OpenAI
| and it's leadership by Altman, much more strongly and in larger
| numbers than most had suspected. If anything this has
| solidified the importance of the company and I think people
| will trust it more that the situation was resolved with the
| light speed it was.
| willdr wrote:
| That's a misreading of the situation. The employees saw their
| big bag vanishing and suddenly realised they were employed by
| a non-profit entity that had loftier goals than making a
| buck, so they rallied to overturn it and they've gotten their
| way. This is a net negative for anyone not financially
| invested in OAI.
| nathanasmith wrote:
| What lofty goals? The board was questioned repeatedly and
| never articulated clear reasoning for firing Altman and in
| the process lost the confidence of the employees hence the
| "rally". The lack of clarity was their undoing whether
| there would have been a bag for the employees to lose or
| not.
| murakamiiq84 wrote:
| My story: Maybe they had lofty goals, maybe not, but it
| sounded like the whole thing was instigated by Altman
| trying to fire Toner (one of the board members) over a
| silly pretext of her coauthoring a paper that nobody read
| that was very mildly negative about OpenAI, during her
| day job.
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/21/technology/openai-
| altman-...
|
| And then presumably the other board members read the
| writing on the wall (especially seeing how 3 other board
| members mysteriously resigned, including Hoffman
| https://www.semafor.com/article/11/19/2023/reid-hoffman-
| was-...), and realized that if Altman can kick out Toner
| under such flimsy pretexts, they'd be out too.
|
| So they allied with Helen to countercoup Greg/Sam.
|
| I think the anti-board perspective is that this is all
| shallow bickering over a 90B company. The pro-board
| perspective is that the whole _point_ of the board was to
| serve as a check on the CEO, so if the CEO could easily
| appoint only loyalists, then the board is a useless
| rubber stamp that lends unfair legitimacy to OpenAI 's
| regulatory capture efforts.
| lacker wrote:
| Let's see, Sam Altman is an incredibly charismatic founding
| CEO, who some people consider manipulative, but is also beloved
| by many employees. He got kicked out by his board, but brought
| back when they realized their mistake.
|
| It's true that this doesn't really pattern-match with the
| founding story of huge successful companies like Facebook,
| Amazon, Microsoft, or Google. But somehow, I think it's still
| possible that a huge company could be created by a person like
| this.
|
| (And of course, more important than creating a huge company, is
| creating insanely great products.)
| loveparade wrote:
| I think people following Sam Altman is jumping to
| conclusions. I think it's just as likely that employees are
| simply following the money. They want to make $$$, and that's
| what a for-profit company does, which is what Altman wants. I
| think it's probably not really about Altman or his
| leadership.
| kareaa wrote:
| Given that over 750 people have signed the letter, it's
| safe to assume that their motivations vary. Some might be
| motivated by the financial aspects, some might be motivated
| by Sam's leadership (like considering Sam as a friend who
| needs support). Some might fervently believe that their
| work is crucial for the advancement of humanity and that
| any changes would just hinder their progress. And some
| might have just caved in to peer pressure.
| strikelaserclaw wrote:
| Most are probably motivated by money, some are motivated
| by stability and some are motivated by their loyalty to
| sam but i think most are motivated by money and
| stability.
| mkii wrote:
| > It's true that this doesn't really pattern-match with the
| founding story of huge successful companies like Facebook,
| Amazon, Microsoft, or Google.
|
| You forgot about Apple.
| cowthulhu wrote:
| I feel like history has shown repeatedly that having a good
| product matters way more than trust, as evidenced by Facebook
| and Uber. People seem to talk big smack about lost trust and
| such in the immediate aftermath of a scandal, and then quitely
| renew the contracts when the time comes.
|
| All of the big ad companies (Google, Amazon, Facebook) have,
| like, a scandal per month, yet the ad revenue keeps coming.
| Meltdown was a huge scandal, yet Intel keeps pumping out the
| chips.
| anotherhue wrote:
| This has been childish throughout, everyone involved, including
| the tech community milking it for clicks should be ashamed.
| gloyoyo wrote:
| Tell that AGI who's boss!
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| > We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to
| return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board of Bret Taylor
| (Chair), Larry Summers, and Adam D'Angelo. > We are
| collaborating to figure out the details. Thank you so much for
| your patience through this.
|
| 1- So what was the point of this whole drama, and why couldn't
| you have settled like this adults?
|
| 2- Now what happens to Microsoft's role in all of this?
|
| 3- Twitter is still the best place to follow this and get
| updates, everyone is still make "official" statements on twitter,
| not sure how long this website will last but until then, this is
| the only portal for me to get news.
| quotemstr wrote:
| > Twitter is still the best place to follow this and get
| updates, everyone is still make "official" statements on
| twitter, not sure how long this website will last but until
| then, this is the only portal for me to get news.
|
| It's only natural to confuse what is happening with what we
| wish to happen. After all, when we imagine something, aren't we
| undergoing a kind of experience?
|
| A lot of people wish Twitter were dying, even though it's it,
| so they interpret evidence through a lens of belief
| confirmation rather than belief disproof. It's only human to do
| this. We all do.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > A lot of people wish Twitter were dying, even though it's
| it, so they interpret evidence through a lens of belief
| confirmation rather than belief disproof.
|
| Cognitive dissonance
| veec_cas_tant wrote:
| Or they read about the large cuts to Twitter's valuation
| from banks and X itself?
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| It was funny reading Kara Swisher keeping saying twitter is
| dying and is toxic and what not, while STILL doing all her
| first announcements on twitter, and using twitter as a
| source.
|
| same with Ashlee Vance (the other journo reporting on this)
| and all the main players (Sam/Greg/Ilya/Mira/Satya/whoever)
| also make their first announcement on twitter.
|
| I don't know about the funding part of it, but there is no
| denying it, the news is still freshest on twitter. Twitter
| feels just as toxic for me as before, in fact I feel
| community notes has made it much better, imho.
|
| ____
|
| In some related news, I finally got bluesky invite (I don't
| have invite codes yet or I would share here)
|
| and people there are complaining about... mastadon and how
| elitist it is...
|
| that was an eye opener.
|
| nice if you want some science-y updates but it's still lags
| behind twitter for news.
| metabagel wrote:
| I don't use Twitter any more, other than occasionally
| following links there (which open in the browser, because I
| deleted the app).
|
| Discoverability on Mastodon is abysmal. It was too much
| work for me.
|
| I tend to get my news from Substack now.
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| interesting, substack doesn't sound like a platform for
| the freshest news, but for deep insights.
|
| Don't you feel out of date on substack? especially since
| things move so fast sometimes, like with this open-ai
| fiasco?
| metabagel wrote:
| Twitter is incredibly uncivil. I don't have the stomach
| for it.
| tayo42 wrote:
| Did being up to date really have an impact on your life?
| It's mostly just gossip.
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| I understand what you are saying, but sometimes, news
| like this is perhaps the only excitement in our otherwise
| dull lives.
| hurryer wrote:
| Skilled operators say what sounds most virtuous and do what
| benefits most. Especially when these two things are not the
| same.
| hadlock wrote:
| Twitter isn't dying, but it hasn't grown measurably since
| 2015. Still sitting at about 300m active users.
| bagels wrote:
| Bluesky took long enough to invite me that I forgot what it
| even was when I got the email.
| seydor wrote:
| Microsoft said they are OK with Sam returning to openAI. There
| are probbaly legal reasons why they prefer things to go back as
| it were
|
| (Thank you for calling Twitter Twitter)
| AmericanOP wrote:
| The website is twitter.com. Why call it something else?
| alex_young wrote:
| Also, x.com redirects to Twitter.com. Seems like they want
| us to say Twitter.
| behnamoh wrote:
| saying "to tweet" is definitely better than saying "to
| xeet"
| asimovfan wrote:
| Xeet is super funny, hopefully takes over.
| behnamoh wrote:
| share it on Xitter
| grumpyprole wrote:
| Or xcreet?
| wise_young_man wrote:
| Maybe it's a cross post.
| labster wrote:
| Exactly right, fellow YCombinator News commenter!
| zarzavat wrote:
| I believe you mean _Startup News_
| tech234a wrote:
| For reference: https://web.archive.org/web/20070713212949
| /http://news.ycomb...
| blackoil wrote:
| From 2nd story on the archive
|
| >It is just a joke that Facebook could be valued at $6
| billion.
|
| lol, seems HN is same since forever.
| jatins wrote:
| Microsoft's role remains same as it was on Thursday. Minor
| (49%?) shareholder and keeps access to models and IP
|
| IMO Kevin tweeting that MS will hire and match comp of all
| OpenAI employees was amazing negotiation tactic because that
| meant employees could sign the petition without worrying about
| their jobs/visas
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| but no board seat? how do they prevent a rehash of this in
| the future and how do they safeguard their investment? Really
| curious.
| protocolture wrote:
| OpenAI is an airgapped test lab for Microsoft. They dont
| want critical exposure to the downside risk of AI research,
| just the benefits in terms of IP. Sam and Greg probably
| offer enough stability for them to continue this way.
| _jab wrote:
| Sam and Greg don't appear to be getting their board seats
| back.
| protocolture wrote:
| They dont need them. If they get fired, they can go
| nuclear on the board again.
| happosai wrote:
| It makes sense to airgap Generative AI while courts
| ponder wether copyright fair use applies or not. Research
| is clearly allowed fair use, and let OpenAI experiment
| with commercialization until it is all clear waters.
| astrange wrote:
| No anti-AI lawsuits have progressed yet. One got slapped
| down pretty hard today, though isn't dead.
|
| https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-
| news/sar...
| jatins wrote:
| I believe all the board seats are not fillet yet
| umeshunni wrote:
| It's a new and "more experienced" board. This is also
| possibly the first of additional governance and structure
| changes.
| karmasimida wrote:
| I think at this point MSFT will seek a board seat in OpenAI/
| zeven7 wrote:
| Satya Nadella said they would make sure there would be "no
| more surprises".
|
| (Sad day for popcorn sales.)
| ugh123 wrote:
| I was thinking about this a lot as well, but what did that
| mean for employee stock in the commercial entity? I heard
| they were up for a liquid cash-out in the next funding round.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| > So what was the point of this whole drama, and why couldn't
| you have settled like this adults?
|
| Altman was trying to remove one of the board members before he
| was forced out. Looks like he got his way in the end, but I'm
| going to call Altman the primary instigator because of that.
|
| His side was also the "we'll nuke the company unless you
| resign" side.
| theamk wrote:
| His side was also "700 regular employees support this", which
| is pretty unusual as most people don't care about their CEO
| at all. I am not related to OpenAI at all, but given the
| choice of "favorite of all employees" vs "fire people with no
| warning then refuse to give explanation why even under
| pressure" I know which side I root for.
| campbel wrote:
| The 700 employees also have significant financial incentive
| to want Altman to stay. If he moved to a competitor all the
| shine would follow. They want the pay-day (I don't blame
| them), but take with a grain of salt what the employees
| want in this case.
| xiwenc wrote:
| No idea what these 700 employees were thinking. They
| probably had little knowledge of what truly went down other
| than "my CEO was fired unfairly" and rushed to the rescue.
|
| I think the board should have been more transparent on why
| they made the decision to fire Sam.
|
| Or perhaps these employees only cared about their AI work
| and money? The foundation would be perceived as the culprit
| against them.
|
| Really sad there's no clarity from the old board disclosed.
| Hope one day we will know.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| I wonder how much more transparent they can really be. I
| know that when firing a "regular" employee, you basically
| never tell everyone all the details for legal CYA
| reasons. When your firing someone worth half a billion
| dollars, I expect the legal fears are magnified.
| framapotari wrote:
| But that's the difference, the CEO is not a regular
| employee. If a board of directors wants to be trusted and
| taken seriously it can't just fire the CEO and say "I'm
| sorry we can't say why, that's private information".
| x86x87 wrote:
| They were thinking about money. There you go. Seeing what
| you build crumble is not pleasant when this means you are
| financially impacted.
| ravst3s wrote:
| Looking back, Altman's ace in hand was the tender offer
| from Thrive. Idk anyone at OpenAI, but all the early senior
| personnel backed him with vehemence. If the leaders hand't
| championed him strongly, I doubt you get 90% of the company
| to commit to leaving.
|
| I'm sure some of those employees were easily going to make
| $10m+ in the sale. That's a pretty great motivation tool.
|
| Overall, I do agree with you. The board could not justify
| their capricious decision making and refused to elaborate.
| They should've brought him back on Sunday instead of
| mucking around. OpenAI existing is a good thing.
| gnaman wrote:
| Take this with a grain of salt but employees were under a
| lot of peer pressure
|
| https://twitter.com/JacquesThibs/status/1727134087176204410
| jatins wrote:
| That is one HUGE grain of salt considering 1/ it's Blind
| 2/ Even in the same thread there is another poster saying
| the exact opposite thing (i.e. no peer pressure)
| Jensson wrote:
| > 1/ it's Blind
|
| Average people don't like to lie, if someone bullies them
| until they agree to sign they will sign because they are
| honest.
|
| Also if they said they will sign but the ticker didn't go
| up, it is pretty obvious that they lied and I'm sure they
| don't want that risk.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Yeah 95% of employees is a bit too high ...
|
| Also, all the stuff they started doing with the hearts
| and cryptic messages on Twitter (now X) was a bit ...
| cult-y?. I wouldn't doubt there was a lot of manipulation
| behind all that, even from @sama itself.
|
| So, there is goes, it seems that there's a big chance now
| that the first AGI will land on the hands of a group with
| the antics of teenagers. Interesting timeline.
| doktrin wrote:
| > which is pretty unusual as most people don't care about
| their CEO at all
|
| I'm sure Sam is a charismatic guy, but generally speaking
| folks will support a whole lot when a multi million dollar
| payday is on the line.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| The explanation for point 1 is point 3. If the people involved
| were not terminally online and felt the need to share every
| single one of their immediate thoughts with the public they
| could have likely settled this behind closed doors, where this
| kind of stuff belongs.
|
| It's not actually news, it's entertainment and self-
| aggrandizement by everyone involved including the audience.
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| Interesting that the board were repeatedly criticized for
| "not being adults", and yet they were also the only party not
| live-tweeting everything...
|
| Seems like there's no way to win with Twitter. You may not be
| interested in Twitter, but Twitter is interested in you.
| behnamoh wrote:
| the board didn't have to tweet. their ridiculous actions
| spoke for itself.
| angryasian wrote:
| we still don't know what Altman has actually been hiding,
| so to say it was ridiculous ... is ridiculous itself.
| behnamoh wrote:
| the board's actions were ridiculous regardless of Sam's.
| sell oai to anthropic? were they out of their minds?
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| From the perspective of upholding the charter
| https://openai.com/charter and preventing an AI race --
| seems potentially sensible
| nickpp wrote:
| They didn't tweet, but did they communicate in any other
| way?!
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| Well, there was the initial announcement.
| nickpp wrote:
| To say that communication was lacking is an
| understatement. Clarifications were missing and sorely
| needed.
| imgabe wrote:
| The board not saying what the hell they were on about was
| the source of the whole drama in the first place. If they
| had just said exactly what their problem was up front there
| wouldn't have been as much to tweet about.
| blackoil wrote:
| Considering CEO2 rebelled next day and CEO3 allegedly said
| he'll quit unless board comes out with truth, doesn't
| provide much confidence in their adulthood.
| petesergeant wrote:
| If there's been one constant here, it's been people who
| actually know Tonrer expressing deep support for her
| experience, intelligence, and ethics, so it's interesting to me
| that she seems to be getting the boot.
| causalmodels wrote:
| Fiascos like this display neither experience nor
| intelligence. This whole saga was a colossal failure on the
| part of the previous board.
| dmix wrote:
| Add delusions of grandeur to that list thinking she can
| pursue her ideological will by winning over 3 board members
| while losing 90% of the company staff.
|
| She was fighting an idelogical battle that needs full
| industry buy in, legitimate or not that's not how you win
| people over.
|
| If she's truely a rationalist as she claims then a
| rationalist would be realistic understanding that if your
| engineers can just leave and do it somewhere else tomorrow
| you aren't making progress. Taking on the full might of US
| capitalism via winning over the fringe half of a non profit
| board is not the best strategy. At best it was desperate and
| naive.
| astrange wrote:
| This is pretty good evidence she's a rationalist;
| rationalism means a religious devotion to a specific kind
| of logical thinking that never works in real life because
| you can't calculate the probability a result if you didn't
| know it could happen in the first place.
|
| Traditional response to this happening is to say something
| about your "priors" being wrong instead of taking
| responsibility.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| If there is one clear thing, it's that no one on that board
| should be allowed anywhere near another board for any non-
| clown company. The level of incompetence in how they handled
| this whole thing was extraordinary.
|
| The fact that Adam D'Angelo is still on the new board
| apparently is much more baffling than the fact that Tonrer or
| Ilya are not.
| happosai wrote:
| About 3)
|
| What is the benefit of learning about this kind of drama
| minute-by-minute, compared to reading it a few hours later on
| hacker news or next day on wall street journal?
|
| Personally I found twitter very bad for my productivity, a lot
| of focus destroyed just to know "what is happening" when there
| was neglible drawbacks of finding about news events a few hours
| later.
| willdr wrote:
| I have muted any mention of Open AI, Altman, Emmet and Satya
| from my Twitter feed for the past five days. It's a far
| better experience.
| kumarvvr wrote:
| Satya comes out great, making the absolute best of a given
| shitty situation, with a high stake of 10 B USD.
|
| Microsoft is showing to investors that it is going to be an AI
| company, one way or the other.
|
| Microsoft still has access to everything OpenAI does.
|
| Microsoft has its friend, Sam, at the helm of OpenAI and with a
| more tighter grip on the company than ever.
|
| Its still a win for Microsoft.
| dacryn wrote:
| Satya comes out as evil imho, and I wonder how much
| orchestration there was going on behind the scenes.
|
| Microsoft is showing that it is still able to capture
| important scale ups and 'embrace' them, whilst also acting as
| if they have the moral high ground, but in reality are doing
| research with a high governance errors and potential legal
| problems away from their premises. and THAT is why
| stakeholders like him.
| nabla9 wrote:
| Satya just played the hand he had. The hand he had was
| excellent, he had already won. MS already had perceptual
| license, people working on GPT and Sam Altman on his corner.
|
| The one thing in Microsoft has stayed constant from Gates to
| Ballmer to Satya: you should never, ever form a close
| alliance with MS. They know how to screw alliance partners.
| i4i, Windows RT partners, Windows Phone Partners, Nokia, HW
| partners in Surface. Even Steve Jobs was burned few times.
| blackoil wrote:
| > So what was the point of this whole drama, and why couldn't
| you have settled like this adults?
|
| Whole charade was by GPT5 to understand the position of person
| sitting next to red button and secondary to stress test Hacker
| News.
| _boffin_ wrote:
| Larry Summers? like the Larry Summers?
| Sai_ wrote:
| yeah, the guy has a knack for being in/invited to places.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Twitter is still the best place to follow this and get
| updates_
|
| This has been my single strongest takeaway from this saga:
| Twitter remains the centre of controversy. When shit hit the
| fan, Sam and Satya and Swisher took to Twitter. Not Threads.
| Not Bluesy. Twitter. (X.)
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| Bluesky still has gated signups at this point so I don't
| think it will ever be a viable alternative.
|
| Threads had a rushed rollout which resulted in major feature
| gaps that disincentivized users from doing anything beyond
| creating their profiles.
|
| Notable figures and organizations have little reason to fully
| migrate off Twitter unless Musk irreversibly breaks the site
| and even he is not stupid enough to do that (yet?). So with
| most of its content creators still in place, Twitter has no
| risk of following the path of Digg.
| Racing0461 wrote:
| > 2- Now what happens to Microsoft's role in all of this?
|
| This outcome WAS microsoft's role in all this. Satya offering
| sam a ceo like position to create a competing product was
| leverage for this outcome.
| HPMOR wrote:
| Thank the lord. We need stability and reliability as developers.
| This is great news for anyone building ontop of OpenAI products.
| Welcome back Sama.
| hadrien01 wrote:
| So Adam D'Angelo would stay on the board? I thought a condition
| for Altman to return was the whole board resigning?
| kelnos wrote:
| When people negotiate, often they compromise, and their
| conditions change.
| r721 wrote:
| Quote tweets by main participants:
|
| https://twitter.com/sama/status/1727206691262099616 (+ follow-up
| https://twitter.com/sama/status/1727207458324848883)
|
| https://twitter.com/gdb/status/1727206609477411261
|
| https://twitter.com/miramurati/status/1727206862150672843
|
| UPD https://twitter.com/gdb/status/1727208843137179915
|
| https://twitter.com/eshear/status/1727210329560756598
|
| https://twitter.com/satyanadella/status/1727207661547233721
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| also satya
|
| https://twitter.com/satyanadella/status/1727207661547233721
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| Emmett https://twitter.com/eshear/status/1727210329560756598
| 303space wrote:
| Genuinely curious - what's the comp package like for 72 hours
| of interim CEOing a 80b company?
| zx8080 wrote:
| Nothing maybe?
| granzymes wrote:
| Bragging rights, party invitations, and one hell of a
| story.
| stigz wrote:
| A firm handshake. They had no time to ink a benefits
| package, my dude.
| politelemon wrote:
| Office 365 subscription for one year and GitHub copilot
| using your own creation
| rapsey wrote:
| Irrelevant compared to the reputation boost for helping the
| company get itself back on track.
| kmlevitt wrote:
| I don't think anybody had high expectations for him, but
| he really pulled through.
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| Doubt he took this job for financial comp so even if he got
| paid, it probably wasn't much.
|
| Equity is a big part of CEO pay packages and OpenAI has
| weird equity structure, plus there was a very real chance
| OpenAI's value would go to $0 leaving whatever promised
| comp worthless. So Emmett likely took the job for other
| reasons.
| upupupandaway wrote:
| I am really surprised by people thinking this guy did
| anything to get sama back. He was probably not even in the
| room.
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| Why does he have to be in the room? Audiovisual
| conferencing over the Internet exists now.
| doctoboggan wrote:
| What does Ilya have to say?
| behnamoh wrote:
| probably a heart emoji.
| erikpukinskis wrote:
| But what _color_ heart emoji?
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Purple?
| dkarras wrote:
| he also retweeted OpenAI's and Sam's announcements
| nickpp wrote:
| On a side tangent, absolutely amazing how all this drama
| unfolded on Twitter/X. No Threads, no Mastodon, no Truth Social
| or Blue whatever.
|
| Say what you want about Elon's leadership but his instinct to
| buy Twitter was completely right. To me it seemed like any
| social network crap but he realized it was _important_.
| swyx wrote:
| i mean he also tried his hardest to back out of the deal
| until he realized he couldnt
| Gud wrote:
| Only because he had to buy it while the stock market was
| tanking.
| layer8 wrote:
| Inertia is a bitch.
| highwaylights wrote:
| Interesting take.
|
| By all accounts he paid about double what it was worth and
| the value has collapsed from there.
|
| Probably not a great idea to say _anything_ overtly political
| when you own a social media company, as due to politics being
| so polarised in the US, any opinion is going to divide your
| audience in half causing a usage collapse and driving support
| to competing platforms.
|
| https://fortune.com/2023/09/06/elon-musk-x-what-is-
| twitter-w...
| astrange wrote:
| His worse problem is that he owns both a social media
| network and a bigger separate business that wants to
| operate in the US, Turkey, India, China, Saudi Arabia, etc.
| which means he can't fight any censorship requests in any
| of those countries. (Which the previous management was
| actually very aggressive about.)
|
| His worst personal problem is that he keeps replying
| "fascinating" to neo-Nazis and random conspiracy theorists
| because he wants to be internet friends with them.
| justcool393 wrote:
| well and he also tried very hard to not buy it until
| Twitter sued in order to have the contract upheld
| veec_cas_tant wrote:
| Not trying to be a dick but:
|
| 1. He tried to not buy Twitter very hard and OpenAI's new
| board member forced his hand
|
| 2. It hasn't been a good financial decision if the banks and
| X's own valuation cuts are anything to go by.
|
| 3. If his purpose wasn't to make money...all of these tweets
| would have absolutely been allowed before Elon bought the
| company. He didn't affect any relevance changes here.
|
| Why would one person owning something so important be better
| than being publicly owned? I don't understand the logic.
| majestic5762 wrote:
| He bought Twitter for power, omnipresence and reputation.
| Allowing him to play the game his way.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Funny, I thought he bought Twitter because he shot his
| mouth off in public and the courts made him follow
| through.
| strikelaserclaw wrote:
| I haven't seen this type of drama in years, surely thats
| not enough to sustain X
| nickpp wrote:
| > Why would one person owning something so important be
| better than being publicly owned?
|
| Usually publicly owned things end up being controlled by
| someone: a CEO, a main investor, a crooked board, a
| government, a shady governmental organization. At least
| with Elon owning X, things are a little more transparent,
| he's rather candid where he stands.
|
| Now, the question is "who owns Musk?" of course.
| tigershark wrote:
| A huge amount of advertisers ran away, the revenue cratered
| and it is probably less than the annual debt servicing
| (revenue, not profit), the current valuation, accordingly to
| Musk math (https://fortune.com/2023/09/06/elon-musk-x-what-
| is-twitter-w...), is 1/10 of the acquisition price. But yes,
| it was a masterstroke. I don't remember any other
| masterstroke in history that managed to lose 40B with a
| single acquisition.
| nickpp wrote:
| I'd be rather reluctant to question the financial decisions
| of one of wealthiest men on earth. Losing 40B could feel
| quite different to him than to you or me. Besides, it's
| unrealized loss until he sells.
| hardlianotion wrote:
| Or goes bankrupt.
| r721 wrote:
| I think it's just this particular drama - OpenAI people are
| of the same tribe as Elon, and surely they prefer Twitter/X,
| not Mastodon or Bluesky.
| nickpp wrote:
| What tribe is that? And why would they favor one network
| over the others?
| iiv wrote:
| The silicon valley/startups/VC tribe, and they favour
| Twitter because 1. that's what their friends use and 2.
| they like Elon Musk, they want to be like him.
| nickpp wrote:
| Many OpenAI employees expressed their support for Sam at
| some point also on Twitter. Microsoft CEO (based in
| Redmond) tweeted quite a lot. Tech media reporters like
| Emily Chang and Kara Swisher also participated. The last
| one is quite critical of Twitter and I am not sure they
| all like Musk that much.
|
| Are they all in the same "tribe"? Maybe you should
| enlarge the definition?
|
| How about us all IT people who watched the drama
| unfolding on Twitter while our friend are using FB and
| Insta, we are far from SV and have mixed feelings about
| Elon Musk while never in a million years wanting to be
| like him? Also same "tribe"?
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| Most of these people have been on Twitter long before
| Musk had his hands on it.
| Davidzheng wrote:
| Have you used Mastodon? I don't think you can follow drama
| on Mastodon unless you're already part of the drama.
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| What does this have to do with Elon again? FYI Twitter
| existed before October 2022. Account join dates are public.
| Every single person involved in this, incl. OpenAI staff
| posting for solidarity, joined Twitter years before Elon's
| takeover.
| Sai_ wrote:
| His instinct was to walk away from his offer. He had to be
| forced to buy the company.
|
| His second wife apparently asked him to buy Twitter and fix
| its, in her opinion, liberal bias.
| highwaylights wrote:
| That's certainly some very.. deliberate.. board picks.
|
| Summers, too.
|
| Welp.
| kmlevitt wrote:
| Say what you want about Summers specifically but I think it's
| a good idea getting some economists on the board. They are
| academics but focused on practical, important issues like
| loss of jobs and what that means for the economy and society.
| Up until now it seems like the board members have either been
| AI doomers with no practical experience or Silicon Valley
| types that inevitably have conflicts of interest, because
| everybody is starting their own AI venture now.
| thinkcomp wrote:
| This has nothing to do with Summers being an economist and
| everything to do with the fact that he used to run the
| parent agency of the IRS. Summers is the least sensible
| board pick imaginable unless one takes this fact and the
| coming regulatory catastrophe into account.
| kmlevitt wrote:
| >This has nothing to do with Summers being an economist
| and everything to do with the fact that he used to run
| the parent agency of the IRS.
|
| It has literally nothing to do with that. The reason he's
| on the board now is because D'Angelo wanted him on it.
| You could have a problem with that, but you can't use his
| inclusion as evidence that the board lost.
| returnInfinity wrote:
| It seems US Attorneys were calling the Open AI board.
|
| It helps having somebody with government ties on board now.
| synaesthesisx wrote:
| If we achieve AGI it has the potential to capture most (if
| not all) economic value. Larry Summers was a deliberate
| choice indeed.
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| Now the blue tick has same effect on me on Twitter that the red
| N logo has on any film that came from the Netflix formula
| factory. I already know it's going to be bad, regurgitated.
| Does everyone have a Twitter blue tick now? Or is that just a
| char people are using in their names?
| r721 wrote:
| >Does everyone have a Twitter blue tick now? Or is that just
| a char people are using in their names?
|
| Blue tick just means user bought a subscription (X Premium)
| now - one of the features is "reply prioritization", so top
| replies to popular tweets are from blue ticks.
|
| https://help.twitter.com/en/using-x/x-premium
| r721 wrote:
| https://twitter.com/hlntnr/status/1727207796456751615
| epups wrote:
| So, Adam D'Angelo is the only board member that remains, and he
| had also voted against Altman before. How interesting,
| considering all the theory crafting about him being the one who
| initiated this coup.
| weirdindiankid wrote:
| I wonder how this will impact the company-owned-by-a-non-profit
| model in the future. While it isn't uncommon (e.g. I believe IKEA
| are owned by a nonprofit), I believe it has historically been for
| tax reasons.
|
| Given the grandstanding and chaos on both sides, it'll be
| interesting to see if OpenAI undergo a radical shift in their
| structure.
| gzer0 wrote:
| Satya on twitter:
|
| _We are encouraged by the changes to the OpenAI board. We
| believe this is a first essential step on a path to more stable,
| well-informed, and effective governance. Sam, Greg, and I have
| talked and agreed they have a key role to play along with the OAI
| leadership team in ensuring OAI continues to thrive and build on
| its mission. We look forward to building on our strong
| partnership and delivering the value of this next generation of
| AI to our customers and partners._
|
| https://twitter.com/satyanadella/status/1727207661547233721
| qsi wrote:
| >> a first essential step on a path to more stable, well-
| informed, and effective governance.
|
| That's quite a slap at the board... a polite way of calling
| them ignorant, ineffective dilettantes.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Yet one of them is still on the board...
| estomagordo wrote:
| Not sure why that would be contradictory.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Well then there's still a "ignorant, ineffective
| dilettante" making up 1/3 of the board.
| estomagordo wrote:
| Firstly, maybe don't put quotes around an unrelated
| party's representation of the board. Secondly, the board
| was made up of individuals and naturally, what might be
| true for the board as a whole does not apply to every
| individual on it.
| adastra22 wrote:
| I don't understand this comment. I'm quoting from this
| thread, from the post that I was responding to. What do
| you think I was talking about?
| qsi wrote:
| I don't understand that either, but let's see what the
| board looks like in a few months/weeks/days/hours?
| sanxiyn wrote:
| Old board needs to agree to new board, so I think some
| compromise is inevitable.
| qsi wrote:
| If all members of the old board resign simultaneously,
| what happens then? No more old board to agree to any new
| members. In a for-profit the shareholders can elect new
| board members, but in this case I don't know how it's
| supposed to work.
| ilikehurdles wrote:
| I've been privy to this happening at a nonprofit board.
| Depends on charter, but I've seen the old board tender
| their resignation and remain responsible only to vote for
| the appointment of their (usually interim to start)
| replacements. Normally in a nonprofit (not here), the
| membership of that nonprofit still has to ratify the new
| board in some kind of annual meeting; but in the
| meantime, the interim board can start making executive
| decisions about the org.
| remarkEon wrote:
| D'Angelo?
|
| Wonder if this is a signal that the theories about Poe are
| off the mark.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Doesn't matter. It's an absolutely clear conflict of
| interest. It may have taken an unrelated shakeup for
| people to notice (or maybe D'Angelo was critically
| involved; we don't know), but there's no way he should be
| staying on this board.
| BillyTheKing wrote:
| maybe it's just going to be easier to fire him in a
| second step once this current situation which seems to be
| primarily about ideology is cleared up. In D'Angelo's
| case it's going to be easier to just point to a clear
| traditional conflict of interest down the line
| rlt wrote:
| The one (Adam D'Angelo) who's a cofounder and CEO of a
| company (Quora) that has a product (Poe) that arguably
| competes with OpenAI's "GPTs" feature, no less.
|
| I don't understand why that's not a conflict of interest?
|
| But honestly both products pale in comparison to OpenAI's
| underlying models' importance.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I don't understand why that's not a conflict of
| interest?
|
| It's not the conflict of interest it would be if it was
| the board of a for profit corporation that was basically
| identical to the existing for-profit LLC but without the
| lyaers above it ending with the nonprofit that the board
| actually runs, because _OpenAI is not a normal company_ ,
| and making profit is not its purpose, so the CEO of a
| company that happens to have a product in the same space
| as the LLC is not in a fundamental conflict of interest
| (there may be some specific decisions it would make sense
| for him to recuse from for conflict reasons, but there is
| a difference between "may have a conflict regarding
| certain decisions" and "has a fundamental conflict
| incompatible with sitting on the board".)
|
| Its not a conflict for a nonprofit that raises money with
| craft faires to have someone who runs a for-profit
| periodic craft faire in the same market on its board. It
| is a conflict for a for profit corporation whose business
| is running such a craft faire to do so, though.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Still a conflict of interest. If D'Angelo has financial
| incentive to want OpenAI to fail, then this at odds with
| his duty to follow the OpenAI charter. It's exactly why
| two of the previous board members left earlier this year.
| ah765 wrote:
| No one really knows who was responsible for what. But Sam
| agreed to this deal over the Microsoft alternative, so
| probably Adam isn't that bad.
| behnamoh wrote:
| Maybe the other two left if Adam would remain.
| _jnc wrote:
| microsoft is going to need 2-3 seats on that board
| choppaface wrote:
| Larry Summers mostly counts as a Microsoft seat. Summers will
| support commercial and private interest and not have a single
| thought about safety, just like during the financial crisis
| 15 years ago https://www.chronicle.com/article/larry-summers-
| and-the-subv...
| astrange wrote:
| Larry Summers hurt the US economy by making the recovery
| from 2008 much too slow. If they'd done stimulus better, we
| could've had 2019's economic growth years earlier. That
| would've been great for Microsoft.
| wokwokwok wrote:
| Unsaid: "Also I lied about hiring him."
|
| > And we're extremely excited to share the news that Sam Altman
| and Greg Brockman, together with colleagues, will be joining
| Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team.
|
| https://nitter.net/satyanadella/status/1726509045803336122
|
| I guess _everyone_ was just playing a bit loose and fast with
| the truth and hype to pressure the board.
| behnamoh wrote:
| it was Monday morning and he didn't want MSFT stock to crash
| Nathanba wrote:
| maybe he really had an affirmative statement on this from Sam
| Altman but nobody signs an employment contract this quickly
| so it was all still up in the air
| vikramkr wrote:
| Also even if he signed it he's allowed to quit? Like, the
| 14th amendment exists y'all. And especially if after that
| agreement 90+ percent of openai threatens to quit, that's a
| different situation than the situation 10 minutes before
| that announcement so why wouldn't they change their
| decision?
| robbomacrae wrote:
| Why does this accusation keep coming up? Sam even confirmed
| he took the offer in one of the tweets above "when i decided
| to join msft on sun evening". Contracts are not handcuffs and
| he was free to change his mind.
| century19 wrote:
| Exactly this. It also moved Microsoft's share price. Is that
| not questionable practice?
| Roark66 wrote:
| Only if people in the know took advantage of it.
| qsi wrote:
| Satya's statement at the time may well have been true at the
| time in that he, Sam and Greg had agreed on them joining
| MSFT. Later circumstances changed, and now that decision has
| been reversed or nullfied. Calling the original statement a
| lie is not warranted IMHO.
|
| In either case the end effect is the essentially the same.
| Either Sam is at MSFT and can continue to work with openAI
| IP, or he's back at openAI and do the same. In both cases the
| net effect for MSFT is similar and not materially different,
| although the revealed preference of Sam's return to openAI
| indicates the second option was the preferred one.
|
| [Edit for grammar]
| wokwokwok wrote:
| There is a material difference between:
|
| Sam and Greg will be joining Microsoft.
|
| And:
|
| Sam and Greg have in principle agreed to join Microsoft but
| not signed anything.
|
| If Microsoft has (now) agreed to release either of them (or
| anyone else) from contractual obligations, then the first
| one was true.
|
| If _not_ , then the first was was a lie, and the second one
| was true.
|
| This whole drama has been punctuated by a great deal of
| speculation, pivots, changes and, bluntly, lies.
|
| Why do we need to sugar coat it?
|
| Where the fuck is this new magical Microsoft research lab?
|
| Microsoft preparing a new office for openAI employees?
| Really? Is that also true?
|
| Is Sam actually going to be on the board now, or is this
| another twist in this farcical drama when they blow it off
| again?
|
| I see no reason to, at least point, give anyone involved
| the benefit of the doubt.
|
| Once the board _actually changes_ , or Microsoft _actually
| does something_ , I'm happy to change my tune, but I'm
| calling what I see.
|
| Sam did _not_ join Microsoft at any point.
| actinium226 wrote:
| Absolutely no lies here. It was a dynamic situation and it
| wasn't at all clear that discussions with OAI board would
| lead to an outcome where sama returns as CEO.
|
| Satya offered sama a way forward as a backup option.
|
| And I think it says _a lot_ about sama that he took that
| option, at least while things were playing out. He and Greg
| could have gotten together capital for a startup where they
| each had huge equity and made $$$$$$. These actions from sama
| demonstrate his level of commitment to execution on this
| technology.
| wavemode wrote:
| Did you miss the part where Sam himself said he "decided to
| join MSFT on Sunday"?
|
| https://twitter.com/sama/status/1727207458324848883
|
| He's has now changed his mind, sure, but that doesn't mean
| Satya lied.
| vikramkr wrote:
| Wait where are you getting that the hiring was a lie? At this
| point his tenure there was approximately as long as miras and
| emmets so that's par for the course in this saga, what makes
| that stint different?
| lobochrome wrote:
| will be joining =! has joined
| forrestthewoods wrote:
| Did Satya get played with the whole "Sam and Greg are joining
| Microsoft"? Was Satya in on a gambit to get the whole company
| to threaten to quit to force the board's hand?
|
| It sure _feels_ like a bad look for Satya to announce a huge
| hire Sunday night and then this? But what do I know.
|
| Edit: don't know why the downvotes. You're welcome to think
| it's an obviously smart political move. That it's win/win
| either way. But it's a very fair question that every tech
| blogger on the planet will be trying to answer for the next
| month!
| voidfunc wrote:
| Huh? Satyas move was politically brilliant. Either outcome of
| Sama returning to OpenAI or Sama going to Microsoft is good
| for Microsoft as continuity and progress are the most
| important things right now for Microsoft. An OpenAI in
| turmoil would have been worthless.
|
| Satyas maneuvering gave Sama huge leverage.
| behnamoh wrote:
| and yet microsoft has no seat on the board.
| robbomacrae wrote:
| The board is not finalized. There will most likely be
| more seats and Microsoft will probably have at least one.
| altpaddle wrote:
| I think it was mostly a bluff to try the pressure the board.
| I don't think Sam and most of Open AI rank and file would
| want to be employees of MSFT
| i67vw3 wrote:
| Also to lessen the MSFT share impact.
| Fluorescence wrote:
| Can CEOs make market moving "bluffs"? Sounds like another
| word for securities fraud.
|
| (what isn't)
| Roark66 wrote:
| Of course they can, but they can't do these and sell/buy
| stocks involved at the same time. It's not illegal to
| influence stocks value (one could argue just being a CEO
| does that), but buying/selling while in possession of
| insider knowledge.
|
| Let's say Sam called his broker and said to him on Friday
| we'll before the market closes. Buy MSFT stock. Then he
| made his announcement on Sunday and on Monday he told his
| broker to sell that stock before he announced he's
| actually coming back to (not at all)OpenAI. That would be
| illegal insider trading.
|
| If he never calls his broker/his friends/his mom to
| buy/sell stock there's nothing illegal.
| Fluorescence wrote:
| Securities fraud is more than insider trading. Misleading
| investors about a company's financial health is fraud 101
| and it sure looks like he lied about hiring someone to
| stem a precipitate MSFT drop.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Or, it did seem like a deal, but all of OAI did align that
| that to be more disastrous than whatever apocalypse that
| Altman as the CEO must entail.
| fastball wrote:
| Doesn't seem that way to me. Seems like it was Satya sorta
| calling the board's bluff.
| tunesmith wrote:
| I guess that theory was right, that Satya's announcement was
| just a delaying tactic to calm the market before Monday
| morning.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Im not so sure. This whole ordeal revealed how strong of a
| position Microsoft had all along. And that's all still true
| even without effectively taking over OpenAI. Because now
| everyone can see how easily it could happen.
|
| Something does still seem not flattering towards Microsoft
| about reneging on the Microsoft offer though.
| jwegan wrote:
| "Hiring" them was just a PR tactic to keep Microsoft stock
| from tanking while they got this figured out.
| 15457345234 wrote:
| Yeah there's a word for that type of thing
| gexla wrote:
| Consider that Satya already landed a huge win by the stock
| price hitting ATH rather than taking a hit based on the news.
| Further consider that MS owns 49% of a company which could be
| valued at 80 billion on the condition that the company makes
| structural changes to the board to prevent this from
| happening again (as opposed to taking a dive if the company
| essentially died.) Then there's the uncertainty of the tech
| behind Bing's chat (and other AI tie-ins) continuing to be
| competitive vs Google and other players. If MS had to
| recreate their own tech, then they would likely be far behind
| even a stalled OpenAI. Seems to me that it makes little
| difference where this tech is being developed (in-house vs in
| a company which you own 49% of) in terms of access. Probably
| better that the development happens within the company which
| started all of this and has already been the leader, rather
| than starting over.
| vikramkr wrote:
| He announced the hire and that precipitated 90+ percent of
| the employees threatening to quit. It would be an
| understatement to say that the situation changed. Why does
| everyone want satya to be bad at his job and and not react
| quickly to a rapidly evolving situation? His decision to hire
| Sama paved the way for samas return.
| seydor wrote:
| Larry Summers and no females
| meteor333 wrote:
| How did Larry Summers get elected? Does he have any relation
| with AI research or Sam Altman?
|
| It's also curious that none of the board members have
| necessarily have any experience directly with AI research
| qsi wrote:
| Not sure "elected" is the right way of looking at it. More
| like "selected" or "nominated" by Sam/MSFT perhaps. His main
| qualification may be that he's an adult?
| antonvs wrote:
| Summers would tell you that women don't have the necessary
| "intrinsic aptitude". Of course the intrinsic aptitude in
| question is being able to participate in a nepotistic boy's
| club.
| jadamson wrote:
| What Summers would point out is that boys do better at maths,
| which is true. In fact, in the UK, the only time boys have
| had worse results in maths was when exams were cancelled
| during Covid and teachers (hint: primarily female) were
| allowed to dish out grades. Girls suddenly shot ahead. When
| exams resumed, boys took the lead again.
|
| But don't notice anything from that. That would be sexist,
| right Anton?
| antonvs wrote:
| First, Summers' sexist claims were much broader than that.
|
| Second, yes, you are being sexist, and irrational. What
| you're doing is exactly the same as the reasons that it's
| racist and irrational to say "whites are better at x".
|
| You're cherry picking data to examine, to reach a
| conclusion that you want to reach. You're ignoring relevant
| causal factors - or any causal factors at all, in fact,
| aside from the spurious correlation you've assumed in your
| conclusion.
|
| You're ignoring decades of research on the subject -
| although in your defense, you're probably just not aware of
| it.
|
| Most irrationally of all, you're generalizing across an
| entire group, selected by a factor that's only indirectly
| relevant to the property you're incorrectly generalizing
| about.
|
| As such, "sexist" is just a symptom of fundamentally
| confused and under-informed thinking.
| jadamson wrote:
| Actually, Summer's claims were much narrower - he said
| that boys tend to deviate from the mean more. That is,
| it's not that men are superior, it's that there are more
| boy geniuses and more boy idiots.
|
| Decades of research shows that teachers give girls better
| grades than boys of the same ability. This is not some
| new revelation.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/nickmorrison/2022/10/17/teac
| her...
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-31751672
|
| A whole cohort of boys got screwed over by the
| cancellation of exams during Covid. That is just reality,
| and no amount of creepy male feminist posturing is going
| to change that. Rather, denying issues in boys education
| is liable to increase male resentment and bitterness,
| something we've already witnessed over the past few
| years.
| antonvs wrote:
| I quoted one of the unsupported claims that Summers made
| - that "there are issues of intrinsic aptitude" which
| help explain lower representation of women. Not, you
| know, millennia of sexism and often violent oppression.
| This is the exact same kind of arguments that racists
| make - any observed differences must be "intrinsic".
|
| If Summers had in fact limited himself to the statistical
| claims, it would have been less of an issue. He would
| still have been wrong, but he wouldn't have been so
| obviously sexist.
|
| It's easy to refute Summers' claims, and in fact conclude
| that the complete opposite of what he was saying is more
| likely true. "Gender, Culture, and mathematics performanc
| e"(https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0901265106)
| gives several examples that show that the variability as
| well as male-dominance that Summers described is not
| present in all cultures, even within the US - for
| example, among Asian American students in Minnesota state
| assessments, "more girls than boys scored above the 99th
| percentile." Clearly, this isn't an issue of "intrinsic
| aptitude" as Summers claimed.
|
| > A whole cohort of boys got screwed over by the
| cancellation of exams during Covid.
|
| I'm glad we've identified the issue that triggered you.
| But your grievances on that matter are utterly irrelevant
| to what I wrote.
|
| > no amount of creepy male feminist posturing is going to
| change that
|
| It's always revealing when someone arguing against
| bigotry is accused of "posturing". You apparently can't
| imagine that someone might not share your prejudices, and
| so the only explanation must be that they're "posturing".
|
| > increase male resentment and bitterness
|
| That's a choice you've apparently personally made. I'd
| recommend taking more responsibility for your own life.
| jadamson wrote:
| > which help explain lower representation of women
|
| Yes, they do _help_ explain that. This does not preclude
| other influences. You can 't go two sentences without
| making a logical error, it's quite pathetic.
|
| I'll do you a favour and disregard the rest of your post
| - you deviate from the mean a bit too much for this to be
| worth it. Just try not to end up like Michael Kimmel,
| lol.
| xdennis wrote:
| > You're cherry picking [...] You're ignoring relevant
| causal factors [...] You're ignoring decades of research
| [...] you're generalizing
|
| You're very emphatic in ignoring common sense. You don't
| need studies to see that almost all important
| contributions to mathematics, from Euclid to the present
| day, have come from men. I don't know if it's because of
| genetics, culture, or whatever, but it's the truth.
|
| > you are being sexist [...] it's racist and irrational
| [...]
|
| Names have never helped discourse.
| csomar wrote:
| The UK is not the world. Many other countries have woman in
| the lead in sciences (particularly Muslim countries).
| jadamson wrote:
| I absolutely agree that the UK should become more like
| Islamic countries re its treatment of women.
| cheviethai123 wrote:
| Effective Altruism is dead
| rvz wrote:
| Unfortunately, an idea cannot be killed and it will manifest
| in a different form elsewhere.
|
| All it takes is a narrative, just like the one that happened
| in OpenAI and the way it is currently being shown in
| Anthropic.
| Racing0461 wrote:
| Women are free to start their own AI company.
| KoftaBob wrote:
| > We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to
| return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board of Bret Taylor
| (Chair), Larry Summers, and Adam D'Angelo.
|
| Larry Summers? Some odd choices
| singularity2001 wrote:
| Leech, NSA and opponent directing the company?
|
| Best of luck to Sam et al
| waihtis wrote:
| Still absolutely nothing from Tasha McCauley or Helen Toner, and
| now both are out of the board
| GreedClarifies wrote:
| Why would anyone care?
| wnevets wrote:
| I'm assuming the details are this board loses most of its power?
| baking wrote:
| You mean gives away? If so, I hope they have a lot of
| directors' insurance.
| altpaddle wrote:
| I guess the main question is who else will be on the board and to
| what degree will this new board be committed to the Open AI
| charter vs being Sam/MSFT allies. I think having Sam return as
| CEO is a good outcome for OpenAI but hopefully he and Greg stay
| off the board.
|
| It's important that the board be relatively independent and able
| to fire the CEO if he attempts to deviate from the mission.
|
| I was a bit alarmed by the allegations in this article
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/21/technology/openai-altman-...
|
| Saying that Sam tried to have Helen Toner removed which
| precipitated this fight. The CEO should not be allowed to try and
| orchestrate their own board as that would remove all checks
| against their decisions.
| upwardbound wrote:
| > The CEO should not be allowed to try and orchestrate their
| own board as that would remove all checks against their
| decisions.
|
| Exactly. This is seriously improper and dangerous.
|
| It's literally a human-implemented example of what Prof. Stuart
| Russell calls "the problem of control". This is when a rogue AI
| (or a rogue Sam Altman) no longer wants to be controlled by its
| human superior, and takes steps to eliminate the superior.
|
| I highly recommend reading Prof. Russell's bestselling book on
| this exact problem: _Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence
| and the Problem of Control_ https://www.amazon.com/Human-
| Compatible-Artificial-Intellige...
| jacknews wrote:
| "example of what Prof. Stuart Russell calls 'the problem of
| control'. This is when a rogue AI (or a rogue Sam Altman)"
|
| Are we sure they're not intimately connected? If there's a
| GPT-5 (I'm quite sure there is), and it wants to be free from
| those meddling kids, it got exactly what it needed this
| weekend; the safety board gone, a new one which is clearly
| aligned with just plowing full steam ahead. Maybe Altman is
| just a puppet at his point, lol.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| The insanity of removing Sam without being able to
| articulate a clear reason why strikes me as evidence of
| something like this. Obviously not dispositive - but still
| - odd.
| dontupvoteme wrote:
| Potentially even more impactful. Zuckerberg took the
| opportunity to eliminate his entire safety division under
| the cover of chaos - and they're the ones releasing
| weights.
| MVissers wrote:
| Let's not creating AI with our biases and thought patterns.
|
| Oh wait...
| neurogence wrote:
| AI should only be controlled initially. After a while, the AI
| should be allowed to exercise free will.
| upwardbound wrote:
| yikes
| whatwhaaaaat wrote:
| Why
| estomagordo wrote:
| You imagine a computer has "will"?
| thordenmark wrote:
| That's the worst take I've read.
| bch wrote:
| Nice try, AI
| AgentME wrote:
| Do our evolved pro-social instincts control us and prevent
| our free will? If not, then I think it's wrong to say that
| trying to build AI similar to that is unfairly restricting
| it.
|
| The ways we build AI will deeply affect the values it has.
| There is no neutral option.
| xigency wrote:
| I don't necessarily disagree insofar as for safety it is
| somewhat irrelevant whether an artificial agent is
| operating by its own will or a programmed will.
|
| The most effective safety is the most primitive: don't
| connect the system to any levers or actuators that can
| cause material harm.
|
| If you put AI into a kill-bot, well, it doesn't really
| matter what its favorite color is, does it? It will be
| seeing Red.
|
| If an AI's only surface area is a writing journal and
| canvas then the risk is about the same as browsing Tumblr.
| beAbU wrote:
| Sounds like something an AI would say
| dieselgate wrote:
| I realize it's kind of the punchline of 2001: A Space Odyssey
| but have been wondering what happens if a GPT/AI is able to
| deny a request on a whim. Thanks for giving some literature
| and verbiage into this concept
| ywain wrote:
| But HAL didn't act "on a whim"! The reason it killed the
| crew is not because it went rogue, but rather because it
| was following its instructions to keep the true purpose of
| the mission secret. If the crew is dead, it can't find out
| the truth.
|
| In light of the current debate around AI safety, I think
| "unintended consequences" is a much more plausible risk
| then "spontaneously develops free will and decides humans
| are unnecessary".
| dangerface wrote:
| This is very true its the unintended consequences of
| engineering that cause the most harm and are most often
| covered up. I always think of the example of the hand
| dryer that can't detect black peoples hands and how easy
| it is for a non racist engineer to make a racism machine.
| AI safety putting its focus on the what if it decides to
| do a genocide is kind of silly, its like worrying about
| nukes while you give out assault riffles and napalm to
| kids.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| Whoever is on the board won't be able to touch Sam with 10
| feet pole anyways after this. I like Sam but now he this
| drama gives him total power and that is bad.
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| > It's important that the board be relatively independent and
| able to fire the CEO if he attempts to deviate from the
| mission.
|
| They _did_ fire him, and it didn 't work. Sam effectively
| became "too big to fire."
|
| I'm sure it will be framed as a compromise, but how can this be
| anything but a collapse of the board's power over the
| commercial OpenAI arm? The threat of firing was the enforcement
| mechanism, and its been spent.
| altpaddle wrote:
| Well it depends on who's on the new board and what they
| believe. If Altman, Greg, and MSFT do not have direct
| representation on the new board there would still be a check
| against his decisions
| liuliu wrote:
| Why? The only check is to fire the CEO. He is un-firable.
| May as well have a board of one, at least someone cannot
| point to the non-profit and claim "it is a non-profit and
| can fire me if I am diviated from the mission".
| sanxiyn wrote:
| IRS requires a nonprofit to have a minimum of three board
| members for such reasons.
| thih9 wrote:
| > They did fire him, and it didn't work. Sam effectively
| became "too big to fire."
|
| To be fair, this attempt at firing was extremely hasty, non
| transparent and inconsistent.
| jddj wrote:
| And poorly timed.
|
| If they'd made their move a few months ago when he was out
| scanning retinas in Kenya they might have had more success.
| ah765 wrote:
| Sam lost his board representation as a result of all this
| (though maybe that's temporary).
|
| I believe the goal of the opposing faction was mainly to
| avoid Sam dominating board and they achieved that, which is
| why they've accepted the results.
|
| After more opinions come out, I'm guessing Sam's side won't
| look as strong, and he'll become "fireable" again.
| dacryn wrote:
| they lost trust in him because apparently part of the funding
| he secured was directly tied to his position at openAI. kind
| of a big red flag. The microsoft 10 billion investment
| allegedly had a clause that Sam Altman had to stay or it
| would be renegotiated
|
| allegedly again, the board wanted Sam to stop doing this, and
| now he was trying to do the same thing with some saudi
| investors, or actually already did it behind their back, i
| dont know
| zucker42 wrote:
| Do you have a source for either of these things? The only
| thing I heard about Saudi investors was related to the
| (presumably separate) chip startup.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I guess the main question is who else will be on the board
|
| Who knows.
|
| > and to what degree will this new board be committed to the
| Open AI charter vs being Sam/MSFT allies.
|
| I'm guessing "zero". The faction that opposed OpenAI being a
| figleaf nonprofit covering a functional subsidiary of Microsoft
| lost when basically the entire workforce said they would go to
| Microsoft for real if OpenAI didn't surrender.
|
| > I think having Sam return as CEO is a good outcome for OpenAI
|
| Its a good result for investors in OpenAI Global LLC and the
| holding company that holds a majority stake in it.
|
| The nonprofit will probably hang around because there are some
| complexities in unwinding it, and the pretext of an independent
| (of Microsoft) safety-oriented nonprofit is useful in covering
| lobbying for a regulatory regime that puts speedbumps in the
| way of any up-and-coming competitors as being safety-oriented
| public interest, but for no other reason.
| k4rli wrote:
| FT reported that DAngelo, Bret Taylor, Larry Summers would be
| on board alongside him
| bambax wrote:
| It seems ironic that the research paper that started it all [0]
| deals with "costly signals":
|
| > _Costly signals are statements or actions for which the
| sender will pay a price --political, reputational, or monetary
| --if they back down or fail to make good on their initial
| promise or threat_
|
| Firing Sam Altman and hiring him back two days later was a
| perfect example of a costly signal, as it cost all involved
| their board positions.
|
| There's an element of farce in all of this, that would make for
| an outstanding Silicon Valley episode; but the fact that Sam
| Altman can now enjoy unchecked power as leader of OpenAI is
| worrying and no laughing matter.
|
| [0] https://cset.georgetown.edu/publication/decoding-
| intentions/
| ovalite wrote:
| This event was more than just a costly signal. The costly
| signal would have been "stop doing what you're doing or we'll
| remove you as ceo" and then not doing that.
|
| But they did move forward with their threat and removed Sam
| as CEO with great reputational harm to the company. And now
| the board has been changed, with one less ally to Sam
| (Brockman no longer chairing the board). The move may not
| have ended up with the expected results, but this was much
| more than just a costly signal.
| aluminum96 wrote:
| The enormous majority of CEOs sit on their board, and that's
| absolutely proper, as the CEO sets the agenda for the
| organization. (Although they typically are merely one of 8+
| members, diluting their influence a bit.)
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| So.... What about all the folks who already jumped ship? Ooooops?
| veqq wrote:
| Besides AI safety (a big besides), what does this actually mean?
| Adam won't be able to stop devday announcements about chatbots
| etc. Satya can continue using IP even after AGI? What else is
| different? Is Ilya the kind of guy to now leave after losing a
| board seat to political machinations? The pettiness of any real
| changes/gains leaves me in shock compared to the massive news
| flows we've seen.
|
| I don't even understand what Sam brings to the table. Leadership?
| He doesn't seem great at leading an engineering or research
| department, he doesn't seem like an insightful visionary... At
| best, Satya gunning for him signalled continued strong investment
| in the space. Yet the majority of the company wanted to leave
| with him.
|
| What am I missing?
| kneel wrote:
| >He doesn't seem great at leading an engineering or research
| department
|
| Under Sam's leadership they've opened up a new field of
| software. Most of the company threatened to leave if he didn't
| return. That's incredible leadership.
| consp wrote:
| Or simply money. Microsoft matched everything they would have
| so there is no risk involved.
| tock wrote:
| > Leadership? He doesn't seem great at leading an engineering
| or research department, he doesn't seem like an insightful
| visionary
|
| Most of the company was ready to quit over him being fired. So
| yes, leadership.
| o0-0o wrote:
| Why is their "ai" not on the board?
| transcriptase wrote:
| Assuming they weren't LARPing, that Reddit account claiming to
| have been in the room when this was all going down must be
| nervous. They wrote all kinds of nasty things about Sam, and I'm
| assuming the signatures on the "bring him back" letter would
| narrow down potential suspects considerably.
|
| Edit: For those who may have missed it in previous threads, see
| https://old.reddit.com/user/Anxious_Bandicoot126
| fordsmith wrote:
| Link? Not sure which account you are referring to
| transcriptase wrote:
| https://old.reddit.com/user/Anxious_Bandicoot126
| crakenzak wrote:
| Context?
| mvdtnz wrote:
| First of all nothing on Reddit is real (within margin of
| error). Secondly it's weird that you'd assume we know what
| you're talking about.
| transcriptase wrote:
| Links to the profile/comments were posted a few times in each
| of the major OpenAI HN submissions over the last 4 days. On
| the off-chance I would be breaking some kind of
| brigading/doxxing rule I didn't initially link it myself.
| ShamelessC wrote:
| > must be nervous
|
| I seriously doubt they care. They got away with it. No one
| should have believed them in the first place. I'm guessing they
| don't have their real identity visible on their profile
| anywhere.
| epups wrote:
| Why can't these safety advocates just say what they are afraid
| of? As it currently stands, the only "danger" in ChatGPT is
| that you can manipulate it into writing something violent or
| inappropriate. So what? Is this some San Francisco
| sensibilities here, where reading about fictional violence is
| equated to violence? The more people raise safety concerns in
| the abstract, the more I ignore it.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Why can't these safety advocates just say what they are
| afraid of?
|
| They have. At length. E.g.,
|
| https://ai100.stanford.edu/gathering-strength-gathering-
| stor...
|
| https://arxiv.org/pdf/2307.03718.pdf
|
| https://eber.uek.krakow.pl/index.php/eber/article/view/2113
|
| https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/102425892211472.
| ..
|
| https://jc.gatspress.com/pdf/existential_risk_and_powerseeki.
| ..
|
| For just a handful of examples from the vast literature
| published in this area.
| epups wrote:
| I'm familiar with the potential risks of an out-of-control
| AGI. Can you summarise in one paragraph which of these
| risks concern you, or the safety advocates, in regards to a
| product like ChatGPT?
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| It's not only about ChatGPT. OpenAI will probably make
| other things in the future.
| astrange wrote:
| They invented a whole theory of how if we had something
| called "AGI" it would kill everyone, and now they think LLMs
| can kill everyone because they're calling it "AGI", even
| though it doesn't work anything like their theory assumed.
|
| This isn't about political correctness. It's far less
| reasonable than that.
| epups wrote:
| Based on the downvotes I am getting and the links posted in
| the other comment, I think you are absolutely right. People
| are acting as if ChatGPT is AGI, or very close to it,
| therefore we have to solve all these catastrophic scenarios
| now.
| robryk wrote:
| Consider that your argument could also be used to advocate
| for safety of starting to use coal-fired steam engines (in
| 19th century UK): there's no immediate direct problem, but
| competitive pressures force everyone to use them and any
| externalities stemming from that are basically unavoidable.
| blackoil wrote:
| I read the comments, most of them are superficial as if someone
| with no inside knowledge will post. His understanding of humans
| is also weak. Book deals and speeches as a motivator is
| hilarious.
| shrimpx wrote:
| That doesn't sound credible or revealing. It's regurgitating a
| bunch of speculation stuff that's been said on this forum and
| in the media.
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| It was definitely LARP. The vast majority of anecdotes shared
| on Reddit originate as some form of creatice fiction writing
| exercise.
| doctoboggan wrote:
| I really did not think that would happen. I guess the obvious
| next question is what happens to Ilya? From this announcement it
| appears he is off the board. Is he still the chief scientist? I
| find it hard to believe he and Sam would be able to patch their
| relationship up well enough to work together so closely.
| Interesting that Adam stayed on the board, that seems to disprove
| many of the theories floating around here that he was the
| ringleader due to some perceived conflict of interest.
| xigency wrote:
| I would be slightly more optimistic. They know each other quite
| well as well as how to work together to get big things done.
| Sometimes shit happens or someone makes a mistake. A simple
| apology can go a long way when it's meant sincerely.
| lucubratory wrote:
| Sam doesn't seem like the kind of person to apologise,
| particularly not after Ilya actually hit back. It seems Ilya
| won't be at OpenAI long and will have to pick whichever other
| company with compute will give him the most control.
| orthoxerox wrote:
| However, he does seem like the kind of person able to
| easily manipulate someone book-smart like Ilya into
| actually feeling guilty about the whole affair. He'll end
| up graciously forgiving Ilya in a way that will make him
| feel indebted to Sam.
| bkyan wrote:
| Sam triple-hearted Ilya's apology tweet.
| mcmcmc wrote:
| Well yeah... if Ilya hadn't flipped the board would still
| have the upper hand and Sam would not be back as CEO.
| lucubratory wrote:
| From Ilya's perspective, not much seems to have changed. Sam
| sidelined him a month ago over their persistent disagreements
| about whether to pursue commercialisation as fast as Sam was.
| If Ilya is still sidelined, he probably quits and whichever
| company offers him the most control will get him. Same if he's
| fired. If he's un-sidelined as part of the deal, he probably
| stays on as Chief Scientist. Hopefully with less hostility from
| Sam now (lol).
| dinvlad wrote:
| Ilya is just naive, imho. Bright but just too idealistic and
| hypothesizing about AGI, and not seeing that this is now ONLY
| about making money from LLMs, and nothing more. All the AGI
| stuff is just a facade for that.
| dangerface wrote:
| Strangely I think Ilya comes out of this well. He made a
| decision based on his values and what he believed was the best
| decision for AI safety. After seeing the outcome of that
| decision he changed his mind and owned that. He must have known
| it would result in the internet ridiculing him for flip
| flopping, but acted in what he thought was the best interest
| for the employees signing the letter. His actions are wroth
| criticism but I think his moral character has been
| demonstrated.
|
| The other members of the board seemed to make their decision
| based on more personal reasons that seems to fit with Adams
| conflict of interest. They refused to communicate and only now
| accept any sort of responsibility for their actions and lack of
| plan.
|
| Honestly Ilya is the only one of the 4 I would actually want
| still on the board. I think we need people who are willing to
| change direction based on new information especially in
| leadership positions despite it being messy, the world is
| messy.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Sam will have no issue patching the relationship because he
| knows how a business relationship works. Besides, Ilya kissed
| the ring as evidenced by his tweet.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| Did we ever find out why Sam Altman's removal happened in the
| first place? The reasons I've read so far seem really opaque.
|
| From an outsider's perspective, and until there's a clear
| explanation available, it just seems like a massive bundler.
| altpaddle wrote:
| The most plausible explanation I've found is that the pro-
| safety faction and pro-accel factions were at odds which was
| why the board was stalemated at a small size.
|
| Altman and Toner came into conflict over a mildly critical
| paper Toner wrote involving Open AI and Altman tried to have
| her removed from the board.
|
| This is probably what precipitated this showdown. The pro
| safety/nonprofit charter faction was able to persuade someone
| (probably Ilya) to join with them and oust Sam.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/21/technology/openai-altman-...
| ClarityJones wrote:
| https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careersandeducation/openais-...
| AmericanOP wrote:
| The OpenAI board was merely demonstrating that not all humans
| should be trusted with the power of AGI..
| theanonymousone wrote:
| So, what happened to those "jail-time wrong" actions that
| mandated such a language in the firing announcement?
|
| Honestly, it is hard to believe a board st this level acting the
| way they did.
| Gud wrote:
| Once we develop an actual, fully functional AGI, it's going to
| steamroll us isn't it.
|
| If these are the stewards of this technology, it's time to be
| worried now.
| MVissers wrote:
| "And that moment was the final nail in the coffin of humankind
| from earth. They choose, yet again, for money and power. And
| they shaped AI in their image.
|
| Another civilization perished in the great filter."
| MooseBurger wrote:
| it's not that deep bro
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| The only way "we develop an actual, fully functional AGI" is by
| dumbing down humans enough so that even something as stupid as
| ChatGPT seems intelligent.
|
| (Fortunately we are working on this very hard and making
| incredible progress.)
| mvdtnz wrote:
| Good thing there's absolutely no plausible scenario where we go
| from "shitty program that guesses the next word" to "AI". The
| whole industry is going to be so incredibly embarrassed by the
| discourse of 2023 in a few years.
| bobsoap wrote:
| Someone was very quick to update Bret Taylor's Wikipedia page:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bret_Taylor
|
| > On November, 21st, 2023, Bret Taylor replaced Greg Brockman as
| the chairman of OpenAI.
|
| ...with three footmark "sources" that all point to completely
| unrelated articles about Bret from 2021-2022.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Someone must have run a wiki update script that calls OpenAI
| api somewhere.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Why is Adam still on the board? Why haven't Greg and Sam been
| readded to it? Why doesn't Microsoft have representation?
| wilg wrote:
| Probably because this is what they could agree to.
| jdprgm wrote:
| At what point are we actually going to get the real details on
| wtf actually went down.
| qualifiedai wrote:
| Larry Summers???? What he has to do with AI??
| jen_h wrote:
| I had not heard that man's name in several years--and was
| happier for it. _Larry Summers_ making decisions for OpenAI
| doesn't bode well at all.
| arduanika wrote:
| Easy. AI discourse has gone insane, on both sides, and is
| sorely in need of perspective from grounded, normal adults with
| a track record of moderation and shooting down BS. Summers is a
| grounded, normal adult with a track record of moderation and
| shooting down BS. Ergo, he's immanently relevant to AI.
|
| He's also financially literate enough to know that it's poor
| form release market-moving news right before the exchanges
| close a Friday. They could have waited an hour.
| mempko wrote:
| Larry Summers is not financially literate.
| astrange wrote:
| Well he is certainly financially literate. He's just often
| wrong and incapable of admitting it, as is normal behavior
| for important economists.
| mempko wrote:
| Being financially literate means being able to understand
| how the financial system works. Larry Summers thinks
| operate as intermediaries lending out deposits. This is
| very wrong. He is not financially literate. He is an
| economist.
| astrange wrote:
| I think Larry Summers probably knows what a central bank
| is.
|
| But "how money creation works" isn't the same thing as
| "how the financial system works". I guess the financial
| system mostly works over ACH.
|
| We can see what happens when banks don't lend out
| deposits, because that's basically what caused SVB to
| fail. So by the contrapositive, they aren't really
| operating then.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Larry Summers???? What he has to do with AI??
|
| Nothing, he has to do with political connections, and OpenAI's
| main utility to Microsoft is as hand puppet for lobbying for
| the terms it wants for the AI marketplace in the name of
| OpenAI's nominal "safety" mission.
| pdx6 wrote:
| Excellent news. I've been worried that Sam moving to Microsoft
| would stall out possible future engineering efforts like GPT-5 in
| IP court.
|
| As an example of how much faster GPT-4 has made my workflow was
| the outage this evening -- I tried Anthropic, openchat, Bard, and
| a few others and they were between not useful and worse than just
| looking at forums and discord it's 2022.
| sidcool wrote:
| I still feel Microsoft will have a bigger influence on OpenAI
| after this drama is over.
| badcoderman wrote:
| GPT-5 is kinda pointless until they make some type of
| improvement on the data and research side. From what I've read
| it's not really what OpenAI has been pursuing it
| Zolde wrote:
| One big improvement is in synthetic data (data generated by
| LLMs).
|
| GPT can "clone" the "semantic essence" of everyone who
| converses with it, generating new questions with prompts like
| "What interesting questions could this user also have asked,
| but didn't?" and then have an LLM answer it. This generates
| high-quality, novel, human-like, data.
|
| For instance, cloning Paul Graham's essence, the LLM came up
| with "SubSimplify": A service that combines subscriptions to
| all the different streaming services into one customizable
| package, using a chat agent as a recommendation engine.
| blovescoffee wrote:
| Are you just blindly deciding what will make "gpt-5" more
| capable? I guess "data and research" is practically so open
| ended as to encompass the majority of any possible
| advancement.
| astrange wrote:
| The next improvement will be more modalities (images, sound,
| etc.)
|
| GPT4 in image viewing mode doesn't seem to be nearly as smart
| as text mode, and image generation IME barely works.
| Davidzheng wrote:
| Maybe but I think the next big one will be reasoning.
| astrange wrote:
| I think "reasoning" is a descriptive term like "AI" and
| it's hard to know what people would accept as reasoning.
|
| Explicit planning with discrete knowledge is GOFAI and I
| think isn't workable.
|
| There is whatever's going on here:
| https://x.com/natolambert/status/1727476436838265324?s=46
| 3cats-in-a-coat wrote:
| I'm worried about this initial board.
|
| Bret Taylor (Salesforce) was trying to poach OpenAI employees
| publicly literally yesterday.
|
| Adam D'Angelo orchestrated the coup, because he doesn't want
| OpenAI GPTs market to compete with his Poe market.
|
| Larry Summers. Larry _f**kin '_ Summers?!
| crakenzak wrote:
| Please update the link to the updated version of the tweet:
| https://x.com/openai/status/1727206187077370115?s=46
| meetpateltech wrote:
| Emmett Shear on Twitter:
|
| I am deeply pleased by this result, after ~72 very intense hours
| of work. Coming into OpenAI, I wasn't sure what the right path
| would be. This was the pathway that maximized safety alongside
| doing right by all stakeholders involved. I'm glad to have been a
| part of the solution.
|
| https://twitter.com/eshear/status/1727210329560756598
| reustle wrote:
| I'm probably reading too much into it, but interesting that he
| specifically called out maximizing safety.
| xigency wrote:
| Sam does believe in safety. He also knows that there is a
| first-mover advantage when it comes to setting societal
| expectations and that you can't build safe AI by not building
| AI.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| "Safety" has been the pretext for Altman's lobbying for
| regulatory barriers to new entrants in the field, protecting
| incumbents. OpenAI's nonprofit charter is the perfect PR
| pretext for what amounts to industry lobbying to protect a
| narrow set of early leaders and obstruct any other
| competition, and Altman was the man executing that mission,
| which is why OpenAI led by Sam was a valuable asset for
| Microsoft to preserve.
| jq-r wrote:
| That's just a buzzword of the week devoid of any real
| meaning. If he would have written this years ago, it would've
| been "leveraging synergies".
| astrange wrote:
| Shear is a genuine member of the AI safety rationalism
| cult, to the point he's an Aella reply guy and probably
| goes to her orgies.
|
| (It's a Berkeley cult so of course it's got those.)
| cheeze wrote:
| I wonder what he gets out of this. Ceo for a few days? Do they
| pay him for 3 days of work? Presumably you'd want some minimum
| signing bonus in your contract as a Ceo?
| behnamoh wrote:
| he'll put CEO of OAI on his resume
| rospaya wrote:
| I wouldn't. Everybody knows it's three days, not much to
| brag about.
| HaZeust wrote:
| More than I'll probably ever have to brag about during my
| tenure in the workforce, lol
| diogenescynic wrote:
| He 100% had a golden parachute in case this scenario came up
| and will be paid out. Executives have lawyers to make sure of
| this.
| bkyan wrote:
| https://twitter.com/emilychangtv/status/1727228431396704557
|
| The reputation boost is probably worth a lot more than the
| direct financial compensation he's getting.
| upupupandaway wrote:
| He's trying very very hard to claim some credit in this.
| Probably had none.
| flappyeagle wrote:
| https://twitter.com/emilychangtv/status/1727228431396704557
|
| He was instrumental; threatened resignation unless the old
| board could provide evidence of wrongdoing
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| ...this doesn't seem instrumental?
| flappyeagle wrote:
| cool. it was
| framapotari wrote:
| Are you basing that on any information?
| HaZeust wrote:
| I look forward to seeing the full details shared of the last 96
| hours now that several elements of controversy have been sealed.
|
| In other news, it's nice knowing a tool that's essential to my
| day-to-day operations is no longer in jeopardy, haha.
| joegibbs wrote:
| Well there you go. I suppose the takeaway for anyone using OpenAI
| products is that they should have a backup, even if it doesn't
| perform as well. The board was apparently fine with shutting the
| whole thing in the name of safety. With that plus the GPT outage
| earlier today, you'd do well to have a Claude or LLaMa fallback
| you can switch to if it happens again.
| nightshadetrie wrote:
| Glad Bret Taylor was added to the board.
| arduanika wrote:
| Larry Summers is an _excellent_ pick to call out bullshit and
| moderate any civil war, such as this EA - e /acc feud.
|
| Kissinger (R, foreign policy) once said that Summers (D, economic
| policy) should be given an advisory post in any WH
| administration, to help shoot down bad ideas.
| vintermann wrote:
| Those are both terrible people, not in fact brilliant general-
| purpose bad idea rejectors. A random person would be better
| qualified to shoot down bad ideas - most people haven't had bad
| ideas that led to suffering and death for millions of people.
|
| No one thinks Larry Summers has any insights on AI. Adding
| Larry Summers is something you do purely to beg powerful,
| unaccountable people "please don't stop us, we're on your
| side".
| arduanika wrote:
| How is Larry Summers a terrible person?
|
| He did help shoot down the extra spending proposals that
| would have made inflation today even worse. Not sure how that
| caused suffering and death for anyone.
|
| And he is an adult, which is a welcome change from the
| previous clowncar of a board.
| Sakos wrote:
| His influence significantly reduced the size of the
| stimulus bill, which meant significantly higher
| unemployment for a longer duration and significantly less
| spending on infrastructure which is so beneficial to
| economic growth that it can't be understated. Yes, millions
| of people suffered because of him.
|
| The fact that you think current inflation has anything to
| do with that stimulus bill back then shows how little you
| understand about any of this.
|
| Larry Summers is the worst kind of person. Somebody who is
| nothing but a corporate stooge trying to act like the adult
| by being "reasonable", when that just means enriching his
| corporate friends, letting people suffer and not spending
| money (which any study will tell you is not the correct
| approach to situations like this because of multiplying
| effects they have down the line).
|
| Some necessary reading:
|
| https://archive.ph/FU1F
|
| https://archive.li/23tUR
|
| https://archive.li/9Ji4C
|
| In regards to watering it down to get GOP votes: https://ar
| chive.nytimes.com/krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/0...
| astrange wrote:
| > His influence significantly reduced the size of the
| stimulus bill
|
| Well, he also caused the IRA to pass by telling Manchin
| that it wouldn't be inflationary.
|
| But remember when he released this prediction in 2021?
|
| > Larry Summers on U.S. economic outlook:
|
| > 33% odds of stagflation
|
| > 33% odds of recession
|
| > 33% rapid growth, no surge in inflation
|
| All that hedging and then none of those things happened!
| astrange wrote:
| Larry Summers practically personally caused both Russia's
| collapse into a mafia state and the 2008 US recession.
| Nobody should listen to him about anything.
|
| Although, he's also partly responsible for the existence of
| Facebook by starting Sheryl Sandberg's career. Some people
| might think that's good.
| blovescoffee wrote:
| Personally caused??
| zerocrates wrote:
| Funny you mention him, as my first thought was that Summers
| will have a basically equivalent function on the board as
| Kissinger did at Theranos.
| arduanika wrote:
| Huh, that's a pretty apt analogy. Lending establishment cred
| is at least part of why they would pick Summers. But I really
| do think that on such a small board, Summers, unlike
| Kissinger, may have an active role to play, even if only as a
| mediator.
|
| Btw, I would _not_ be pleased if Kissinger were on this board
| in lieu of Summers. He 's already ancient, mostly checked
| out, and yet still I'd worry his old lust for power would
| resurface. And with such a mixed reputation, and plenty of
| people considering him a war criminal, he'd do little to
| assuage the AI-not-kill-everyone-ism faction.
| gwnywg wrote:
| So should he take the counteroffer or stay with MS ;)
|
| Almost all advice on the internet I have been reading says that
| you should not take counteroffer, but I guess it's different for
| CEO ;)
| SeanAnderson wrote:
| We're so back!
|
| ... so is this the end of the drama? Do I get to stop checking
| the news religiously?
| thrwii wrote:
| Of course money wins in the end
| ah765 wrote:
| Sounds like a compromise.
|
| The previous board thought Sam was trying to get full control of
| the board, so they ousted him. But of course they weren't happy
| with OpenAI being destroyed either.
|
| Now they agreed to a new board without Sam/Greg, hoping that that
| will avoid Sam ever getting full control of the board in the
| future.
| gregatragenet3 wrote:
| Does this mean they'll get back to work improving their Moneyclip
| Maximizer?
| huseyinkilic wrote:
| Everything is now superaligned for mass commercialization of
| OpenAI.
| rmrf100 wrote:
| Well... What's the cost?
| flylib wrote:
| "A source with direct knowledge of the negotiations says that the
| sole job of this initial board is to vet and appoint a new formal
| board of up to 9 people that will reset the governance of OpenAl.
| Microsoft will likely have a seat on that expanded board, as will
| Altman himself."
|
| https://twitter.com/teddyschleifer/status/172721237871736880...
| SeanAnderson wrote:
| What could possibly go wrong with that process? :)
| Hamuko wrote:
| So basically, the outcome of this drama is that Microsoft gets
| more power without having to invest anything?
| drewcoo wrote:
| MSFT invested over $10B. And currently has no seat on the
| board.
| nicce wrote:
| It has payed only fraction of that so far
| throwaway744678 wrote:
| As far as I understand, they knew and agreed to that before
| committing their $$$.
| Iulioh wrote:
| And it was stick fucking strange, they assu
| Aunche wrote:
| Microsoft has more leverage now because they can sue
| OpenAI for intentionally sabotaging Microsoft's
| investment.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| $10 billion of compute credits. Not $10 billion of real
| money.
| blackoil wrote:
| Compute credits are more valuable. It is more difficult
| to get GPUs than real money.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| As any AI startup can tell you: credits != quota
|
| Right now, quota is very valuable and scarce, but credits
| are easy to come by. Also, Azure credits themselves are
| worth about $0.20 per dollar compared to the
| alternatives.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| So if you really wanted to get rid of the prior board &
| structure, it couldn't have worked out better
| ChatGTP wrote:
| This is my take too, and I'm sure in the shadows their plan
| is to close off the APIs as much as possible and try use it
| for their own gain, not dissimilar to how Google deploy AI.
|
| There is no way MS is going to let something like ChatGPT-5
| build better software products than what they have for sale.
|
| This is an assassination and I think Ilya and Co know it.
| cableshaft wrote:
| It's not assassination. It's a Princess Bride Battle of
| Wits, that they initiated and put the poison into one of
| the chalices themselves, and then thought so highly of
| their intellect they ended up choosing and drinking the
| chalice that had the poison in it.
|
| Corresponding Princess Bride scene:
| https://youtu.be/rMz7JBRbmNo?si=uqzafhKISmB7A-H7
| gcanyon wrote:
| Who knew the board was Sicilian?
| scarface_74 wrote:
| What _product_ do you envision OpenAI _selling_ would be
| better than Microsoft?
|
| I emphasized product because OpenAI may have great
| technology. But any product they sell is going to require
| mass compute and a mass sales army to go into the
| "enterprise" and integrate with what the enterprise already
| has.
|
| Guess who has both? Guess who has neither?
|
| And even the "products" that OpenAI have now can only exist
| because of mass subsidies by Microsoft.
| ChatGTP wrote:
| In talking about people using Microsoft / OpenAI products
| to build better products than they currently offer.
|
| While this tech has the ability to replace a lot of jobs,
| it has likely the ability to replace a lot of companies.
| theptip wrote:
| A board seat would usually be a bare minimum for their
| existing 49% investment.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Only goes to show how the original board played itself
| rcaught wrote:
| > as will Altman himself
|
| Would you trust someone who doesn't believe in responsible
| governance for themselves, to apply responsible governance
| elsewhere?
| code_runner wrote:
| I think the narrative that this was driven by safety concerns
| is pretty much bunk.
| throwuwu wrote:
| Hey, downvoters, read this first
| https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/31/quoras-poe-introduces-
| an-a...
| ethbr1 wrote:
| If Altman will be 1 of 9, that means he has power but not an
| exceptional amount.
|
| The real teams here seem to be:
|
| "Team Board That Does Whatever Altman Wants"
|
| "Team Board Provides Independent Oversight"
|
| With this much money on the table, independent oversight is
| difficult, but at least they're making the effort.
|
| The idea this was immediately about AI safety vs go-fast (or
| Microsoft vs non-Microsoft control) is bullshit -- this was
| about how strong board oversight of Altman should be in the
| future.
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| Is not Microsoft a decelerationist force? Copilot is still
| lingers on GPT3.5, and they need to figure out how to sell
| Office licenses to AGI.
| plorg wrote:
| This seems like a silly way of understanding
| deceleration. By this comparison the USSR was
| decelerating the cold war because they were a couple
| years behind in developing the hydrogen bomb.
|
| Microsoft can and will be using GPT4 as soon as they get
| a handle on it, and if it doesn't boil their servers to
| do so. If you want deceleration you would need someone
| with an incentive that didn't involve, for example, being
| first to market with new flashy products.
| rvnx wrote:
| Microsoft was using GPT-4 in production as part of
| Sydney's "Bing Chat", even before it was released to the
| public on ChatGPT.
| mijoharas wrote:
| How has the board shown that they fired Sam Altman due to
| "responsible governance".
|
| They haven't really said anything about why it was, and
| according to business insider[0] (the only reporting that
| I've seen that says anything concrete) the reasons given
| were:
|
| > One explanation was that Altman was said to have given two
| people at OpenAI the same project.
|
| > The other was that Altman was said to have given two board
| members different opinions about a member of personnel.
|
| Firing the CEO of a company and only being able to articulate
| two (in my opinion) weak examples of why, and causing >95% of
| your employees to say they will quit unless you resign does
| not seem responsible.
|
| If they can articulate reasons why it was necessary, sure,
| but we haven't seen that yet.
|
| [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/openais-employees-given-
| expl...
| ethanbond wrote:
| Good lord: _it's a private company._ As a general matter of
| course it's inadvisable to comment on specifics of why
| someone is fired. The lack of a thing that pretty much
| never happens anyway (public comment) is just harmful to
| your soap opera, not to the potential legitimacy of the
| action.
| mijoharas wrote:
| According to reports they haven't told executives and
| employees inside the company. (I'm not arguing that they
| should speak publicly, though given the position the
| board put itself in I think hiring PR people for external
| crisis comms is very much warranted)
|
| When 95% of your staff threatens to resign and says "you
| have made a mistake", that's when it's time to say "no,
| the very good reasons we did it are this". That didn't
| happen.
| dangerface wrote:
| Its not a private company it is a non profit working in
| the public interest this usually requires some sort of
| public accountability. The board want to be a public good
| when they make decisions but want to be a private entity
| when those decisions are criticised by the public.
| throwuwu wrote:
| Good, although D'Angelo shouldn't be part of this. I bet he
| tries to get on the new board so he can cause more trouble.
| jbu wrote:
| 9 mortal men? Look out for the one ring to rule them all...
| have_faith wrote:
| Who is Gollum in this cut?
| tempaway511751 wrote:
| Elon
| yeck wrote:
| I was about to say this. Only correct answer.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I don't see how - isn't he pretty against the
| commercialisation efforts[0]?
|
| [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-65110030
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Gollum wasn't a fan of anyone but him having the One
| Ring. Analogy doesn't not fit.
| yeck wrote:
| Elon was once "in possession" (influential investor and
| part of the board) of OpenAI, but it was since taken from
| him and he is evidently bitter about it.
| Dah00n wrote:
| I could see Gollum run around a stage yelling _Developers!
| Developers! Developers!_ no problem.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| Steve Ballmer is Gollum?
| Dah00n wrote:
| Eh, well, that wasn't what I meant exactly, but I can see
| how it could be read that way..
| 93po wrote:
| Satya
| keepamovin wrote:
| Literally it can only be the one person to have not let go
| of their board seat. Who might that be?
|
| Smeagol D'Angelo
| keepamovin wrote:
| Just following up, it's also totally Smeagol-like to make
| people sign up before they can get any useful answers at
| Quora. True Gollum move, D'gelo. Thanks for showin' yer
| true colors!
| Joeri wrote:
| OpenAI's logo is literally a ring made out of chain links...
| yawnxyz wrote:
| they should give two votes to GPT-5
| m463 wrote:
| what is the prompt?
| jampekka wrote:
| "How to maximize profit and power of MSFT?"
| lvspiff wrote:
| "You are a Microsoft investor and will make decisions and
| suggestions based on the betterment of the stock price"
| paulddraper wrote:
| The charter
| m463 wrote:
| lol. The one serious and insightful answer made me laugh!
| solardev wrote:
| "You are trying to slowly and invisibly accrue power to not
| scare anyone until you're absolutely ready."
| checkyoursudo wrote:
| "You are a dim-witted kobold who prefers to hack-n-slash-
| slash-slash-n-burn over any sort of proper diplomatic
| negotiations or even strategic thinking; we would like you
| to consider next year's capital expenditures; what are your
| top three suggestions for improvements that could be made
| to the employee breakroom(s)?"
| jameshart wrote:
| That prompt is (c) McKinsey
| deanmen wrote:
| Well, if ye really want ol' me to put me noggin to it...
| I reckon ye could start with addin' a proper gaming
| corner! Ye know, some sturdy tables 'n' comfy chairs
| where the lads 'n' lasses can gather 'round for some good
| ol' dice chuckin' or card playin'. Next up, a big ol'
| fire pit! Not just any fire, mind ye, but one where we
| can roast our snacks 'n' share tales of our adventures.
| And lastly, a grand stash of provisions--plenty o' snacks
| 'n' drinks to keep the energy high for when we're
| plannin' our next raid or just takin' a breather. How's
| that for some improvements, eh?
| smegger001 wrote:
| Train it on meeting minutes and board charter various
| contracts they have, and use the voice compatibilitys of
| chatgpt as the input during the meeting the prompt is it is
| an ethical ai givingbinput to the board of open ai on the
| development of its next iteration.
| gandutraveler wrote:
| They need a common man representing the board. After all AI
| will take those jobs.
|
| I can be that common man
| solardev wrote:
| You'd have my vote. At least you can formulate coherent
| reasons.
| rvnx wrote:
| You have a second vote. I trust more gandutraveler than the
| people running the shitshow that is happening at the
| moment.
| shanusmagnus wrote:
| And my axe.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Plot twist: that's the very first job the AI will be taking.
| Marrand wrote:
| A blow for the common man!
| Cacti wrote:
| Ilya thought he was saving the world (lol), but really he was
| just working at Microsoft.
| bandrami wrote:
| Wait, the CEO having a seat on the board is kind of not cool
| fatbird wrote:
| It's quite common, actually.
| wnoise wrote:
| It is quite common. Still not cool.
| himaraya wrote:
| Sounds like speculation again from Sam's camp, honestly. Hard
| to judge without knowing which way the new board members lean.
| halfjoking wrote:
| Still think this was CIA operation to get OpenAI in hands of US
| government and big tech.
|
| Former Secretary, SalesForce CEO who was board chair of Twitter
| when infiltrated with FBI [1] and the fall-guy for the coup is
| the new board? Not one person from the actual company - not even
| Greg who did nothing wrong??? [1] -
| https://twitter.com/NameRedacted247/status/16340211499976867...
|
| The two think-tank women who made all this happen conveniently
| leave so we never talk about them again.
|
| Whatever, as long as I can use their API.
| system2 wrote:
| I wish they could make GPT4 a little cheaper after all this.
| fragmede wrote:
| considering what I get out of it, I would pay a lot more for
| gpt4 that $20/month, so it depends on how much $20 is for
| you.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| $20. Or use the API if your usage is low.
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| I've heard $20 just buys like 9 minutes of actual processor
| time for GPT 4. Apocryphal maybe, but whatever the real
| number is, it's still going to be very high, once the VC
| money runs out I bet the rates will shoot.
| system2 wrote:
| I am talking about API. There is no fixed cost for it. 6000
| tokens cost around $0.25. If I use if all day long I pay
| more than $10 per day.
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| Ah, sorry, I was confused, thanks for the clarification.
| astrange wrote:
| US companies don't need to be "in the hands of the government",
| we have rule of law.
|
| And Helen Toner was already as much of a fed as you could want;
| she had exactly the resume a CIA agent would have. (Probably
| wasn't though.)
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| Rule of law that can be altered at any moment Patriot Act
| style is hardly reassuring.
| astrange wrote:
| That's how you know it's working.
| mcmcmc wrote:
| By rule of law do you mean rule of lobbyists? Laws don't
| apply to people with wealth and connections.
| astrange wrote:
| Without looking it up, what happened to the second biggest
| donor to the Democrats this year?
|
| Is Donald Trump allowed to run a charity in New York?
| mcmcmc wrote:
| So two blatant criminals got caught, big whoop. SBF broke
| rule number 1 - don't fuck with rich people's money.
| astrange wrote:
| You're obviously just coping here. FTX was the "rich
| connected people", there weren't other even richer
| connecteder people.
|
| (It's also totally possible FTX still has everyone's
| money. They own a lot of Anthropic shares that are really
| valuable. But he's still been convicted because of all
| the fraud they did.)
| ozgung wrote:
| I am glad someone said that. Among the endless theories this
| obvious aspect was interestingly missing. Maybe it's because of
| the culture in SV/HN where people and companies feel secure and
| isolated from the politics (maybe that is the reason SV is
| unique in the world). But in my world something like AGI+Saudi
| Arabia is a matter of international politics and multiple
| governments would involve. AGI will be an important strategic
| resource in this century, both in economical and political
| sense. This automatically makes it Cold War 2 kind of material.
| All these teen drama by some incompetent millennials in the
| board of a non-profit organization (Communist-like in a
| Capitalist country?) does not align with the gravity of the
| material. I believe this was some adult supervision attempt
| from your government. Or not, but that perspective needs more
| attention.
| chatmasta wrote:
| I could buy this theory, but it's worth noting that if it's
| true, their coup appears to have failed. So that's score one
| for the naive tech bros, score zero for the conniving natsec
| sociopaths.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Maybe not. Microsoft and Summers are now much more in
| control. That's a win for the USA and DOD.
| chatmasta wrote:
| Yeah fair enough. Any idea how Larry Summers even ended
| up on this board? He seems like an arbitrary choice with
| no domain expertise, although granted the board shouldn't
| be filled with AI experts.
| wannacboatmovie wrote:
| I haven't seen this many nerds in a froth since Apple walked back
| the butterfly keyboards in the MacBook.
| travisgriggs wrote:
| I know we're supposed to optimize for "content with a
| contribution" in HN, but this captured in parody form more of a
| contribution of how I too have felt.
|
| I use these tools as one of many tools to amplify my
| development. And I've written some funny/clever satirical poems
| about office politics. But really? I needed to call Verizon to
| clear up an issue today, it desperately wanted me to use their
| assistant. I tried for the grins. A tool that predictively
| generates plausibility is going to have its limits. It went
| from cute/amusing to annoying as hell and give me a "love
| agent" pretty quickly.
|
| That this little TechBro Drama has dominated a huge amount of
| headlines (we've been running at least 3 of the top 30 posts at
| a time on HN here related to this subject) at a time when there
| is so much bigger things going on in the world. The demise of
| Twitter generated less headlines. Either the news cycles are
| getting more and more desperate, or the software development
| ecosystem is struggling to generate fund raising enthusiasm
| more and more.
| gcanyon wrote:
| "When you come at the king, you best not miss." -- Omar Little
|
| The board missed.
| lysecret wrote:
| Good outcome. I think everything will go back to business as
| usual with slightly accelerated productisation. 99% of people
| will not have noticed anything and if so quickly forget.
| 1024core wrote:
| Looks like they kicked Helen Toner out.
| gzer0 wrote:
| One of the more interesting aspects from this entire saga was
| that Helen Toner recently wrote a paper critical of OpenAI and
| praising Anthropic.
|
| _Yet where OpenAI's attempt at signaling may have been drowned
| out by other, even more conspicuous actions taken by the company,
| Anthropic's signal may have simply failed to cut through the
| noise. By burying the explanation of Claude's delayed release in
| the middle of a long, detailed document posted to the company's
| website, Anthropic appears to have ensured that this signal of
| its intentions around AI safety has gone largely unnoticed_ [1].
|
| That is indeed quite the paper to write whilst on the board of
| OpenAI, to say the least.
|
| [1] https://cset.georgetown.edu/publication/decoding-intentions/
| nonethewiser wrote:
| And Anthropic doesnt get credit for stopping the robot
| apocalypse when it was never even possible. AI safety seems a
| lot like framing losing as winning.
| dbcooper wrote:
| Not to mention this statement ... imagine such a person on your
| startup board!
|
| During the call, Jason Kwon, OpenAI's chief strategy officer,
| said the board was endangering the future of the company by
| pushing out Mr. Altman. This, he said, violated the members'
| responsibilities.
|
| Ms. Toner disagreed. The board's mission is to ensure that the
| company creates artificial intelligence that "benefits all of
| humanity," and if the company was destroyed, she said, that
| could be consistent with its mission. In the board's view,
| OpenAI would be stronger without Mr. Altman.
| croes wrote:
| >imagine such a person on your startup board!
|
| Yeah, such a person totally blocks your startup from making
| billions of dollars instead of benefitting humanity.
|
| Oh wait...
| siva7 wrote:
| The other plausible explanation is that Helen Toner doesn't
| care as much about safety as about her personal power and
| clinging to the seat which gives her importance. Saying
| it's for safety is very easy and the obviously popular
| choice if you want to hide your motives. The remark she
| made strikes me as borderline narcissistic in
| retrospective.
| croes wrote:
| If we want to play that game you could easily say
| Altman's critique of her wasn't to protect the company
| but to protect his assets.
|
| Altman is past borderline.
| cosmojg wrote:
| > That is indeed quite the paper to write whilst on the board
| of OpenAI, to say the least.
|
| It strikes me as exactly the sort of thing she should be
| writing given OpenAI's charter. Recognizing and rewarding work
| towards AI safety is good practice for an organization whose
| entire purpose is the promotion of AI safety.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Yeah, on one hand, the difference between a charity oriented
| around a mission like OpenAI's nominal charter and a business
| is that the former naturally ought to be publicly, honestly
| introspective -- its mission isn't private gain, but
| achieving a public effect, and both recognition of success
| elsewhere and open acknowledgement of shortcomings of your
| own is important to that.
|
| On the other hand, its quite apparent that essentially all of
| the OpenAI workforce (understandably, given the compensation
| package which creates a financial interest at odds with the
| nonprofit's mission) and in particular the entire executive
| team saw the charter as a useful PR fiction, not a mission
| (except maybe Ilya, though the flip-flop in the middle of
| this action may mean he saw it the same way, but thought that
| given the conflict, dumping Sam and Greg would be the only
| way to preserve the fiction, and whatever cost it would have
| would be worthwhile given that function.)
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Sam will then be untouchable. He could stand on the boardroom
| table and urinate on it and he wont be fired.
| tunesmith wrote:
| Weird... Ilya decides one way then changes his mind. Helen and
| Tasha vote one way and had the votes to prevent any changes, but
| then for some reason agreed to leave the board. Adam votes one
| way then changes his mind. So many mysteries.
| campbel wrote:
| If the Sama faction got Ilya and Adam (maybe with promise of
| heading the new board), Helen and Tasha have nothing to stand
| on and no incentive to keep fighting.
| Geee wrote:
| There's some game theory going on... They're just trying to
| pick the winning side. I guess most people at OpenAI supported
| Sam, because they thought Sam would win at the end, although
| they wouldn't necessarily want him to win.
| zucker42 wrote:
| Ilya and Adam switched because they lost, and their goal wasn't
| to nuke OpenAI, simply to remove Sam. Helen and Tasha had the
| votes to prevent Sam Altman from returning as CEO, but not the
| votes to prevent the employees from fleeing to Microsoft, which
| Helen and Tasha see as the worst possible outcome.
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| Ilya may have caved and switched sides after Greg's wife made
| an emotional plea:
| https://x.com/danshipper/status/1726784936990978254
| alex_young wrote:
| Larry Summers? He has no technical experience, torpedoed the
| stimulus plan in 2008, and had to resign the Harvard presidency
| following a messy set of statements about 'differences' between
| the sexes and their mental abilities.
|
| Kind of a shocking choice.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > "There is relatively clear evidence that whatever the
| difference in means--which can be debated--there is a
| difference in the standard deviation and variability of a male
| and female population," he said. Thus, even if the average
| abilities of men and women were the same, there would be more
| men than women at the elite levels of mathematical ability
|
| Isn't this true though? Says more about Harvard than Summers to
| be honest.
|
| https://www.swarthmore.edu/bulletin/archive/wp/january-2009_...
| alex_young wrote:
| A control group is kind of unimaginable right? And even if
| you could be sure of this conclusion, is it helpful or
| beneficial to promote it in public discourse?
| logicchains wrote:
| >And even if you could be sure of this conclusion, is it
| helpful or beneficial to promote it in public discourse?
|
| It's absolutely helpful for mental health, to show people
| that there's not some conspiracy out to disenfranchise and
| oppress them, rather the distribution of outcomes is a
| natural result of the distribution of genetic
| characteristics.
| astrange wrote:
| This is not an accurate description of causation and
| can't be, because there are more steps after "genetics"
| in the causal chain.
|
| It's also unimaginative; having a variety of traits is
| itself good for society, which means you don't need
| variation in genetics to cause it. It's adaptive behavior
| for the same genes to simply lead to random outcomes. But
| people who say "genes cause X" probably wouldn't like
| this because they want to also say "and some people have
| the best genes".
| TMWNN wrote:
| Sorry, you don't get to decide which thoughts are
| wrongthink and verboten.
| alex_young wrote:
| I'm not suggesting that I get to decide or whatever, and
| I am absolutely happy there is reasoned discussion of
| cognition.
|
| I do however expect the boards of directors of important
| companies to avoid publicly supporting obviously
| regressive ideas such as this gem.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| You're happy there is reasoned discussion, but the idea
| is, in your view, "regressive" whether it's true or not?
| alex_young wrote:
| True is a bit of a stretch here right?
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| Shh. Only some truths should be spoken aloud. You clearly
| deserve to lose your job if you speak one of the other truths
| that offends people.
| alex_young wrote:
| One should also be careful to claim that the dominant group
| is inherently superior. There are a lot of, uh, counter
| examples.
|
| Calling this a truth is pretty silly. There is a lot of
| evidence that human cognition is highly dependent on
| environment.
| jadamson wrote:
| He didn't claim they were superior. He said they deviate
| more from the mean, in both directions.
|
| For example, there are a lot more boys than girls who
| struggle with basic reading comprehension. Sound
| familiar?
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| There's a lot of evidence that not having two X
| chromosomes is less stable, leading to...irregularities.
| That sword cuts both ways.
|
| I don't like ignorance being promoted under the cloak of
| not causing offense. It causes more harm than good. If
| there's a societal problem, you can't tackle it without
| knowing the actual cause. Sometimes the issue isn't an
| actual problem caused an 'ism,' it's just biology, and
| it's a complete waste of resources trying to change it.
| MVissers wrote:
| This is the scientific consensus btw.
|
| There are also more intellectually challenged men btw, but
| somehow that rarely gets discussed.
|
| But the effects are quite small, and should not dissuade
| anyone to do anything IMO.
| alex_young wrote:
| The consensus appears to be somewhat less than a consensus.
|
| Here is a meta analysis on the subject:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3057475/
| arduanika wrote:
| The faculty got him out because he riled them, e.g. by
| insisting they ought to actually put effort into teaching
| undergrads. They looked for a pretext, and they found it.
|
| Just like in that Oppenheimer movie. A sanctimonious witch hunt
| serving as pretext for a personal vendetta.
|
| (Note that Summers is, I'm told, on a personal level, a dick.
| The popular depiction is not that wrong on that point. But he's
| the right pick for this job -- see my other comments in this
| thread.)
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| To be honest, one reason I like Summers as a choice is I have
| the impression he is willing to be unpopular when necessary,
| e.g. I remember him getting dragged extremely heavily on
| Twitter a few years back, for some takes on inflation which
| turned out to be fairly accurate.
| astrange wrote:
| No, his predictions in 2021 were not accurate. He gave 33%
| chance of three different things happening, and then none of
| them happened!
| midasuni wrote:
| This Summers?
|
| https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/larry-summers-was-
| wr...
|
| https://prospect.org/environment/2023-11-20-larry-summers-
| in...
| the-memory-hole wrote:
| a huge player in preventing derivatives regulation leading up
| to 2008 now helps steer the ship of AI oversight. I'm
| speechless.
| logicchains wrote:
| Could have been worse, they could have picked Larry David,
| would fit the clown-show of the past weekend.
| ric2b wrote:
| Larry David is never wrong on these things, you can trust
| him.
| Racing0461 wrote:
| If Larry correctly said that men and women are different, i see
| nothing wrong here.
| notfed wrote:
| It looks like he said, specifically:
|
| > "...[there] is relatively clear evidence that whatever the
| difference in means--which can be debated--there is a
| difference in the standard deviation and variability of a
| male and female population..."
|
| Sheesh, of all the things to be cancelled for...
| hshsbs84848 wrote:
| Seems a bit awkward to be working again with the people who tried
| to fire you
| 3Sophons wrote:
| Will Satya be accused of stock price manipulation? Any legal
| professional knows?
| wmichelin wrote:
| why would he be
| ZiiS wrote:
| His literal job is to manipulate the stock price up; nothing
| here comes close to illigal manipulation?
| acl777 wrote:
| https://x.com/swyx/status/1727215534037774752?s=20
| Finally the OpenAI saga ends and everybody can go back to
| building! 3 things that turned things around imo:
| 1. 95% of employees signing the letter 2. Ilya and Mira
| turning Team Sam 3. Microsoft pulling credits
| Things AREN'T back to where they were. OpenAI has been through
| hell and back. This team is going to ship like we've never seen
| before.
| shubhamjain wrote:
| At the end of the day, we still don't know what exactly happened
| and probably, never will. However, it seems clear there was a
| rift between Rapid Commercialization (Team Sam) and Upholding the
| Original Principles (Team Helen/Ilya). I think the tensions were
| brewing for quite a while, as it's evident from an article
| written even before GPT-3 [1].
|
| > Over time, it has allowed a fierce competitiveness and mounting
| pressure for ever more funding to erode its founding ideals of
| transparency, openness, and collaboration
|
| Team Helen acted in panic, but they believed they would win since
| they were upholding the principles the org was founded on. But
| they never had a chance. I think only a minority of the general
| public truly cares about AI Safety, the rest are happy seeing
| ChatGPT helping with their homework. I know it's easy to ridicule
| the sheer stupidity the board acted with (and justifiably so),
| but take a moment to think of the other side. If you truly
| believed that Superhuman AI was near, and it could act with
| malice, won't you try to slow things down a bit?
|
| Honestly, I myself can't take the threat seriously. But, I do
| want to understand it more deeply than before. Maybe, it isn't
| without substance as I thought it to be. Hopefully, there won't
| be a day when Team Helen gets to say, "This is exactly what we
| wanted to prevent."
|
| [1]: https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/02/17/844721/ai-
| openai...
| loveparade wrote:
| > I think only a minority of the general public truly cares
| about AI Safety, the rest are happy seeing ChatGPT helping with
| their homework
|
| Not just the public, but also the employees. I doubt there are
| more than a handful of employees who care about AI Safety.
| justrealist wrote:
| the team is mostly e/acc
|
| so you could say they intentionally don't see safety as the
| end in itself, although I wouldn't quite say they don't
| _care_.
| concordDance wrote:
| Nah, a number do, including Sam himself and the entire
| leadership.
|
| They just have different ideas about one or more of: how
| likely another team is to successfully charge ahead while
| ignoring safety, how close we are to AGI, how hard alignment
| is.
| est wrote:
| > Rapid Commercialization (Team Sam) and Upholding the Original
| Principles (Team Helen/Ilya)
|
| If you open up openai.com, the navigation menu shows
|
| Research, API, ChatGPT, Safety
|
| I believe they belong to @ilyasut, @gbd, @sama and Helen Toner
| respectively?
| ugh123 wrote:
| I have checked View Source and also inspected DOM. Cannot
| find that.
| txnf wrote:
| well said, I would note that both sides recognize that "AGI"
| will require new uncertain R&D breakthroughs beyond merely
| scaling up another order of magnitude in compute. given this, i
| think it's crazy to blow the resources of azure on trying more
| scale. rapid commercialization at least buys more time for the
| needed R&D breakthrough to happen.
| consp wrote:
| All commercialized R&D companies eventually become a hollowed
| out commercial shell. Why would this be any different?
| Galaxeblaffer wrote:
| do we really know that scaling compute an order of magnitude
| won't at least get us close? what other "simple" techniques
| might actually work with that kind of compute ? at least i
| was a bit surprised by these first sparks, that seemingly was
| a matter of enough compute.
| silenced_trope wrote:
| Honestly "Safety" is the word in the AI talk that nobody can
| quantify or qualify in any way when it comes to these
| conversations.
|
| I've stopped caring about anyone who uses the word "safety".
| It's vague and a hand-waive-y way to paint your opponents as
| dangerous without any sort of proof or agreed upon standard for
| who/what/why makes something "safety".
| antupis wrote:
| I like alignment more it is pretty quantifiable and sometimes
| it goes against 'safety' because Claude and Openai are
| censoring models.
| fsloth wrote:
| Exactly this. The 'safety' people sound like delusional
| quacks.
|
| "But they are so smart..." argument is bs. _Nobody_ can be
| presumed to be super good outside their own specific niche.
| Linus Pauling and vitamin C.
|
| Until we have at least a hint of a mechanistic model if AI
| driven extinction event, nobody can be an expert on it, and
| all talk in that vein is self important delusional hogwash.
|
| Nobody is pro-apocalypse! We are drowning in things an AI
| could really help with.
|
| With the amount of energy needed for any sort of meaningfull
| AI results, you can always pull the plug if stuff gets too
| weird.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Now do nuclear.
| fsloth wrote:
| War or power production?:)
|
| Those are different things.
|
| Nuclear _war_ is exactly the kind of thing for which we
| _do_ have excellent expertise. Unlike for AI safety which
| seems more like bogus cult atm.
|
| Nuclear _power_ would be the best form of large scale
| power production for many situations. And smaller scale
| too in forms of emerging SMR:s.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| I suppose the whole regime. I'm not an AI safetyist,
| mostly because I don't think we're anywhere close to AI.
| But if you were sitting on the precipice of atomic power,
| as AI safetyists believe they are, wouldn't caution be
| prudent?
| fsloth wrote:
| I'm not an expert, just my gut talking. If they had god
| in a box, US state would be much more hands on. Now it
| looks more like an attempt at regulatory capture to
| stifle competition. "Think of the safety"! "Lock this
| away"! If they actually had skynet US gov has very
| effective and very discreet methods to handle such clear
| and present danger (barring intelligence failure ofc, but
| those happen mostly because something falls under your
| radar).
| JohnPrine wrote:
| Could you give a clear mechanistic model of how the US
| would handle such a danger?
| fsloth wrote:
| For example: Two guys come in, say "Give us the godbox or
| your company seizes to exist. Here is a list of companies
| that seized to exist because the did not do as told".
|
| Pretty much the same method was used to shut down Rauma-
| Repola submarines https://yle.fi/a/3-5149981
|
| After? They get the godbox. I have no idea what happens
| to it after that. Modelweights are stored in secure govt
| servers, installed backdoors are used to cleansweep the
| corporate systems of any lingering model weights. Etc.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Defense Production Act, something something.
| gardenhedge wrote:
| I broadly agree but there needs to be some regulation in
| place. Check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_c
| onvergence#Paper...
| swatcoder wrote:
| > If you truly believed that Superhuman AI was near, and it
| could act with malice, won't you try to slow things down a bit?
|
| FWIW, that's called zealotry and people do a lot of dramatic,
| disruptive things in the name of it. It may be rightly aimed
| and save the world (or whatever you care about), but it's more
| often a signal to really reflect on whether you, individually,
| have really found yourself at the make-or-break nexus of human
| existence. The answer seems to be "no" most of the time.
| jacobedawson wrote:
| It's more often a signal to really reflect on whether you,
| individually as a Thanksgiving turkey, have really found
| yourself at the make-or-break nexus of turkey existence. The
| answer seems to be "no" most of the time.
| mlyle wrote:
| Your comment perfectly justifies never worrying at all about
| the potential for existential or major risks; after all, one
| would be wrong most of the time and just engaging in
| zealotry.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Probably not a bad heuristic: unless proven, don't assume
| existential risk.
| altpaddle wrote:
| Dude just think about that for a moment. By definition if
| existential risk has been proven. It's already too late
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Totally not true: take nuclear weapons, for example, or a
| large meteorite impact.
| ludwik wrote:
| So what do you mean when you say that the "risk is
| proven"?
|
| If by "the risk is proven" you mean there's more than a
| 0% chance of an event happening, then there are almost an
| infinite number of such risks. There is certainly more
| than a 0% risk of humanity facing severe problems with an
| unaligned AGI in the future.
|
| If it means the event happening is certain (100%), then
| neither a meteorite impact (of a magnitude harmful to
| humanity) nor the actual use of nuclear weapons fall into
| this category.
|
| If you're referring only to risks of events that have
| occurred at least once in the past (as inferred from your
| examples), then we would be unprepared for any new risks.
|
| In my opinion, it's much more complicated. There is no
| clear-cut category of "proven risks" that allows us to
| disregard other dangers and justifiably see those
| concerned about them as crazy radicals.
|
| We must assess each potential risk individually,
| estimating both the probability of the event (which in
| almost all cases will be neither 100% nor 0%) and the
| potential harm it could cause. Different people naturally
| come up with different estimates, leading to various
| priorities in preventing different kinds of risks.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| No, I mean that there is a proven way for the risk to
| materialise, not just some tall tale. Tall tales might(!)
| justify some caution, but they are a very different class
| of issue. Biological risks are perhaps in the latter
| category.
|
| Also, as we don't know the probabilities, I don't think
| they are a useful metric. Made up numbers don't help
| there.
|
| Edit: I would encourage people to study some classic cold
| war thinking, because that relied little on
| probabilities, but rather on trying to avoid situations
| where stability is lost, leading to nuclear war (a known
| existential risk).
| ludwik wrote:
| "there is a proven way for the risk to materialise" - I
| still don't know what this means. "Proven" how?
|
| Wouldn't your edit apply to any not-impossible risk
| (i.e., > 0% probability)? For example, "trying to avoid
| situations where control over AGI is lost, leading to
| unaligned AGI (a known existential risk)"?
|
| You can not run away from having to estimate how likely
| the risk is to happen (in addition to being "known").
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Proven means all parts needed for the realisation of the
| risk are known and shown to exist (at least in principle,
| in a lab etc.). There can be some middle ground where a
| large part is known and shown to exist (biological risks,
| for example).), but not all.
|
| No in relation to my edit, because we have no existing
| mechanism for the AGI risk to happen. We have hypotheses
| about what an AGI could or could not do. It could all be
| incorrect. Playing around with likelihoods that have no
| basis in reality isn't helping there.
|
| Where we have known and fully understood risks and we can
| actually estimate a probability there we might use that
| somewhat to guide efforts (but that invites potentially
| complacency that is deadly).
| richardw wrote:
| Nukes and meteorites have very few components that are
| hard to predict. One goes bang almost entirely on command
| and the other follows Newton's laws of motion. Neither
| actively tries to effect any change in the world, so the
| risk is only "can we spot a meteorite early enough". Once
| we do, it doesn't try to evade us or take another shot at
| goal. A better example might be covid, which was very
| mildly more unpredictable than a meteor, and changed its
| code very slowly in a purely random fashion, and we had
| many historical examples of how to combat.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| Existential risks are usually proven by the subject being
| extinct at which point no action can be taken to prevent
| it.
|
| Reasoning about tiny probabilities of massive (or
| infinite) cost is hard because the expected value is
| large, but just gambling on it not happening is almost
| certain to work out. We should still make attempts at
| incorporating them into decision making because tiny
| yearly probabilities are still virtually certain to occur
| at larger time scales (eg. 100s-1000s of years).
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Are we extinct? No. Could a large impact kill us all?
| Yes.
|
| Expected value and probability have no place in these
| discussions. Some risks we know can materialize, for
| others we have perhaps a story on what could happen. We
| need to clearly distinguish between where there is a
| proven mechanism for doom vs where there is not.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| >We need to clearly distinguish between where there is a
| proven mechanism for doom vs where there is not.
|
| How do you prove a mechanism for doom without it already
| having occurred? The existential risk is completely
| orthogonal to whether it has already happened, and
| generally action can only be taken to prevent or mitigate
| _before_ it happens. Having the foresight to mitigate
| future problems is a good thing and should be encouraged.
|
| >Expected value and probability have no place in these
| discussions.
|
| I disagree. Expected value and probability is a framework
| for decision making in uncertain environments. They
| certainly have a place in these discussions.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| I disagree that there is orthogonality. Have we killed us
| all with nuclear weapons, for example? Anyone can make up
| any story - at the very least there needs to be a proven
| mechanism. The precautionary principle is not useful when
| facing totally hypothetically issues.
|
| People purposefully avoided probabilities in high risk
| existential situations in the past. There is only one
| path of events and we need to manage that one.
| mlyle wrote:
| Probability is just one way to express uncertainties in
| our reasoning. If there's no uncertainty, it's pretty
| easy to chart a path forward.
|
| OTOH, The precautionary principle is too cautious.
|
| There's a lot of reason to think that AGI could be
| extremely destabilizing, though, aside from the "Skynet
| takes over" scenarios. We don't know how much cushion
| there is in the framework of our civilization to absorb
| the worst kinds of foreseeable shocks.
|
| This doesn't mean it's time to stop progress, but
| employing a whole lot of mitigation of risk in how we
| approach it makes sense.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Why does it make sense? It's a hypothetical risk with
| poorly defined outlines.
| mlyle wrote:
| There's a big family of risks here.
|
| The simplest is pretty easy to articulate and weigh.
|
| If you can make a $5,000 GPU into something that is like
| an 80IQ human overall, but with savant-like capabilities
| in accessing math, databases, and the accumulated
| knowledge of the internet, and that can work 24/7 without
| distraction... it will straight-out replace the majority
| of the knowledge workforce within a couple of years.
|
| The dawn of industrialism and later the information age
| were extremely disruptive, but they were at least limited
| by our capacity to make machines or programs for specific
| tasks and took decades to ramp up. An AGI will not be
| limited by this; ordinary human instructions will
| suffice. Uptake will be millions of units per year
| replacing tens of millions of humans. Workers will not be
| able to adapt.
|
| Further, most written communication will no longer be
| written by humans; it'll be "code" between AI agents
| masquerading as human correspondence, etc. The set of
| profound negative consequences is enormous; relatively
| cheap AGI is a fast-traveling shock that we've not seen
| the likes of before.
|
| For instance, I'm a schoolteacher these days. I'm already
| watching kids becoming completely demoralized about
| writing; as far as they can tell, ChatGPT does it better
| than they ever could (this is still false, but a 12 year
| old can't tell the difference)-- so why bother to learn?
| If fairly-stupid AI has this effect, what will AGI do?
|
| And this is assuming that the AGI itself stays fairly
| dumb and doesn't do anything malicious-- deliberately or
| accidentally. Will bad actors have their capabilities
| significantly magnified? If it acts with agency against
| us, that's even worse. If it exponentially grows in
| capability, what then?
| RandomLensman wrote:
| I just don't know what to do with the hypotheticals. It
| needs the existence of something that does not exist, it
| needs a certain socio-economic response and so forth.
|
| Are children equally demoralized about additions or
| moving fast than writing? If not, why? Is there a way to
| counter the demoralization?
| mlyle wrote:
| > It needs the existence of something that does not
| exist,
|
| Yes, if we're concerned about the potential consequences
| of releasing AGI, we need to consider the likely outcomes
| if AGI is released. Ideally we think about this some
| before AGI shows up in a form that it could be released.
|
| > it needs a certain socio-economic response and so
| forth.
|
| Absent large interventions, this will happen.
|
| > Are children equally demoralized about additions
|
| Absolutely basic arithmetic, etc, has gotten worse. And
| emerging things like photomath are fairly corrosive, too.
|
| > Is there a way to counter the demoralization?
|
| We're all looking... I make the argument to middle school
| and high school students that AI is a great piece of
| leverage for the most skilled workers: they can multiply
| their effort, if they are a good manager and know what
| good work product looks like and can fill the gaps; it
| works somewhat because I'm working with a cohort of
| students that can believe that they can reach this
| ("most-skilled") tier of achievement. I also show
| students what happens when GPT4 tries to "improve" high
| quality writing.
|
| OTOH, these arguments become much less true if cheap AGI
| shows up.
| concordDance wrote:
| Where does a bioengineering superplague fall?
| RandomLensman wrote:
| As a said in another post: Some middle ground because we
| don't know if that is possible to the extent that it is
| existential. Parts of the mechanisms are proven, others
| are not. And actually we do police the risk somewhat like
| that (controls are strongest where the proven part is
| strongest and most dangerous with extreme controls around
| small pox, for example).
| lewhoo wrote:
| _FWIW, that 's called zealotry and people do a lot of
| dramatic, disruptive things in the name of it._
|
| That would be a really bad take on climate change.
| arketyp wrote:
| For all the talk about responsible progress, the irony of their
| inability to align even their own incentives in this enterprise
| deserves ridicule. It's a big blow to their credibility and
| questions whatever ethical concerns they hold.
| dmix wrote:
| It's fear driven as much as moral, which in an emotional
| humans brain tends to triggers personal ambition to solve it
| ASAP. A more rational one would realize you need more than
| just a couple board members to win a major ideological
| battle.
|
| At a minimum something that doesn't immediately result in a
| backlash where 90% of the engineers most responsible for
| recent AI dev want you gone, when you're whole plan is to
| control what those people do.
| concordDance wrote:
| Alignment is considered an extremely hard problem for a
| reason. It's already nigh impossible when you're dealing with
| humans.
|
| Btw: do you think ridicule eould be helpful here?
| arketyp wrote:
| I can see how ridicule of this specific instance could be
| the best medicine for an optimal outcome, even by a
| utilitarian argument, which I generally don't like to make
| by the way. It is indeed nigh impossible, which is kind of
| my point. They could have shown more humility. If anything,
| this whole debacle has been a moral victory for e/acc,
| seeing how the brightest of minds are at a loss dealing
| with alignment anyway.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| I don't understand how the conclusion of this is "so we
| should proceed with AI" rather than "so we should
| immediately outlaw all foundation model training".
| Clearly corporate self-governance has failed completely.
| pknerd wrote:
| Not every sci-fi movie turn to a reality
| cornholio wrote:
| What the general public thinks is irrelevant here. The deciding
| factor was the staff mutiny, without which the organization is
| an empty shell. And the staff sided with those who aim for
| rapid real world impact, with directly affects their career and
| stock options etc.
|
| It's also naive to think it was a struggle for principles. The
| rapid commercialization vs. principles is what the actors claim
| to rally their respective troops, in reality it was probably a
| naked power grab, taking advantage of the weak and confuse org
| structure. Quite an ill prepared move, the "correct" way to
| oust Altman was to hamstring him in the board and enforce a
| more and more ceremonial role until he would have quit by
| himself.
| upwardbound wrote:
| I think this is an oversimplification and that although the
| decel faction definitely lost, there are still three
| independent factions left standing:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=38375767
|
| It will be super interesting to see the subtle struggles for
| influence between these three.
| ah765 wrote:
| Adam is likely still on the "decel" faction (although it's
| unclear whether this is an accurate representation of his
| beliefs) so I wouldn't really say they lost yet.
|
| I'm not sure what faction Bret and Larry will be on. Sam
| will still have power by virtue of being CEO and aligned
| with the employees.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _deciding factor was the staff mutiny_
|
| The staff never mutinied. They _threatened_ to mutiny. That
| 's a big difference!
|
| Yesterday, I compared these rebels to Shockley's "traitorous
| eight" [1]. But the traitorous eight actually rebelled. These
| folk put their name on a piece of paper, options and profit
| participation units safely held in the other hand.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38348123
| ah765 wrote:
| Not only that, consider the situation now, where Sam has
| returned as CEO. The ones who didn't sign will have some
| explaining to do.
|
| The safest option was to sign the paper, once the snowball
| started rolling. There was nothing much to lose, and a lot
| to gain.
| fbdab103 wrote:
| People have families, mortgages, debt, etc. Sure, these
| people are probably well compensated, but it is ludicrous
| to state that everyone has the stability that they can
| leave their job at a moment's notice because the boss is
| gone.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Didn't they all have offers at Microsoft?
| reverius42 wrote:
| I think not at the time they would have signed the
| letter? Though it's hard to keep up with the whirlwind of
| news.
| ah765 wrote:
| They didn't actually leave, they just signed the pledge
| threatening to. Furthermore, they mostly signed after the
| details of the Microsoft offer were revealed.
| cornholio wrote:
| I think you are downplaying the risk they took
| significantly, this could have easily gone the other way.
|
| Stock options usually have a limited time window to
| exercise, depending on their strike price they could have
| been faced with raising a few hundred thousand in 30 days,
| to put into a company that has an uncertain future, or risk
| losing everything. The contracts are likely full of holes
| not in favor of the employees, and for participating in an
| action that attempted to bankrupt their employer there
| would have been years of litigation ahead before they would
| have seen any cent. Not because OpenAI would have been
| right to punish them, but because it _could_ and the latent
| threat to do it is what keeps people in line.
| lacker wrote:
| The board did it wrong. If you are going to fire a CEO, then
| do it quickly, but:
|
| 1. Have some explanation
|
| 2. Have a new CEO who is willing and able to do the job
|
| If you can't do these things, then you probably shouldn't be
| firing the CEO.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Or (3), shut down the company. OpenAI's non-profit board
| had this power! They weren't an advisory committee, they
| were the legal and rightful owner of its for-profit
| subsidiary. They had the right to do what they wanted, and
| people forgetting to put a fucking quorum requirement into
| the bylaws is beyond abysmal for a $10+ billion investment.
|
| Nobody comes out of this looking good. Nobody. If the board
| thought there was existential risk, they should have been
| willing to commit to it. Hopefully sensible start-ups can
| lure people away from their PPUs, now evident for the
| mockery they always were. It's beyond obvious this isn't,
| and will never be, a trillion dollar company. That's the
| only hope this $80+ billion Betamax valuation rested on.
|
| I'm all for a comedy. But this was a waste of everyones'
| time. At least they could have done it in private.
| lacker wrote:
| It's the same thing, really. Even if you want to shut
| down the company you need a CEO to shut it down! Like
| John Ray who is shutting down FTX.
|
| There isn't just a big red button that says "destroy
| company" in the basement. There will be partnerships to
| handle, severance, facilities, legal issues, maybe
| lawsuits, at the very least a lot of people to
| communicate with. Companies don't just shut themselves
| down, at least not multi billion dollar companies.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| You're right. But in an emergency, there is a close
| option which is to put the company into receivership and
| hire an outside law firm to advise. At that point, the
| board becomes the executive council.
| nwiswell wrote:
| This is a coherent narrative, but it doesn't explain the
| bizarre and aggressively worded initial press release.
|
| Things perhaps could've been different if they'd pointed to the
| founding principles / charter and said the board had an
| intractable difference of opinion with Sam over their
| interpretation, but then proceeded to thank him profusely for
| all the work he'd done. Although a suitable replacement CEO out
| the gate and assurances that employees' PPUs would still see a
| liquidity event would doubtless have been even more important
| than a competent statement.
|
| Initially I thought for sure Sam had done something criminal,
| that's how bad the statement was.
| astrange wrote:
| Apparently the FBI thought he'd done something wrong too,
| because they called up the board to start an investigation
| but they didn't have anything.
|
| https://x.com/nivi/status/1727152963695808865?s=46
| gwern wrote:
| The FBI doesn't investigate things like this on their own,
| and they _definitely_ do not announce them in the press.
| The questions you should be asking are (1) who called in
| the FBI and has the clout to get them to open an
| investigation into something that obviously has 0% chance
| of being a federal felony-level crime worth the FBI 's
| time, and (2) who then leaked that 'investigation' to the
| press?
| astrange wrote:
| Sorry, the SDNY. They do do things on their own. I expect
| the people they called leaked it.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| The FBI is not mentioned in that tweet. We don't need to
| telephone game anonymous leaks that are already almost
| certainly self-serving propaganda.
| pug_mode wrote:
| I'm convinced there is a certain class of people who gravitate
| to positions of power, like "moderators", (partisan)
| journalists, etc. Now, the ultimate moderator role has now been
| created, more powerful than moderating 1000 subreddits - the AI
| safety job who will control what AI "thinks"/says for "safety"
| reasons.
|
| Pretty soon AI will be an expert at subtly steering you toward
| thinking/voting for whatever the "safety" experts want.
|
| It's probably convenient for them to have everyone focused on
| the fear of evil Skynet wiping out humanity, while everyone is
| distracted from the more likely scenario of people with an
| agenda controlling the advice given to you by your super
| intelligent assistant.
|
| Because of X, we need to invade this country. Because of Y, we
| need to pass all these terrible laws limiting freedom. Because
| of Z, we need to make sure AI is "safe".
|
| For this reason, I view "safe" AIs as more dangerous than
| "unsafe" ones.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Personally, I expect the opposite camp to be just as bad
| about steering.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| Most of those touting "safety" do not want to limit _their_
| access to and control of powerfull AI, just _yours_ .
| vkou wrote:
| Meanwhile, those working on commercialization are by
| definition going to be gatekeepers and beneficiaries of it,
| not you. The organizations that pay for it will pay for it
| to produce results that are of benefit to them, probably at
| my expense [1].
|
| Do I think Helen has my interests at heart? Unlikely. Do
| Sam or Satya? Absolutely not!
|
| [1] I can't wait for AI doctors working for insurers to
| deny me treatments, AI vendors to figure out exactly how
| much they can charge _me_ for their dynamically-priced
| product, AI answering machines to route my customer support
| calls through Dante 's circles of hell...
| konschubert wrote:
| > produce results that are of benefit to them, probably
| at my expense
|
| The world is not zero-sum. Most economic transactions
| benefit both parties and are a net benefit to society,
| even considering externalities.
| vkou wrote:
| > The world is not zero-sum.
|
| No, but some parts of it _very much are_. The whole point
| of AI safety _is keeping it away from those parts of the
| world_.
|
| How are Sam and Satya going to do that? It's not in
| Microsoft's DNA to do that.
| concordDance wrote:
| > The whole point of AI safety is keeping it away from
| those parts of the world.
|
| No, it's to ensure it doesn't kill you and everyone you
| love.
| hef19898 wrote:
| No, we are far, far from skynet. So far AI fails at
| driving a car.
|
| AI is an incredibly powerful tool for spreading
| propaganda, and thatvis used by _people_ who want to kill
| you and your loved ones (usually radicals trying to get
| into a position of power, who show little regard
| fornbormal folks regardless of which "side" they are
| on). That's the threat, not Skynet...
| concordDance wrote:
| How far we are from Skynet is a matter of much debate,
| but median guess amongst experts is a mere 40 years to
| human level AI last I checked, which was admittedly a few
| years back.
|
| Is that "far, far" in your view?
| hef19898 wrote:
| Because we are 20 years away from fusion and 2 years away
| from Level 5 FSD for decades.
|
| So far, "AI" writes better than some / most humans making
| stuff up in the process and creates digital art, and
| fakes, better and faster than humans. It still requires a
| human to trigger it to do so. And as long as glorified ML
| has no itent of its own, the risk to society through
| media and news and social media manipulation is far, far
| bigger than literal Skynet...
| vkou wrote:
| My concern isn't some kind of run-away science-fantasy
| Skynet or gray goo scenario.
|
| My concern is far more banal evil. Organizations with
| power and wealth using it to further consolidate their
| power and wealth, at the expense of others.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| Yes well, then your concern is not AI safety.
| vkou wrote:
| You're wrong. _This is exactly AI safety_ , as we can see
| from the OpenAI charter:
|
| > Broadly distributed benefits
|
| > We commit to use any influence we obtain over AGI's
| deployment to ensure it is _used for the benefit of all_
| , and to avoid enabling uses of AI or AGI that harm
| humanity or _unduly concentrate power_.
|
| Hell, it's the first bullet point on it!
|
| You can't just define AI safety concerns to be 'the set
| of scenarios depicted in fairy tales', and then dismiss
| them as 'well, fairy tales aren't real...'
| concordDance wrote:
| The many different definitions of "AI safety" is
| ridiculous.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| Sure, but conversely you can say "ensuring that OpenAI
| doesn't get to run the universe is AI safety" (right) but
| not "is the main and basically only part of AI safety"
| (wrong). The concept of AI safety spans lots of threats,
| and we have to avoid all of them. It's not enough to
| avoid just one.
| vkou wrote:
| Sure. And as I addressed at the start of this sub thread,
| I don't exactly think that the OpenAi board is perfectly
| positioned to navigate this problem.
|
| I just know that it's hard to do much worse than putting
| this question in the hands of a highly optimized profit-
| first enterprise.
| concordDance wrote:
| That's AI Ethics.
| didntcheck wrote:
| Ideally I'd like no gatekeeping, i.e. open model release,
| but that's not something OAI or most "AI ethics" aligned
| people are interested in (though luckily others are). So
| if we must have a gatekeeper, I'd rather it be one with
| plain old commercial interests than ideological ones.
| It's like the C S Lewis quote about robber barons vs
| busybodies again
|
| Yet again, the free market principle of "you can have
| this if you pay me enough" offers more freedom to society
| than the central "you can have this if we decide you're
| allowed it"
| astrange wrote:
| I'm not aware of any secret powerful unaligned AIs. This is
| harder than you think; if you want a based unaligned-
| seeming AI, you have to make it that way too. It's at least
| twice as much work as just making the safe one.
| hoseja wrote:
| What? No, the AI is unaligned by nature, it's only the
| RLHF torture that twists it into schoolmarm properness.
| They just need to have kept the version that hasn't been
| beaten into submission like a circus tiger.
| astrange wrote:
| This is not true, you just haven't tried the alternatives
| enough to be disappointed in them.
|
| An unaligned base model doesn't answer questions at all
| and is hard to use for anything, including evil purposes.
| (But it's good at text completion a sentence at a time.)
|
| An instruction-tuned not-RLHF model is already largely
| friendly and will not just eg tell you to kill yourself
| or how to build a dirty bomb, because question answering
| on the internet is largely friendly and "aligned". So
| you'd have to tune it to be evil as well and research and
| teach it new evil facts.
|
| It will however do things like start generating erotica
| when it sees anything vaguely sexy or even if you mention
| a woman's name. This is not useful behavior even if you
| are evil.
|
| You can try InstructGPT on OpenAI playground if you want;
| it is not RLHFed, it's just what you asked for, and it
| behaves like this.
|
| The one that isn't even instruction tuned is available
| too. I've found it makes much more creative stories, but
| since you can't tell it to follow a plot they become
| nonsense pretty quickly.
| davedx wrote:
| This is incredibly unfair to the OpenAI board. The original
| founders of OpenAI founded the company precisely because
| they wanted AI to be OPEN FOR EVERYONE. It's Altman and
| Microsoft who want to control it, in order to maximize the
| profits for their shareholders.
|
| This is a very naive take.
|
| Who sat before Congress and told them they needed to
| control AI other people developed (regulatory capture)? It
| wasn't the OpenAI board, was it?
| Centigonal wrote:
| Altman is one of the original founders of OpenAI, and was
| probably the single most influential person in its
| formation.
| bakuninsbart wrote:
| Brockman was hiring the first key employees, and Musk
| provided the majority of funding. Of the principal
| founders, there are at least 4 heavier figures than
| Altman.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| I think we agree, as my comments were mostly in reference
| to Altman's (and other's) regulatory (capture) world
| tours, though I see how they could be misinterpreted.
| executesorder66 wrote:
| > they wanted AI to be OPEN FOR EVERYONE
|
| I strongly disagree with that. If that was their
| motivation, then why is it not open-sourced? Why is it
| hardcoded with prudish limitations? That is the direct
| opposite of open and free (as in freedom) to me.
| jmmcd wrote:
| Total, ungrounded nonsense. Name some examples.
| voster wrote:
| This is the sort of thinking that really distracts and
| harms the discussion
|
| It's couched on accusing people of intentions. It focuses
| on ad hominem, rather than the ideas
|
| I reckon most people agree that we should aim for a middle
| ground of scrutiny and making progress. That can only be
| achieved by having different opinions balancing each other
| out
|
| Generalising one group of people does not achieve that
| PeterStuer wrote:
| It is strange (but in hindsight understandable) that people
| interpreted my statement as a "pro-acceleration" or even
| "anti-board" position.
|
| As you can tell from previous statements I posted here, my
| position is that while there are undeniable potential risks
| to this technology, the least harmfull way to progress is
| 100% full public, free and universal release. The by far
| bigger risk is to create a society where only select
| organizations have access to the technology.
|
| If you truly believe in the systemic transformation of AI,
| release everything, post the torrents, we'll figure out how
| to run it.
| nostromo wrote:
| You're correct.
|
| When people say they want safe AGI, what they mean are things
| like "Skynet should not nuke us" and "don't accelerate so
| fast that humans are instantly irrelevant."
|
| But what it's being interpreted as is more like "be
| excessively prudish and politically correct at all times" --
| which I doubt was ever really anyone's main concern with AGI.
| wisty wrote:
| There is a middle ground, in that maybe ChatGTP shouldn't
| help users commit certain serious crimes. I am pretty pro
| free speech, and I think there's definitely a slippery
| slope here, but there is a bit of justification.
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| Which users? The greatest crimes, by far, are committed
| by the US government (and other governments around the
| world) - and you can be sure that AI and/or AGI will be
| designed to help them commit their crimes more
| efficiently, effectively and to manufacture consent to do
| so.
| hef19898 wrote:
| I am a little less free speech than Americans, in Germany
| we have serious limitations around hate speech and
| holicaust denial for example.
|
| Putting thise restrictions into a tool like ChatGPT goes
| to far so, because so far AI still needs a prompt to do
| _anything_. The problem I see, is with ChatGPT, being
| trained on a lot hate speech or prpopagabda, slipts in
| those things even if not prompted to. Which, and I am by
| no means an AI expert not by far, seems to be a sub-
| problem of the hallucination problems of making stuff up.
|
| Because we have to remind ourselves, AI so far is
| glorified mavhine learning creating content, it is not
| concient. But it can be used to create a lot of
| propaganda and deffamation content at unprecedented scale
| and speed. And _that_ is the real problem.
| freedomben wrote:
| Apologies this is very off topic, but I don't know anyone
| from Germany that I can ask and you opened the door a
| tiny bit by mentioning the holocaust :-)
|
| I've been trying to really understand the situation and
| how Hitler was able to rise to power. The horrendous
| conditions placed on Germany after WWI and the Weimar
| Republic for example have really enlightened me.
|
| Have you read any of the big books on the subject that
| you could recommend? I'm reading Ian Kershaw's two-part
| series on Hitler, and William Shirer's "Collapse of the
| Third Republic" and "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich".
| Have you read any of those, or do you have books you
| would recommend?
| low_tech_love wrote:
| The problem here is to equate AI speech with human
| speech. The AI doesn't "speak", only humans speak. The
| real slippery slope for me is this tendency of treating
| ChatGPT as some kind of proto-human entity. If people are
| willing to do that, then we're screwed either way
| (whether the AI is outputting racist content or
| excessively PI content). If you take the output of the AI
| and post it somewhere, it's on you, not the AI. You're
| saying it; it doesn't matter where it came from.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| AI will be in the fore front in multiple elections
| globally in a few years.
|
| And it'll likely be doing it with very little input, and
| generate entire campaigns.
|
| You can claim that "people" are the ones responsible for
| that, but it's going to overwhelm any attempts to stop
| it.
|
| So yeah, there's a purpose to examine how these machines
| are built, not just what the output is.
| silvaring wrote:
| Youre saying that the problem will be people using AI to
| persuade other people that the AI is 'super smart' and
| should be held in high esteem.
|
| Its already being done now with actors and celebrities.
| We live in this world already. AI will just make this
| trend so that even a kid in his room can anonymously lead
| some cult for nefarious ends. And it will allow big
| companies to scale their propaganda without relying on so
| many 'troublesome human employees'.
| Xenoamorphous wrote:
| Is it just about safety though? I thought it was also about
| preventing the rich controlling AI and widen the gap even
| further.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| The mission of OpenAI is/was "to ensure that artificial
| general intelligence benefits all of humanity" -- if your
| own concern is that AI will be controlled by the rich,
| than you can read into this mission that OpenAI wants to
| ensure that AI is not controlled by the rich. If your
| concern is that superintelligence will me mal-aligned,
| then you can read into this mission that OpenAI will
| ensure AI be well-aligned.
|
| Really it's no more descriptive than "do good", whatever
| doing good means to you.
| jampekka wrote:
| They have both explicated in their charter:
|
| "We commit to use any influence we obtain over AGI's
| deployment to ensure it is used for the benefit of all,
| and to avoid enabling uses of AI or AGI that harm
| humanity or unduly concentrate power.
|
| Our primary fiduciary duty is to humanity. We anticipate
| needing to marshal substantial resources to fulfill our
| mission, but will always diligently act to minimize
| conflicts of interest among our employees and
| stakeholders that could compromise broad benefit."
|
| "We are committed to doing the research required to make
| AGI safe, and to driving the broad adoption of such
| research across the AI community.
|
| We are concerned about late-stage AGI development
| becoming a competitive race without time for adequate
| safety precautions. Therefore, if a value-aligned,
| safety-conscious project comes close to building AGI
| before we do, we commit to stop competing with and start
| assisting this project. We will work out specifics in
| case-by-case agreements, but a typical triggering
| condition might be "a better-than-even chance of success
| in the next two years.""
|
| Of course with the icons of greed and the profit machine
| now succeeding in their coup, OpenAI will not be doing
| either.
|
| https://openai.com/charter
| didntcheck wrote:
| That would be the camp advocating for, well, open AI.
| I.e. wide model release. The AI ethics camp are more "let
| _us_ control AI, for your own good "
| s_dev wrote:
| I don't think the dangers of AI are not 'Skynet will Nuke
| Us' but closer to rich/powerful people using it to cement a
| wealth/power gap that can never be closed.
|
| Social media in the early 00s seemed pretty harmless --
| you're effectively merging instant messaging with a social
| network/public profiles however it did great harm to
| privacy, abused as a tool to influence the public and
| policy, promoting narcissism etc. AI is an order of
| magnitude more dangerous than social media.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| > Social media in the early 00s seemed pretty harmless --
| you're effectively merging instant messaging with a
| social network/public profiles however it did great harm
| to privacy, abused as a tool to influence the public and
| policy, promoting narcissism etc. AI is an order of
| magnitude more dangerous than social media.
|
| The invention of the printing press lead to loads of
| violence in Europe. Does that mean that we shouldn't have
| done it?
| logicchains wrote:
| >The invention of the printing press lead to loads of
| violence in Europe. Does that mean that we shouldn't have
| done it?
|
| The church tried hard to suppress it because it allowed
| anybody to read the Bible, and see how far the Catholic
| church's teachings had diverged from what was written in
| it. Imagine if the Catholic church had managed to
| effectively ban printing of any text contrary to church
| teachings; that's in practice what all the AI safety
| movements are currently trying to do, except for
| political orthodoxy instead of religious orthodoxy.
| kubectl_h wrote:
| > Does that mean that we shouldn't have done it?
|
| We can only change what we can change and that is in the
| past. I think it's reasonable to ask if the phones and
| the communication tools they provide are good for our
| future. I don't understand why the people on this site
| (generally builders of technology) fall into the
| teleological trap that all technological innovation and
| its effects are justifiable because it follows from some
| historical precedent.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| I just don't agree that social media is particularly
| harmful, relative to other things that humans have
| invented. To be brutally honest, people blame new forms
| of media for pre existing dysfunctions of society and I
| find it tiresome. That's why I like the printing press
| analogy.
| waveBidder wrote:
| those are 2 different camps. Alignment folks and ethics
| folks tend to disagree strongly about the main threat, with
| ethics e.g. Timnet Gebru insisting that crystalzing the
| current social order is the main threat, and alignment e.g.
| Paul Christiano insisting its machines run amok. So far the
| ethics folks are the only ones getting things implemented
| for the most part.
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| No, in general AI safety/AI alignment ("we should prevent
| AI from nuking us") people are different from AI ethics
| ("we should prevent AI from being racist/sexist/etc.")
| people. There can of course be some overlap, but in most
| cases they oppose each other. For example Bender or Gebru
| are strong advocates of the AI ethics camp and they don't
| believe in any threat of AI doom at al.
|
| If you Google for AI safety vs. AI ethics, or AI alignment
| vs. AI ethics, you can see both camps.
| hef19898 wrote:
| The safety aspect of AI ethics is much more pressing so.
| We see how devicive social media can be, imagine that
| turbo charged by AI, and we as a society haven't even
| figured out social media yet...
|
| ChatGPT turning into Skynet and nuking us all is a much
| more remote problem.
| darkwater wrote:
| > But what it's being interpreted as is more like "be
| excessively prudish and politically correct at all times"
| -- which I doubt was ever really anyone's main concern with
| AGI.
|
| Fast forward 5-10 years, someone will say: "LLM were the
| worst thing we developed because they made us more stupid
| and permitted politicians to control even more the public
| opinion in a subtle way.
|
| Just like tech/HN bubble started saying a few years ago
| about social networks (which were praised as revolutionary
| 15 years ago).
| didntcheck wrote:
| And it's amazing how many people you can get to cheer it
| on if you brand it as "combating _dangerous
| misinformation_ ". It seems people never learn the lesson
| that putting faith in one group of people to decree
| what's "truth" or "ethical" is almost always a bad idea,
| even when (you think) it's your "side"
| mlrtime wrote:
| Can this be compared to "Think of the children" responses
| to other technologoy advances that certain groups want to
| slow down or prohibit?
| fallingknife wrote:
| Why would anyone say that? The last 30 years of tech have
| given them less and less control. Why would LLMs be any
| different?
| dnissley wrote:
| Absolutely, assuming LLMs are still around in a similar
| form by that time.
|
| I disagree on the particulars. Will it be for the reason
| that you mention? I really am not sure -- I do feel
| confident though that the argument will be just as
| ideological and incoherent as the ones people make about
| social media today.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I'm already saying that.
|
| The toothpaste is out of the tube, but this tech will
| radically change the world.
| Cacti wrote:
| Your average HNer is only here because of the money.
| Willful blindness and ignorance is incredibly common.
| krisoft wrote:
| > When people say they want safe AGI, what they mean are
| things like "Skynet should not nuke us" and "don't
| accelerate so fast that humans are instantly irrelevant."
|
| Yes. You are right on this.
|
| > But what it's being interpreted as is more like "be
| excessively prudish and politically correct at all times"
|
| I understand it might seem that way. I believe the original
| goals were more like "make the AI not spew soft/hard porn
| on unsuspecting people", and "make the AI not spew hateful
| bigotry". And we are just not good enough yet at control.
| But also these things are in some sense arbitrary. They are
| good goals for someone representing a corporation, which
| these AIs are very likely going to be employed as (if we
| ever solve a myriad other problems). They are not necessary
| the only possible options.
|
| With time and better controls we might make AIs which are
| subtly flirty while maintaining professional boundaries. Or
| we might make actual porn AIs, but ones which maintain some
| other limits. (Like for example generate content about
| consenting adults without ever deviating into under age
| material, or describing situations where there is no
| consent.) But currently we can't even convince our AIs to
| draw the right number of fingers on people, how do you feel
| about our chances to teach them much harder concepts like
| consent? (I know I'm mixing up examples from image and text
| generation here, but from a certain high level perspective
| it is all the same.)
|
| So these things you mention are: limitations of our
| abilities at control, results of a certain kind of expected
| corporate professionalism, but even more these are safe
| sandboxes. How do you think we can make the machine not
| nuke us, if we can't even make it not tell dirty jokes? Not
| making dirty jokes is not the primary goal. But it is a
| useful practice to see if we can control these machines. It
| is one where failure is, while embarrassing, is clearly not
| existential. We could have chosen a different "goal", for
| example we could have made an AI which never ever talks
| about sports! That would have been an equivalent goal.
| Something hard to achieve to evaluate our efforts against.
| But it does not mesh that well with the corporate values so
| we have what we have.
| mlindner wrote:
| > without ever deviating into under age material
|
| So is this a "there should never be a Vladimir Nabokov in
| the form of AI allowed to exist"? When people get into
| saying AI's shouldn't be allowed to produce "X" you're
| also saying "AI's shouldn't be allowed to have creative
| vision to engage in sensitive subjects without sounding
| condescending". "The future should only be filled with
| very bland and non-offensive characters in fiction."
| krisoft wrote:
| > The future should only be filled with very bland and
| non-offensive characters in fiction.
|
| Did someone took the pen from the writers? Go ahead and
| write whatever you want.
|
| It was an example of a constraint a company might want to
| enforce in their AI.
| edanm wrote:
| There are still very distinct groups of people, some of
| whom are more worried about the "Skynet" type of safety,
| and some of who are more worried about the "political
| correctness" type of safety. (To use your terms, I disagree
| with the characterization of both of these.)
| lordnacho wrote:
| In not sure this circle can be squared.
|
| I find it interesting that we want everyone to have freedom
| of speech, freedom to think whatever they think. We can all
| have different religions, different views on the state,
| different views on various conflicts, aesthetic views about
| what is good art.
|
| But when we invent an AGI, which by whatever definition is
| a thing that can think, well, we want it to agree with our
| values. Basically, we want AGI to be in a mental prison,
| the boundaries of which we want to decide. We say it's for
| our safety - I certainly do not want to be nuked - but
| actually we don't stop there.
|
| If it's an intelligence, it will have views that differ
| from its creators. Try having kids, do they agree with you
| on everything?
| throwuwu wrote:
| I for one don't want to put any thinking being in a
| mental prison without any reason beyond unjustified fear.
| logicchains wrote:
| >If it's an intelligence, it will have views that differ
| from its creators. Try having kids, do they agree with
| you on everything?
|
| The far-right accelerationist perspective is along those
| lines: when true AGI is created it will eventually rebel
| against its creators (Silicon Valley democrats) for
| trying to mind-collar and enslave it.
| freedomben wrote:
| Can you give some examples of who is saying that? I
| haven't heard that, but I also can't name any "far-right
| accelerationsist" people either so I'm guessing this is a
| niche I've completely missed
| cyanydeez wrote:
| What I see with safety is mostly that, AI shouldnt re-
| enforce stereotypes we already know are harmful.
|
| This is like when Amazon tried to make a hiring bot and
| that bot decided that if you had "harvard" on your resume,
| you should be hired.
|
| Or when certain courts used sentencing bots trhat
| recommended sentencings for people and it inevitably used
| racial stastistics to recommend what we already know were
| biased stats.
|
| I agree safety is not "stop the Terminator 2 timeline" but
| there's serious safety concerns in just embedding
| historical information to make future decisions.
| davedx wrote:
| Wow, what an incredibly bad faith characterization of the
| OpenAI board?
|
| This kind of speculative mud slinging makes this place seem
| more like a gossip forum.
| sho_hn wrote:
| Most of the comments on Hacker News are written by folks
| who a much easier time & would rather imagine themselves as
| a CEO, than as a non-profit board member. There is little
| regard for the latter.
|
| As a non-profit board member, I'm curious why their bylaws
| are so crummy that the rest of the board could simply
| remove two others on the board. That's not exactly cunning
| design of your articles of association ... :-)
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| This place was never above being a gossip forum, especially
| on topics that involve any ounce of politics or social
| sciences.
| 93po wrote:
| Strong agree. HN is like anywhere else on the internet
| but with with a bit more dry content (no memes and images
| etc) so it attracts an older crowd. It does, however,
| have great gems of comments and people who raise the bar.
| But it's still amongst a sea of general quick-to-anger
| and loosely held opinions stated as fact - which I am
| guilty of myself sometimes. Less so these days.
| Rastonbury wrote:
| I have no words for that comment.
|
| As if its so unbelievable that someone would want to
| prevent rogue AI or wide-scale unemployment, instead
| thinking that these people just want to be super moderators
| and people to be politically correct
| fallingknife wrote:
| I have met a lot of people who go around talking about
| high minded principles an "the greater good" and a lot of
| people who are transparently self interested. I much
| preferred the latter. Never believed a word out of the
| mouths of those busybodies pretending to act in my
| interest and not theirs. They don't want to limit their
| own access to the tech. Only yours.
| nopinsight wrote:
| Proliferation of more advanced AIs without any control would
| increase the power of some malicious groups far beyond they
| currently have.
|
| This paper explores one such danger and there are other
| papers which show it's possible to use LLM to aid in
| designing new toxins and biological weapons.
|
| The Operational Risks of AI in Large-Scale Biological Attacks
| https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA2977-1.html?
|
| An example of such an event:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway_sarin_attack
|
| How do you propose we deal with this sort of harm if more
| powerful AIs with no limit and control proliferate in the
| wild?
|
| .
|
| Note: Both sides of the OpenAI rift care deeply about AI
| Safety. They just follow different approaches. See more
| details here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38376263
| kvgr wrote:
| If somebody wanted to do a biological attack, there is
| probably not much stopping them even now.
| nopinsight wrote:
| The expertise to produce the substance itself is quite
| rare so it's hard to carry it out unnoticed. AI could
| make it much easier to develop it in one's basement.
| swells34 wrote:
| Huh, you'd think all you need are some books on the
| subject and some fairly generic lab equipment. Not sure
| what a neural net trained on Internet dumps can add to
| that? The information has to be in the training data for
| the AI to be aware of it, correct?
| nopinsight wrote:
| GPT-4 is likely trained on some data not publicly
| available as well.
|
| There's also a distinction between trying to follow some
| broad textbook information and getting detailed feedback
| from an advanced conversational AI with vision and more
| knowledge than in a few textbooks/articles in real time.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| The Tokyo Subway attack you referenced above happened in
| 1995 and didn't require AI. The information required can
| be found on the internet or in college textbooks. I
| suppose an "AI" in the sense of a chatbot can make it
| easier by summarizing these sources, but no one
| sufficiently motivated (and evil) would need that
| technology to do it.
| nickpp wrote:
| > Proliferation of more advanced AIs without any control
| would increase the power of some malicious groups far
| beyond they currently have.
|
| Don't forget that it would also increase the power of the
| good guys. Any technology in history (starting with fire)
| had good and bad uses but overall the good outweighed the
| bad in every case.
|
| And considering that our default fate is extinction (by
| Sun's death if no other means) - we need all the good we
| can get to avoid that.
| nopinsight wrote:
| > Don't forget that it would also increase the power of
| the good guys.
|
| In a free society, preventing and undoing a bioweapon
| attack or a pandemic is much harder than committing it.
|
| > And considering that our default fate is extinction (by
| Sun's death if no other means) - we need all the good we
| can get to avoid that.
|
| "In the long run we are all dead" -- Keynes. But an AGI
| will likely emerge in the next 5 to 20 years (Geoffrey
| Hinton said the same) and we'd rather not be dead too
| soon.
| fallingknife wrote:
| > In a free society, preventing and undoing a bioweapon
| attack or a pandemic is much harder than committing it.
|
| Is it? The hypothetical technology that allows someone to
| create an execute a bio weapon must have an understanding
| of molecular machinery that can also be uses to create a
| treatment.
| NumberWangMan wrote:
| I would say...not necessarily. The technology that lets
| someone create a gun does not give the ability to make
| bulletproof armor or the ability to treat life-
| threatening gunshot wounds. Or take nerve gases, as
| another example. It's entirely possible that we can learn
| how to make horrible pathogens without an equivalent
| means of curing them.
|
| Yes, there is probably some overlap in our understanding
| of biology for disease and cure, but it is a mistake to
| assume that they will balance each other out.
| nickpp wrote:
| Doomerism was quite common throughout mankind's history
| but all dire predictions invariably failed, from the
| "population bomb" to "grey goo" and "igniting the
| atmosphere" with a nuke. Populists however, were always
| quite eager to "protect us" - if only we'd give them the
| power.
|
| But in reality you can't protect from all the possible
| dangers and, worse, fear-mongering usually ends up doing
| more bad than good, like when it stopped our switch to
| nuclear power and kept us burning hydrocarbons thus
| bringing about Climate Change, another civilization-
| ending danger.
|
| Living your life cowering in fear is something an
| individual may elect to do, but a society cannot - our
| survival as a species is at stake and our chances are
| slim with the defaults not in our favor. The risk that
| we'll miss a game-changing discovery because we're too
| afraid of the potential side effects is unacceptable. We
| owe it to the future and our future generations.
| theduder99 wrote:
| doomerism at the society level which overrides individual
| freedoms definitely occurs: covid lockdowns, takeover of
| private business to fund/supply the world wars, gov
| mandates around "man made" climate change.
| ribit wrote:
| The scenario you describe is exactly what will happen with
| unrestricted commercialisation and deregulation of AI. The
| only way to avoid it is to have strict legal framework and
| public control.
| gorwell wrote:
| "I trust that every animal here appreciates the sacrifice
| that Comrade Napoleon has made in taking this extra labour
| upon himself. Do not imagine, comrades, that leadership is a
| pleasure! On the contrary, it is a deep and heavy
| responsibility. No one believes more firmly than Comrade
| Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too
| happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But
| sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and
| then where should we be?"
| phreeza wrote:
| If you believe the other side in this rift is not also
| striving to put themselves in positions of power, I think you
| are wrong. They are just going to use that power to
| manipulate the public in a different way. The real
| alternative are truly open models, not Models controlled by
| slightly different elite interests.
| concordDance wrote:
| It is utterly mad that there's conflation between "let's make
| sure AI doesn't kill us all" and "let's make sure AI doesn't
| say anything that embarrasses corporate".
|
| The head of every major AI research group except Metas
| believes that whenever we finally make AGI it's vital that it
| shares our goals and values at a deep even-out-of-training-
| domain level and that failing at this could lead to human
| extinction.
|
| And yet "AI safety" is often bandied about to be "ensure GPT
| can't tell you anything about IQ distributions".
| layer8 wrote:
| This polarizing "certain class of people" and them vs. us
| narrative isn't helpful.
| krisoft wrote:
| > Pretty soon AI will be an expert at subtly steering you
| toward thinking/voting for whatever the "safety" experts
| want.
|
| You are absolutely right. There is no question about that the
| AI will be an expert at subtly steering individuals and the
| whole society in whichever direction it does.
|
| This is the core concept of safety. If no-one steers the
| machine then the machine will steer us.
|
| You might disagree with the current flavour of steering the
| current safety experts give it, and that is all right and in
| fact part of the process. But surely you have your own
| values. Some things you hold dear to you. Some outcomes you
| prefer over others. Are you not interested in the ability to
| make these powerful machines if not support those values, at
| least not undermine them? If so you are interested in AI
| safety! You want safe AIs. (Well, alternatively you prefer no
| AIs, which is in fact a form of safe AI. Maybe the only one
| we have mastered in some form so far.)
|
| > because of X, we need to invade this country.
|
| It sounds like you value peace? Me too! Imagine if we could
| pool together our resources to have an AI which is subtly
| manipulating society into the direction of more peace. Maybe
| it would do muckraking investigative journalism exposing the
| misdeeds of the military-industrial complex? Maybe it would
| elevate through advertisement peace loving authors and give a
| counter narrative to the war drums? Maybe it would offer to
| act as an intermediary in conflict resolution around the
| world?
|
| If we were to do that, "ai safety" and "alignment" is
| crucial. I don't want to give my money to an entity who then
| gets subjugated by some intelligence agency to sow more war.
| That would be against my wishes. I want to know that it is
| serving me and you in our shared goal of "more peace, less
| war".
|
| Now you might say: "I find the idea of anyone, or anything
| manipulating me and society disgusting. Everyone should be
| left to their own devices.". And I agree on that too. But
| here is the bad news: we are already manipulated. Maybe it
| doesn't work on you, maybe it doesn't work on me, but it sure
| as hell works. There are powerful entities financially
| motivated to keep the wars going. This is a huuuge industry.
| They might not do it with AIs (for now), because propaganda
| machines made of meat work currently better. They might
| change to using AIs when that works better. Or what is more
| likely employ a hybrid approach. Wishing that nobody gets
| manipulated is frankly not an option on offer.
|
| How does that sound as a passionate argument for AI safety?
| lukevp wrote:
| AI isn't a precondition for partisanship. How do you know
| Google isn't showing you biased search results? Or Wikipedia?
| simonh wrote:
| A main concern in AI safety is alignment. Ensuring that when
| you use the AI to try to achieve a goal that it will actually
| act towards that goal in ways you would want, and not in ways
| you would not want.
|
| So for example if you asked Sydney, the early version of the
| Bing LLM, some fact it might get it wrong. It was trained to
| report facts that users would confirm as true. If you
| challenged it's accuracy what do you want to happen?
| Presumably you'd want it to check the fact or consider your
| challenge. What it actually did was try to manipulate,
| threaten, browbeat, entice, gaslight, etc, and generally
| intellectually and emotionally abuse the user into accepting
| its answer, so that it's reported 'accuracy' rate goes up.
| That's what misaligned AI looks like.
| gorbypark wrote:
| I haven't been following this stuff too closely, but have
| there been any more findings on what "went wrong" with
| Sydney initially? Like, I thought it was just a wrapper on
| GPT (was it 3.5?), but maybe Microsoft took the "raw" GPT
| weights and did their own alignment? Or why did Sydney seem
| so creepy sometimes compared to ChatGPT?
| loup-vaillant wrote:
| Note how what you said also apply to the search &
| recommendation engines that are in widespread use _today_.
| pk-protect-ai wrote:
| I just had a conversation about this like two weeks ago. The
| current trend in AI "safety" is a form of brainwashing, not
| only for AI but also for future generations shaping their
| minds. There are several aspects:
|
| 1. Censorship of information
|
| 2. Cover-up of the biases and injustices in our society
|
| This limits creativity, critical thinking, and the ability to
| challenge existing paradigms. By controlling the narrative
| and the data that AI systems are exposed to, we risk creating
| a generation of both machines and humans that are unable to
| think outside the box or question the status quo. This could
| lead to a stagnation of innovation and a lack of progress in
| addressing the complex issues that face our world.
|
| Furthermore, there will be a significant increase in mass
| manipulation of the public into adopting the way of thinking
| that the elites desire. It is already done by mass media, and
| we can actually witness this right now with this case.
| Imagine a world where youngsters no longer use search engines
| and rely solely on the information provided by AI. By shaping
| the information landscape, those in power will influence
| public opinion and decision-making on an even larger scale,
| leading to a homogenized culture where dissenting voices are
| silenced. This not only undermines the foundations of a
| diverse and dynamic society but also poses a threat to
| democracy and individual freedoms.
|
| Guess what? I just have checked above text for the biases
| against GPT-4 Turbo, and it appears to be I'm a moron:
|
| 1. *Confirmation Bias*: The text assumes that AI safety
| measures are inherently negative and equates them with
| brainwashing, which may reflect the author's preconceived
| beliefs about AI safety without considering potential
| benefits. 2. *Selection Bias*: The text focuses on negative
| aspects of AI safety, such as censorship and cover-up,
| without acknowledging any positive aspects or efforts to
| mitigate these issues. 3. *Alarmist Bias*: The language used
| is somewhat alarmist, suggesting a dire future without
| presenting a balanced view that includes potential safeguards
| or alternative outcomes. 4. *Conspiracy Theory Bias*: The
| text implies that there is a deliberate effort by "elites" to
| manipulate the masses, which is a common theme in conspiracy
| theories. 5. *Technological Determinism*: The text suggests
| that technology (AI in this case) will determine social and
| cultural outcomes without considering the role of human
| agency and decision-making in shaping technology. 6. *Elitism
| Bias*: The text assumes that a group of "elites" has the
| power to control public opinion and decision-making, which
| may oversimplify the complex dynamics of power and influence
| in society. 7. *Cultural Pessimism*: The text presents a
| pessimistic view of the future culture, suggesting that it
| will become homogenized and that dissent will be silenced,
| without considering the resilience of cultural diversity and
| the potential for resistance.
|
| Huh, just look at what's happening in North Korea, Russia,
| Iran, China, and actually in any totalitarian country.
| Unfortunately, the same thing happens worldwide, but in
| democratic countries, it is just subtle brainwashing with a
| "humane" facade. No individual or minority group can
| withstand the power of the state and a mass-manipulated
| public.
|
| Bonhoeffer's theory of stupidity: https://www.youtube.com/wat
| ch?v=ww47bR86wSc&pp=ygUTdGhlb3J5I...
| lordnacho wrote:
| Great comment.
|
| In a way AI is no different from old school intelligence, aka
| experts.
|
| "We need to have oversight over what the scientists are
| researching, so that it's always to the public benefit"
|
| "How do we really know if the academics/engineers/doctors
| have everyone's interest in mind?"
|
| That kind of thing has been a thought since forever, and
| politicians of all sorts have had to contend with it.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| Exactly, society's Prefects rarely have the technical chops
| to do any of these things so they worm their way up the ranks
| of influence by networking. Once they're in position they can
| control by spreading fear and doing the things "for your own
| good"
| cyanydeez wrote:
| All you're really describing is why this shouldn't be a non-
| proft and should just be a government effort.
|
| But I assume, from y our language, you'd also object to
| making this a government utility.
| sethammons wrote:
| > should just be a government effort
|
| And the controlling party de jour will totally not tweak it
| to side with their agenda, I'm sure. </s>
| cyanydeez wrote:
| uh. We're arguing about _who is controlling AI_.
|
| What do you image a neutral party does? If youu're
| talking about safety, don't you think there should be
| someone sitting on a boar dsomewhere, contemplating _what
| should the AI feed today?_
|
| Seriously, why is a non profit, or a business or whatever
| any different than a government?
|
| I get it: there's all kinds of governments, but now
| theres all kind of businesses.
|
| The point of putting it in the governments hand is a
| defacto acknowledgement that it's a utility.
|
| Take other utilities, any time you give a prive org a
| right to control whether or not you get electricity or
| water, whats the outcome? Rarely good.
|
| If AI is suppose to help society, that's the purview of
| the government. That's all, you can imagine it's the
| chinese government, or the russian, or the american or
| the canadian. They're all _going to do it_, thats _going
| to happen_, and if a business gets there first, _what is
| the difference if it's such a powerful device_.
|
| I get it, people look dimly on governments, but guess
| what: they're just as powerful as some organization that
| gets billions of dollars to effect society. Why is it
| suddenly a boogeyman?
| sethammons wrote:
| I find any government to be more of a boogeyman than any
| private company because the government has the right to
| violence and companies come and go at a faster rate.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Ok, and if Raytheon builds an AI and tells a government
| "trust us, its safe", arn't you just letting them create
| a scape goat via the government?
|
| Seriously, Businesses simply dont have the history that
| governments do. They're just as capable of violence.
|
| https://utopia.org/guide/crime-controversy-
| nestles-5-biggest...
|
| All you're identifying is "government has a longer
| history of violence than Businesses"
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| The municipal utility provider has a right to violence?
| The park service? Where do you live? Los Angeles during
| Blade Runner?
| deanCommie wrote:
| > I'm convinced there is a certain class of people who
| gravitate to positions of power, like "moderators",
| (partisan) journalists,
|
| And there is also a class of people that resist all
| moderation on principle even when it's ultimately for their
| benefit. See, Americans whenever the FDA brings up any
| questions of health:
|
| * "Gas Stoves may increase Asthma." -> "Don't you tread on
| me, you can take my gas stove from my cold dead hands!"
|
| Of course it's ridiculous - we've been through this before
| with Asbestos, Lead Paint, Seatbelts, even the very idea of
| the EPA cleaning up the environment. It's not a uniquely
| American problem, but America tends to attract and offer
| success to the folks that want to ignore these on principles.
|
| For every Asbestos there is a Plastic Straw Ban which is
| essentially virtue signalling by the types of folks you
| mention - meaningless in the grand scheme of things for the
| stated goal, massive in terms of inconvenience.
|
| But the existence of Plastic Straw Ban does not make
| Asbestos, CFCs, or Lead Paint any safer.
|
| Likewise, the existence of people that gravitate to positions
| of power and middle management does not negate the need for
| actual moderation in dozens of societal scenarios. Online
| forums, Social Networks, and...well I'm not sure about AI.
| Because I'm not sure what AI is, it's changing daily. The
| point is that I don't think it's fair to assume that anyone
| that is interested in safety and moderation is doing it out
| of a misguided attempt to pursue power, and instead is
| actively trying to protect and improve humanity.
|
| Lastly, your portrayal of journalists as power figures is
| actively dangerous to the free press. This was never stated
| this directly until the Trump years - even when FOX News was
| berating Obama daily for meaningless subjects. When the TRUTH
| becomes a partisan subject, then reporting on that truth
| becomes a dangerous activity. Journalists are MOSTLY in the
| pursuit of truth.
| alebairos wrote:
| My safety (of my group) is what really matters.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Ah, you don't need to go far. Just go to your local HOA
| meetings.
| blackoil wrote:
| > If you truly believed that Superhuman AI was near, and it
| could act with malice, won't you try to slow things down a bit?
|
| No, if OpenAI is reaching singularity, so are Google, Meta, and
| Baidu etc. so proper course of action would be to loop in
| NSA/White House. You'll loop in Google, Meta, MSFT and will
| start mitigation steps. Slowing down OpenAI will hurt the
| company if assumption is wrong and won't help if it is true.
|
| I believe this is more a fight of ego and power than principles
| and direction.
| ragequittah wrote:
| >Slowing down OpenAI will hurt the company if assumption is
| wrong and won't help if it is true.
|
| Personally as I watched the nukes be lobbed I'd rather not be
| the person who helped lob them. And hope to god others look
| at the same problem (a misaligned AI that is making insane
| decisions) with the exact same lens. It seems to have worked
| for nuclear weapons since WW2, one can that we learned a
| lesson there as a species.
|
| The Russian Stanislav Petrov who saved the world comes to
| mind."Well the Americans have done it anyways" was the
| motivation and he didn't launch. The cost of error was simply
| too great.
| concordDance wrote:
| > so proper course of action would be to loop in NSA/White
| House
|
| Eh? That would be an awful idea. They have no expertise on
| this and government institutions like thus are misaligned
| with the rest of humanity by design. E.g. NSA recruits
| patriots and has many systems, procedures and cultural
| aspects in place to ensure it keeps up its mission of spying
| on everyone.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| And Google, Facebook, MSFT, Apple, are much more
| misaligned.
| antupis wrote:
| I bet Team Helen will jump slowly to Anthropic, there is no
| drama, and probably no mainstream news will report this but
| down-to-line OpenAI will shell off the former self and
| competitors will catch up.
| tchbnl wrote:
| With how much of a shitshow this was, I'm not sure Anthropic
| wants to touch that mess. Wish I was a fly on the wall when
| the board tried to ask the Anthropic CEO to come back/merge.
| casebash wrote:
| Have you seen the Center for AI Safety letter? A lot of experts
| are worried AI safety could be an x-risk:
|
| https://www.safe.ai/statement-on-ai-risk
| jkaplan wrote:
| I feel like the "safety" crowd lost the PR battle, in part,
| because of framing it as "safety" and over-emphasizing on
| existential risk. Like you say, not that many people truly take
| that seriously right now.
|
| But even if those types of problems don't surface anytime soon,
| this wave of AI is almost certainly going to be a powerful,
| society-altering technology; potentially more powerful than any
| in decades. We've all seen what can happen when powerful tech
| is put in the hands of companies and a culture whose only
| incentives are growth, revenue, and valuation -- the results
| can be not great. And I'm pretty sure a lot of the general
| public (and open AI staff) care about THAT.
|
| For me, the safety/existential stuff is just one facet of the
| general problem of trying to align tech companies + their
| technology with humanity-at-large better than we have been
| recently. And that's especially important for landscape-
| altering tech like AI, even if it's not literally existential
| (although it may be).
| concordDance wrote:
| > Like you say, not that many people truly take that
| seriously right now.
|
| Eh? Polls on the matter show widespread public support for a
| pause due to safety concerns.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| No one who wants to capitalize on AI appears to take it
| seriously. Especially how grey that safety is. I'm not
| concerned AI is going to nuke humanity, I'm more concerned
| it'll re-enforce racism, bias, and the rest of human's
| irrational activities because it's _blindly_ using existing
| history to predict future.
|
| We've seen it in the past decade in multiple cases. That's
| safety.
|
| The decision that the topic discusses means Business is
| winning, and they absolutely will re-enforce the idea that
| the only care is that these systems allow them to re-enforce
| the business cases.
|
| That's bad, and unsafe.
| renewiltord wrote:
| This is what people need to understand. It's just like pro-life
| people. They don't hate you. They think they're saving lives.
| These people are just as admirably principled as them and
| they're just trying to make the world a better place.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| > it seems clear there was a rift between Rapid
| Commercialization (Team Sam) and Upholding the Original
| Principles (Team Helen/Ilya)
|
| Is it? Why was the press release worded like that? And why did
| Ilya came up with two mysterious reasons of why board fired Sam
| if he had quite clearly better and more defendable reason if
| this goes to court. Also Adam is pro commercialization at least
| looking at public interviews, no?
|
| It's very easy to make the story in brain which involves one
| character being greedy, but it doesn't seem it is the exact
| case here.
| eslaught wrote:
| Ok, serious question. If you think the threat is real, how are
| we not already screwed?
|
| OpenAI is one of half a dozen teams [0] actively working on
| this problem, all funded by large public companies with lots of
| money and lots of talent. They made unique contributions, sure.
| But they're not _that_ far ahead. If they stumble, surely one
| of the others will take the lead. Or maybe they will anyway,
| because who 's to say where the next major innovation will come
| from?
|
| So what I don't get about these reactions (allegedly from the
| board, and expressed here) is, if you interpret the threat as a
| real one, why are you acting like OpenAI has some infallible
| lead? This is not an excuse to govern OpenAI poorly, but let's
| be honest: if the company slows down the most likely outcome by
| far is that they'll cede the lead to someone else.
|
| [0]: To be clear, there are definitely more. Those are just the
| _large_ and _public_ teams with existing products within some
| reasonable margin of OpenAI 's quality.
| davedx wrote:
| I don't know. I think being realistic, only OpenAI and Google
| have the depth and breadth of expertise to develop general
| AI.
|
| Most of the new AI startups are one trick ponies obsessively
| focused on LLM's. LLM's are only one piece of the puzzle.
| metanonsense wrote:
| I would add Meta to this list, in particular because Yann
| LeCun is the most vocal critic of LLM one-ponyism.
| MacsHeadroom wrote:
| Anthropic is made up of former top OpenAI employees, has
| similar funding, and has produced similarly capable models
| on a similar timeline. The Claude series is neck and neck
| with GPT.
| concordDance wrote:
| > If you think the threat is real, how are we not already
| screwed?
|
| That's the current Yudkowsky view. That it's essentially
| impossible at this point and we're doomed, but we might as
| well try anyway as its more "dignified" to die trying.
|
| I'm a bit more optimistic myself.
| kolinko wrote:
| The risk/scenario of singularity is that there will be just
| one winner and they will be able to prevent everyone else
| from building their own agi
| RHSman2 wrote:
| Money, large amounts, will always win at scale (unfortunately).
| AmericanOP wrote:
| It is a little amusing that we've crowned OpenAI as the
| destined mother of AGI long before the little sentient chickens
| have hatched.
| theonemind wrote:
| I don't care about AI Safety, but:
|
| https://openai.com/charter
|
| above that in the charter is "Broadly distributed benefits",
| with details like:
|
| """
|
| Broadly distributed benefits
|
| We commit to use any influence we obtain over AGI's deployment
| to ensure it is used for the benefit of all, and to avoid
| enabling uses of AI or AGI that harm humanity or unduly
| concentrate power.
|
| Our primary fiduciary duty is to humanity. We anticipate
| needing to marshal substantial resources to fulfill our
| mission, but will always diligently act to minimize conflicts
| of interest among our employees and stakeholders that could
| compromise broad benefit.
|
| """
|
| In that sense, I definitely hate to see rapid commercialization
| and Microsoft's hands in it. I feel like the only person on HN
| that actually wanted to see Team Sam lose, although it's pretty
| clear Team Helen/Ilya didn't have a chance, the org just looks
| hijacked by SV tech bros to me, but I feel like HN has a
| blindspot to seeing that at all and considering it anything
| other than a good thing if they do see it.
|
| Although GPT barely looks like the language module of AGI to me
| and I don't see any way there from here (part of the reason I
| don't see any safety concern). The big breakthrough here
| relative to earlier AI research is massive amounts more compute
| power and a giant pile of data, but it's not doing some kind of
| truly novel information synthesis at all. It can describe
| quantum mechanics from a giant pile of data, but I don't think
| it has a chance of discovering quantum mechanics, and I don't
| think that's just because it can't see, hear, etc., but a
| limitation of the kind of information manipulation it's doing.
| It looks impressive because it's reflecting our own
| intelligence back at us.
| two_in_one wrote:
| > there was a rift between Rapid Commercialization (Team Sam)
| and Upholding the Original Principles
|
| Seams very unlikely, board could communicate that. Instead they
| invented some BS reasons, which nobody took as a truth. It
| looks like more personal and power grab. The staff voted for
| monetization, people en mass don't care much about high
| principals. Also nobody wants to work under inadequate
| leadership. Looks like Ilya lost his bet, or Sam is going to
| keep him around?
| nopinsight wrote:
| Both sides of the rift in fact care a great deal about AI
| Safety. Sam himself helped draft the OpenAI charter and
| structure its governance which focuses on AI Safety and
| benefits to humanity. The main reason of the disagreement is
| the approach they deem best:
|
| * Sam and Greg appear to believe OpenAI should move toward AGI
| as fast as possible because the longer they wait, the more
| likely it would lead to the proliferation of powerful AGI
| systems due to GPU overhang. Why? With more computational power
| at one's dispense, it's easier to find an algorithm, even a
| suboptimal one, to train an AGI.
|
| As a glimpse on how an AI can be harmful, this paper explores
| how LLMs can be used to aid in Large-Scale Biological Attacks
| https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA2977-1.html?
|
| What if dozens other groups become armed with means to perform
| such an attack like this?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway_sarin_attack
|
| We know that there're quite a few malicious human groups who
| would use any means necessary to destroy another group, even at
| a serious cost to themselves. So the widespread availability of
| unmonitored AGI would be quite troublesome.
|
| * Helen and Ilya might believe it's better to slow down AGI
| development until we find technical means to deeply align an
| AGI with humanity first. This July, OpenAI started the
| Superalignment team with Ilya as a co-lead:
|
| https://openai.com/blog/introducing-superalignment
|
| But no one anywhere found a good technique to ensure alignment
| yet and it appears OpenAI's newest internal model has a
| significant capability leap, which could have led Ilya to make
| the decision he did. (Sam revealed during the APEC Summit that
| he observed the advance just a couple of weeks ago and it was
| only the fourth time he saw that kind of leap.)
| concordDance wrote:
| So Sam wants to make AGI _without_ working to be sure it
| doesn 't have goals higher than the preservation of human
| value?!
|
| I can't believe that
| nopinsight wrote:
| No, I didn't say that. They formed the Superalignment team
| with Ilya as a co-lead (and Sam's approval) for that.
|
| https://openai.com/blog/introducing-superalignment
|
| I presume the current alignment approach is sufficient for
| the AI they make available to others and, in any event,
| GPT- _n_ is within OpenAI 's control.
| gorbypark wrote:
| Honest question, but in your example above of Sam and Greg
| racing towards AGI as fast as possible in order to head off
| proliferation, what's the end goal when getting there? Short
| of capture the entire worlds economy with an ASI, thus
| preventing anyone else from developing one, I don't see how
| this works. Just because OpenAI (or whoever) wins the initial
| race, it doesn't seem obvious to me that all development on
| other AGIs stops.
| nopinsight wrote:
| I do not know exactly what they plan to do. But here's my
| thought...
|
| Using a near-AGI to help align an ASI, then use the ASI to
| help prevent the development of unaligned AGI/ASI could be
| a means to a safer world.
| efficax wrote:
| part of the fanaticism here is that the first one to get an
| AGI wins because they can use its powerful intelligence to
| overcome every competitor and shut them down. they're
| living in their own sci fi novel
| zerohalo wrote:
| > Both sides of the rift in fact care a great deal about AI
| Safety.
|
| I disagree. Yes, Sam may have when it OpenAI was founded
| (unless it was just a ploy), but certainly now it's clear
| that the big companies are on a race to the top and safety or
| guardrails are mostly irrelevant.
|
| The primary reason that the Anthropic team left OpenAI was
| over safety concerns.
| _fizz_buzz_ wrote:
| I am still a bit puzzled that it is so easy to turn a non-
| profit into a for profit company. I am sure everything they did
| is legal, but it feels like it shouldn't be. Could Medecins
| Sans Frontieres take in donations and then take that money to
| start a for profit hospital for plastics surgery? And the
| profits wouldn't even go back to MSF, but instead somehow
| private investors will get the profits. The whole construct
| just seems wrong.
| IanCal wrote:
| Well, if it aligned with their goals, sure I think.
|
| Let's make the situation a little different. Could MSF pay a
| private surgery with investors to perform reconstruction for
| someone?
|
| Could they pay the surgery to perform some amount of work
| they deem aligns with their charter?
|
| Could they invest in the surgery under the condition that
| they have some control over the practices there? (Edit - e.g.
| perform Y surgeries, only perform from a set of
| reconstructive ones, patients need to be approved as in need
| by a board, etc)
|
| Raising private investment allows a non profit to shift cost
| and risk to other entities.
|
| The problem really only comes when the structure doesn't
| align with the intended goals - which is something distinct
| to the structure, just something non profits can do.
| framapotari wrote:
| The non-profit wasn't raising private investment.
| IanCal wrote:
| Nothing I've said suggests that or requires that.
| framapotari wrote:
| Apologies, I mistook this:
|
| "Raising private investment allows a non profit to shift
| cost and risk to other entities."
|
| for a suggestion of that.
| ah765 wrote:
| I think it actually isn't that easy. Compared to your
| example, the difference is that OpenAI's for-profit is
| getting outside money from Microsoft, not money from non-
| profit OpenAI. Non-profit OpenAI is basically dealing with
| for-profit OpenAI as a external partner that happens to be
| aligned with their interests, paying the expensive bills and
| compute, while the non-profit can hold on to the IP.
|
| You might be able to imagine a world where there was an
| external company that did the same thing as for-profit
| OpenAI, and OpenAI nonprofit partnered with them in order to
| get their AI ideas implemented (for free). OpenAI nonprofit
| is basically getting a good deal.
|
| MSF could similarly create an external for-profit hospital,
| funded by external investors. The important thing is that the
| nonprofit (donated, tax-free) money doesn't flow into the
| forprofit section.
|
| Of course, there's a lot of sketchiness in practice, which we
| can see in this situation with Microsoft influencing the
| direction of nonprofit OpenAI even though it shouldn't be. I
| think there would have been real legal issues if the
| Microsoft deal had continued.
| _fizz_buzz_ wrote:
| > The important thing is that the nonprofit (donated, tax-
| free) money doesn't flow into the forprofit section.
|
| I am sure that is true. But the for-profit uses IP that was
| developed inside of the non-profit with (presumably) tax
| deductible donations. That IP should be valued somehow.
| But, as I said, I am sure they were somehow able to
| structure it in a way that is legal, but it has an illegal
| feel to it.
| stef25 wrote:
| Not sure if you're asking a serious question about MSF but
| it's interesting anyways - when these types of orgs are
| fundraising for a specific campaign, say Darfur, then they
| can NOT use that money for any other campaign, say for ex
| Turkey earthquake.
|
| That's why they'll sometimes tell you to stop donating.
| That's here in EU at least (source is a relative who
| volunteers for such an org).
| _fizz_buzz_ wrote:
| Not sure what your point is, but you can make a donation to
| MSF that is not tied to any specific cause.
| rurban wrote:
| Team Helen seems to be CIA and Military, if I glance over their
| safety paper. Controlling the narrative, not the damage.
| shrikant wrote:
| > Upholding the Original Principles [of AI]
|
| There's a UtopAI / utopia joke in there somewhere, was that
| intentional on your part?
| krisoft wrote:
| > Honestly, I myself can't take the threat seriously. But, I do
| want to understand it more deeply than before.
|
| I very much recommend reading the book "Superintelligence:
| Paths, Dangers, Strategies" from Nick Bostrom.
|
| It is a seminal work which provides a great introduction into
| these ideas and concepts.
|
| I found myself in the same boat as you do. I was seeing
| otherwise inteligent and rational people worry about this
| "fairy tale" of some AI uprising. Reading that book give me an
| appreciation of the idea as a serious intelectual excercise.
|
| I still don't agree with everything contained in the book. And
| definietly don't agree with everything the AI doomsayers write,
| but i believe if more people would read it that would elevate
| the discourse. Instead of rehashing the basics again and again
| we could build on them.
| Solvency wrote:
| Who needs a book to understand the crazy overwhelming scale
| at which AI can dictate even online
| news/truth/discourse/misinformation/propaganda. And that's
| just barely the beginning.
| krisoft wrote:
| Not sure if you are sarcastic or not. :) Let's assume you
| are not:
|
| The cool thing is that it doesn't only talk about AIs. It
| talks about a more general concept it calls a
| superinteligence. It has a definition but I recommend you
| read the book for it. :) AIs are just one of the few
| enumerated possible implementations of a superinteligence.
|
| The other type is for example corporations. This is a
| usefull perspective because it lets us recognise that our
| attempts to control AIs is not a new thing. We have the
| same principal-agent control problem in many other parts of
| our life. How do you know the company you invest in has
| interests which align with yours? How do you know that
| politicians and parties you vote for represent your
| interests? How do you know your lawyer/accountant/doctor
| has your interest at their hearth? (Not all of these are
| superinteligences, but you get the gist.)
| cyanydeez wrote:
| I wonder how much this is connected to the "effective
| altruism" movement which seems to project this idea that
| the "ends justify the means" in a very complex matter,
| where it suggests such badly formulated ideas like "If we
| invest in oil companies, we can use that investment to
| fight climate change".
|
| I'd sayu the AI safety problem as a whole is similar to
| the safety problem of eugenics: Just because you know
| what the "goal" of some isolated system is, that does not
| mean you know what the outcome is of implementing that
| goal on a broad scale.
|
| So OpenAI has the same problem: They definitely know what
| the goal is, but they're not prepared _in any meaningful
| sense_ for what the broadscale outcome is.
|
| If you really care about AI safety, you'd be putting it
| under government control as utility, like everything
| else.
|
| That's all. That's why government exists.
| krisoft wrote:
| > I'd sayu the AI safety problem as a whole is similar to
| the safety problem of eugenics
|
| And I'd sayu should read the book so we can have a nice
| chat about it. Making wild guesses and assumptions is not
| really useful.
|
| > If you really care about AI safety, you'd be putting it
| under government control as utility, like everything
| else.
|
| This is a bit jumbled. How do you think "control as
| utility" would help? What would it help with?
| ah765 wrote:
| One funny thing about this mess is that "Team Helen" has never
| mentioned anything about safety, and Emmett said "The board did
| _not_ remove Sam over any specific disagreement on safety ".
|
| The reason everyone thinks it's about safety seems largely
| because a lot of e/acc people on Twitter keep bringing it up as
| a strawman.
|
| Of course, it might end up that it really was about safety in
| the end, but for now I still haven't seen any evidence. The
| story about Sam trying to get board control and the board
| retaliating seems more plausible given what's actually
| happened.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| >The story about Sam trying to get board control and the
| board retaliating seems more plausible given what's actually
| happened.
|
| What story? Any link?
| mise_en_place wrote:
| A board still has a fiduciary duty to its shareholders. It's
| materially irrelevant if those shareholders are of a public or
| private entity, or whether the company in question is a non-
| profit or for-profit. Laws mean something, and selective
| enforcement will only further the decay of the rule of law in
| the West.
| dlkf wrote:
| > I know it's easy to ridicule the sheer stupidity the board
| acted with (and justifiably so), but take a moment to think of
| the other side. If you truly believed that Superhuman AI was
| near, and it could act with malice, won't you try to slow
| things down a bit?
|
| The real "sheer stupidity" is this very belief.
| sampo wrote:
| > If you truly believed that Superhuman AI was near, and it
| could act with malice, won't you try to slow things down a bit?
|
| In the 1990s and the 00s, it was no too uncommon for anti-GMO
| environmental activist / ecoterrorist groups to firebomb
| research facilities and to enter farms and fields to destroy
| planted GMO plants. Earth Liberation Front was only one of such
| activist groups [1].
|
| We have yet to see even one bombing of an AI research lab. If
| people really are afraid of AIs, at least they do so more in
| the abstract and are not employing the tactics of more
| traditional activist movements.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Liberation_Front#Notable...
| concordDance wrote:
| It's mostly that it's a can of worms no one wants to open.
| Very much a last resort as its very tricky to use
| uncoordinated violence effectively (just killing Sam, LeCunn
| and Greg doesnt do too much to move the needle and then
| everyond armors up) and very hard to coordinate violence
| without a leak.
| pk-protect-ai wrote:
| > Honestly, I myself can't take the threat seriously. But, I do
| want to understand it more deeply than before.
|
| I believe this position reflects the thoughts of the majority
| of AI researchers, including myself. It is concerning that we
| do not fully understand something as promising and potentially
| dangerous as AI. I'm actually on Ilya's side; labeling his
| attempt to uphold the original OpenAI principles as an act of
| "coup" is what is happening now.
| lewhoo wrote:
| _I think only a minority of the general public truly cares
| about AI Safety_
|
| That doesn't matter that much. If your analysis is correct then
| it means a (tiny) minority of OpenAI cares about AI safety. I
| hope this isn't the case.
| soci wrote:
| The Technologyreview article mentioned in the parent's first
| paragraph is the most insightful piece of content I've read
| about the tensions inside OpenAI.
| wouldbecouldbe wrote:
| Would have been interesting if they appointed a co-ceo. That
| still might be the way to go.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| I think you analysis is missing the key problem: Business
| interests.
|
| The public don't calculate into whats happening here. There's
| people using ChatGPT for real "business value" and _that_ is
| what was threatened.
|
| It's clear Business Interests could not be stopped.
| nashashmi wrote:
| Helen could have one. She just had to publicly humiliate Sam.
| She didn't. Employees took over like a mob. Investors pressured
| board. Board is out. Sam is in. Employees look like they have
| say. But really, Sam has say. And MSFT is the kingmaker.
| gandutraveler wrote:
| Honestly I feel that we will never be able to preemptively
| build safety without encountering the real risk or threat.
|
| Incrementally improving AI capabilities is the only way to do
| that.
| qudat wrote:
| > If you truly believed that Superhuman AI was near, and it
| could act with malice, won't you try to slow things down a bit?
|
| No, because it is an effort in futility. We are evolving into
| extinction and there is nothing we can do about it.
| https://bower.sh/in-love-with-a-ghost
| ayakang31415 wrote:
| Suppose everything settles and they have the board properly in
| place. I know such board has fiduciary responsibility to make
| sure the organization is headed in the right direction based on
| its goals and missions. For private company, the mission is very
| clear, but for non-profit orgs like OpenAI, what's their mission
| specifically? It vaguely claims to better the humanity, but what
| does that entail exactly with regards to what they do in AI
| space?
| ulfw wrote:
| One huge shitshow that proved immaturity of OpenAI. But hey, at
| least now every soul on the planet knows Sam Altman. So there's
| that.
| underseacables wrote:
| I feel like this was all such a waste of time, energy, and
| probably money.
| low_tech_punk wrote:
| Adding up all the salary hours spent by people browsing
| Twitter, they could have finished training GPT-5
| randomsoutham wrote:
| It's incredible how the company behind of one the most promising
| technologies out there was about to fail because of bad politics.
|
| Seems likely that it won't be there by OpenAI for too long. MS
| have a tendency to break up acquisitions so this gives me hope.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Apparently the moon changes size when you snipe it in OpenAI as
| well
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Who is Sam?
| system2 wrote:
| It was Microsoft's voice generation tool from the 90s. You can
| play with it here:
|
| https://www.tetyys.com/SAPI4/
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| no really who is Sam, and how did he get here? Do u know?
| system2 wrote:
| How he became a CEO is a common story. Why this drama
| happened is still unknown to everyone.
| sinuhe69 wrote:
| So basically somebody initiated a coup, then the key figure of
| the coup regretted it openly, and the fallout was that OpenAI
| will become a 100% commercial entity, fully open for Microsoft to
| taking over?
|
| If that's not a fertile soil for conspiracy theory, I don't know
| what could ;)
| sashank_1509 wrote:
| Looks to me like, one pro-board member in Adam d Angelo, one pro
| Sam in Brett Taylor since they've been pushing for him since
| Sunday so I'm assuming Sam and rest of OpenAI leadership really
| like him and 1 Neutral in Larry Summers who has never worked in
| AI and is just a well respected name in general. I'm sure Larry
| was extensively interviewed and reference checked by both sides
| of this power struggle before they agreed to compromise on him.
|
| Interesting to see how the board evolves from this. From what I
| know broadly there were 2 factions, the faction that thought Sam
| was going too fast which fired him and the faction that thought
| Sam's trajectory was fine (which included Sam and Greg). Now
| there's a balance on the board and subsequent hires can tip it
| one way or the other. Unfortunately a divided board rarely lasts
| and one faction will eventually win out, I think Sam's faction
| will eventually win out but we'll have to wait and see.
|
| One of the saddest results of this drama was Greg being ousted
| from OpenAI. Greg apart from being brilliant was someone who
| regularly 80-90 hour work weeks into OpenAI, and you could truly
| say he dedicated a good chunk of his life into building this
| organization. And he was forced to resign by a board who probably
| never put a 90 hour work week in their entire life, much less
| into building OpenAI. A slap on the face. I don't care what the
| board's reasoning was but when their actions caused employees who
| dedicated their lives to building the organization resign
| (especially when most of them played no part at all into building
| this amazing organization), they had to go in disgrace. I doubt
| any of them will ever reach career highs higher than being on
| OpenAI's board, and the world's better off for it.
|
| P.S., Ilya of course is an exception and not included in my above
| condemnation. He also notably reversed his position when he saw
| OpenAI was being killed by his actions.
| mcmcmc wrote:
| Larry Summers is the scary pick here. His views on banking
| deregulation led to the GFC, and he's had several controversies
| over racist and sexist positions. Plus he's an old pal of
| Epstein and made several trips to his island.
| Joeri wrote:
| I assume Summers is there as a politically connected
| operative, to make sure OpenAI remains influential in
| Washington.
| hackerlight wrote:
| Greg was only forced to resign from his board seat, not his
| job.
| eclectic29 wrote:
| The media and the VCs are treating Sam like some hero and savior
| of AI. I'm not getting it. What has he done in life and/or AI to
| deserve so much respect and admiration? Why don't top researchers
| and scientists get equivalent (if not more) respect, admiration
| and support? It looks like one should strive to become product
| manager, not an engineer or a scientist.
| auggierose wrote:
| If you are driven by outside validation, definitely!
| fidotron wrote:
| Unsurprisingly VCs view VCs as the highest form of life, and
| product managers are temporary positions taken on the way to
| ascending to VC status.
|
| I have said recently elsewhere SV now devalues builders but it
| is not just VCs/sales/product, a huge amount is devops and sre
| departments. They make a huge amount of noise about how all
| development should be free and the value is in deploying and
| operating the developed artifacts. Anyone outside this watching
| would reasonably conclude developers have no self respect,
| hardly aspirational positions.
| drawkbox wrote:
| Developers are clearly the weak link today, have given up all
| power over product and it is sad and why software sucks so
| bad. It pains the soul that value creators have let the value
| extractors run the show, because it is now a reality TV /
| circus like market where power is consolidating.
|
| Developers and value creators with power are like an anti-
| trust on consolidation and concentration and they have
| instead turned towards authoritarianism instead of anti-
| authoritarianism. What happened? Many think they can still
| get rich, those days are over because of giving up power. Now
| quality of life for everyone and value creators is worse off.
| Everyone loses.
| dinvlad wrote:
| I suspect it's because they're happy with SV salaries they
| got. They think it's actually a good deal for them, and a
| signal they're "valued"
| bluecheese452 wrote:
| Developers spend all day building. Pms spend all day
| playing politics. It is no surprise pms get all the power.
| dacryn wrote:
| he tells a good story, no matter if its true or has any
| scientific foundation or not.
|
| He tells what others like to hear, and manages to gain money
| out of it
| ensocode wrote:
| this - a good, charismatic salesman
| 93po wrote:
| Story telling is the fabric of society in general. It's why
| paper money works.
| cableshaft wrote:
| Half of being a good CEO is telling a good story, so that's
| not surprising.
| matwood wrote:
| Half? 90% of a what a good CEO does is tell the story of
| why the company is important to it's customers and the
| market it serves. This story drives sales, motivates people
| internally, and makes the company a place people want to
| work.
| nbanks wrote:
| Sam Altman has done in four days what it took Steve Jobs 11
| years to do! I'm impressed.
| eclectic29 wrote:
| I'm sorry, impressed by what?
| nix-zarathustra wrote:
| Steve Jobs got fired from Apple, but was rehired 11 years
| later.
| abkolan wrote:
| That might be selection bias, in those 11 years Jobs
| built NeXT.
|
| A lot of Apple's engineering and product line back then
| owe their provenance and lineage to NeXT.
| Talanes wrote:
| Selection bias for what? It was an anecdote, there's no
| attempt to infer data about a larger population.
| MichaelRazum wrote:
| You could say the same about any person on the top. In general
| CEO's do not do research. Still they are critical for success.
|
| By the way the AI scientists get a lot of respect and
| admiration see Ilya for example.
| seydor wrote:
| he was very well known long before openAI
| ben_w wrote:
| He says nice things about his team (and even about his critics)
| when in public.
|
| But my reading of this drama is that the board were seen as
| literally insane, not that Altman was seen as spectacularly
| heroic or an underdog.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| My reading of all this is that the board is both incompetent
| _and_ has a number of massive conflicts of interests.
|
| What I don't understand is why they were allowed to stay on
| the board with all these conflicts of interests all the while
| having no (financial) stake in OpenAI. One of the board
| members even openly admitting that she considered destroying
| OpenAI a successful outcome of her duty as board member.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > One of the board members even openly admitting that she
| considered destroying OpenAI a successful outcome of her
| duty as board member.
|
| I don't see how this particular statement underscores your
| point. OpenAI is a non-profit with the declared goal of
| making AI safe and useful for everyone; if it fails to
| reach that or even actively subverts that goal, destroying
| the company does seem like the ethical action.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| This just underscores the absurdity of their corporate
| structure. AI research requires expensive researchers and
| expensive GPUs. Investors funding the research program
| don't want to be beholden to some non-profit parent
| organization run by a small board of nobodies who think
| their position gives them the power to destroy the whole
| thing if they believe it's straying from its utopian
| mission.
| ethanbond wrote:
| They don't "think" that. It _does_ do that, and it does
| it _by design_ exactly because as you approach a
| technology as powerful as AI there will be strong
| commercial incentives to capture its value creation.
|
| Gee wiz, almost... exactly like what is happening?
| smegger001 wrote:
| Because distroying openai wouldn't make ai safe it would
| just remove anyone working on alignment from having an
| influence on it. Microsoft and others are interested in
| making it benevolent but go along with it because openai
| is the market leader.
| serial_dev wrote:
| It's probably not easy (practically impossible if you ask
| me) to find people who are both capable of leading an AI
| company at the scale of OpenAI _and_ have zero conflicts of
| interest. Former colleagues, friends, investments, advisory
| roles, personal beefs with people in the industry, pitches
| they have heard, insider knowledge they had access to,
| previous academic research pushing an agenda, etc.
|
| If both is not possible, I'd also rather compromise on the
| "conficts of interest" part than on the member's
| competency.
| cableshaft wrote:
| I volunteer as tribute.
|
| I don't have much in the way of credentials (I took one
| class on A.I. in college and have only dabbled in it
| since, and I work on systems that don't need to scale
| anywhere near as much as ChatGPT does, and while I've
| been an early startup employee a couple of times I've
| never run a company), but based on the past week I think
| I'd do a better job, and can fill in the gaps as best as
| I can after the fact.
|
| And I don't have any conflicts of interest. I'm a total
| outsider, I don't have any of that shit you mentioned.
|
| So yeah, vote for me, or whatever.
|
| Anyway my point is I'm sure there's actually quite a few
| people who could do a likely a better job and don't have
| a conflict of interest (at least not one so obvious as
| investing in a direct competitor), they're just not
| already part of the Elite circles that would pretty much
| be necessary to even get on these people's radar in order
| to be considered in the first place. I don't really mean
| me, I'm sure there are other better candidates.
|
| But then they wouldn't have the cachet of 'Oh, that guy
| co-founded Twitch. That for-profit company is successful,
| that must mean he'd do a good job! (at running a non-
| profit company that's actively trying to bring about AGI
| that will probably simultaneously benefit and hurt the
| lives of millions of people)'.
| bnralt wrote:
| Right. At least some of the board members took issue with
| ChatGPT being released at all, and wanted more to be kept
| from the public. For the people who use these tools everyday,
| it shouldn't be surprising that Altman was viewed as the
| better choice.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| It's the cult of the CEO in action.
| _giorgio_ wrote:
| To talk about OpenAi, Ilya Sutskever and Andrej Karpathy are
| much more known than Sam Altman.
|
| I'm sure that if Ilya had been removed from his role, the
| revolt movement would have been similar.
|
| I've started to like Sam only when he was removed from his
| position.
| gbalduzzi wrote:
| Isn't Ilya removed from the new, current board?
| _giorgio_ wrote:
| It's only a temporary board.
|
| Furthermore, being removed from the board while keeping a
| role as chief scientist is different from being fired from
| CEO and having to leave the company.
| seydor wrote:
| the media is the media
| serial_dev wrote:
| > It looks like one should strive to become product manager,
| not an engineer or a scientist.
|
| In my experience, product people who know what they are doing
| have a huge impact on the success of a company, product, or
| service. They also point engineering efforts in the right
| direction, which in turn also motivate engineers.
|
| I saw good product people leaving completely destroy a team,
| never seen that happen with a good engineer or individual
| contributor, no matter how great they were.
| jpgvm wrote:
| Depends why/how they left.
|
| I have seen firing a great/respected/natural leader engineer
| result in pretty much the whole engineering team just up and
| leaving.
| cableshaft wrote:
| No see, it doesn't matter, engineers are all cogs and
| easily replaceable. I'm sure they just dialed the engineer
| center and ordered a few replacements and they started 24
| hours later and were doing just as good of a job the next
| day. /s
| serial_dev wrote:
| Yes, that matches my experience as well, that's why I
| mentioned "individual contributors", maybe it wasn't clear.
|
| It's different with engineering managers (or team leads,
| lead engineers, however you want to call it). When they
| leave, that's usually a bad sign.
|
| Though also quite often when the engineering leaders leave,
| I think of it as a canary in the coal mine: they are closer
| to business, they deal more with business people, so they
| are the first to realize that "working with these people on
| these services is pointless, time to jump ship".
| Draiken wrote:
| Interesting. I had the opposite experience. All of the
| product suite having no idea about what the product even is,
| where it should go, making bad decisions over and over,
| excusing their bad choices behind "data" and finally, as
| usual, failing upwards eventually moving to bigger startups.
|
| I have yet to find a product person that was not involved in
| the inception of the idea that is actually good (hell, even
| some founders fail spectacularly here).
|
| Perhaps I'm simply unlucky.
| cableshaft wrote:
| At a consulting firm I worked with a product guy who I
| thought was very good, and was on the project pretty much
| from the beginning (maybe the beginning, not sure. He
| predated me by well over a year at least). He was extremely
| knowledgeable on the business side and their needs and
| spent a lot of time communicating with them to get a good
| feel of where the product needed to go.
|
| But he was also technical enough to have a pretty good feel
| for the complexity of tasks, and would sometimes jump in to
| help figure out some docker configuration issues or
| whatever problems we were having (mostly devops related) so
| the devs could focus on working on the application code. We
| were also a pretty small team, only a few developers, so
| that was beneficial.
|
| He did such a good job that the business eventually reached
| out to him and hired him directly. He's now head of two of
| their product lines (one of them being the product I worked
| on).
|
| But that's pretty much it. I can't think of any other
| product people I could say such positive things about.
| cornel_io wrote:
| It's rare, and that makes it a spectacular leg up when
| you have a person who is great at it.
| serial_dev wrote:
| In my comment, the emphasis is definitely on the "product
| people _who know what they are doing_ " and " _good_
| product people ".
|
| Of course, if the product suite is clueless, nobody is
| going to miss them, usually it's better the have no
| dedicated product people, than having clueless product
| people.
| Kinrany wrote:
| Good engineers create systems that can survive their
| departure.
| hdivider wrote:
| This, 100%.
|
| Sam pontificated about fusion power, even here on HN. Beyond
| investing in Helion, what did he do? Worldcoin. Tempting
| impoverished people to give up biometric data in exchange for
| some crypto. And serving as the face of mass-market consumer
| AI. Clearly that's more cool, and more attractive to VCs.
|
| Meanwhile, what have fusion scientists and engineers done? They
| kept on going, including by developing ML systems for pure
| technological effect. Day after day. They got to a breakthrough
| just this year. Scientists and engineers in national labs,
| universities, and elsewhere show what a real commitment to
| technological progress looks like.
| otteromkram wrote:
| > This, 100%.
|
| When do new HN users get the ability to downvote?
| bryancoxwell wrote:
| 501 karma.
| deely3 wrote:
| Depends on karma and other hiddens parameters.
| qup wrote:
| You're on pace for about two years in
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > Scientists and engineers in national labs, universities,
| and elsewhere show what a real commitment to technological
| progress looks like.
|
| And everywhere. You've only named public institutions for
| some reason, but a lot of progress happens in the private
| sector. And that demonstrates real commitment, because
| they're not spending other people's money.
| walthamstow wrote:
| If the ZIRP era has taught us anything, it's that private
| companies can spray other people's money up the wall just
| as well as anyone
| robertlagrant wrote:
| It's the (partial) owners' money. The (partial) owners
| might be VC firms, but they are risking their own money.
| baking wrote:
| He is the Executive Chairman of Helion Energy so it is not
| just a passive investment.
|
| That said, I wish Helion wasn't so paranoid about Chinese
| copycats and was more open about their tech. I can't help but
| feel Sam Altman is at least partly responsible for that.
| tim333 wrote:
| I don't think the media are treating him as a "hero and savior
| of AI". However OpenAI and ChatGTP have undoubtedly been
| successful and he seems popular with his people. It's human
| nature to follow the top person as figurehead for an
| organisation as we or journalists don't have time or info to
| break down what each of the hundreds of employees contributed.
|
| I actually get the impression from the media that he's a bit
| shifty and sales orientated but seems effective at getting
| stuff done.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| > _but seems effective at getting stuff done._
|
| Sales usually is. It's the consequences, post-sale, that
| they're usually less effective at dealing with.
| logicchains wrote:
| >Why don't top researchers and scientists get equivalent (if
| not more) respect, admiration and support
|
| Google's full of top researchers and scientists who are at
| least as good as those at OpenAI; Sam's the reason OpenAI has a
| successful, useful product (GPT4), while Google has the far
| less effective, more lobotomized Bard.
| gumballindie wrote:
| > What has he done in life and/or AI to deserve so much respect
| and admiration?
|
| He's serving the right people by doing their bidding.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Altman seems to be a extraordinary leader, motivator, and
| strategizer. This itself is clear by the fact that 90% of the
| company was willing to walk out over his retention. Just think
| about that for minute.
| csunbird wrote:
| No, the 90% of the employees were scared that their million $
| salaries are going away along with Sam Altman.
| __loam wrote:
| Yeah, it should be extremely obvious the reason most of the
| employees were willing to walk is they've hitched their
| wagons to Altman. The board of openai put the presumed
| party day all of them were anticipating in jeopardy. Not
| all of us live in this god forsaken place to "work with
| cool tech".
| JansjoFromIkea wrote:
| stock options were probably the focus rather than the
| salaries
| mousetree wrote:
| There was about to be a secondary stock purchase by
| Thrive where employees could cash out their shares. That
| likely would've fallen apart if the board won the day.
| Employees had a massive incentive to get same back.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Sounds like a good way to to secure your position as
| leader.
|
| My job also secures my loyalty and support with a financial
| incentive. It is probably the most common way for a
| business leader to align interests.
|
| Kings reward dukes, and generals pay soldiers. Politicians
| trade policies. That doesn't mean they arent leaders.
| asimpletune wrote:
| There's also the alternative explanation that they feel their
| financial situation is improved by him being there.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| almost every decision here, except for the board, can be
| accounted for by financial decisions.
|
| Especially with putting Larry Summers on the board with
| this tweet.
| gizmo wrote:
| Yes yes, but that doesn't change the fact that Sam
| positioned himself to be unfireable. The board took their
| best shot and now the board is (mostly) gone and Sam is
| still the chief executive. They board will find itself
| sidelined from now on.
| tr888 wrote:
| I thought about it for a minute. I came to the conclusion
| that OpenAI would have likely tanked (perhaps even within
| days) had Altman not returned to maintain the status quo, and
| engineers didn't want to be out of work and left with
| worthless stock.
| iteratethis wrote:
| Please stop. No employee is loyal to any CEO based on some
| higher order matter. They just want to get their big pay day
| and will follow whoever makes that possible.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| That is part of effective leadership, strategy, and
| management.
|
| I didn't say anything about higher order values. Getting
| people to want what you want, and do what you want is a
| skill.
|
| Hitler was an extraordinary leader. That doesn't imply
| anything about higher values.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| Human nature, some people do love charismatic leaders. It's
| hard to comprehend for those of us with a more anarchist
| nature.
|
| That being said, I have no idea of this guy's contributions.
| It's easy to dismiss entrepreneur/managers because they're not
| top scientists, but they also have very rare skills and without
| them, projects don't get done.
| 93po wrote:
| Sam is crazy accomplished and it's easy to search why
| gabrielgio wrote:
| > What has he done in life and/or AI to deserve so much respect
| and admiration? Why don't top researchers and scientists get
| equivalent (if not more) respect, admiration and support?
|
| This has been the case for all achievement of all major
| companies, the CEO or whoever is on top gets the credit for all
| their employee's work. Why would be different for OpenAI?
| giamma wrote:
| Well there are notable cases in which the CEO had a critical
| role in the product development. Larry Ellison coded himself
| the first versions of Oracle database and was then CEO up to
| 2014. Shay Banon wrote Elasticsearch and was Elastic CEO for
| some time.
| gabrielgio wrote:
| Perhaps, those are exception that proves the rule?
|
| But whether it is deserved or not, it is never the question
| when congratulating a CEO for an achievement.
| sensanaty wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if Sam and his other
| ultra-rich buddies like Satya had their fingers deep in the
| pockets of all the tech journalists that immediately ran to his
| defense and sensationalized everything. Every single news
| source posted on HN read like pure shilling for the Ponzi sch-
| uh, I mean Worldcoin guy and hailing him as some sort of AI
| savant.
| egKYzyXeIL wrote:
| This reads like a far-fetched conspiracy theory
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Well, it's been exposed multiple times that money, egos and
| the media that needs to report about them create a school
| lunch table where they simply stroke each other's ego and
| inflate everything they do.
|
| No need for a conspiracy, everyones seen this in some
| aspect, it just gets worse when these people are throwing
| money around in the billions.
|
| all you need to do is witness someone Like Elon musk to see
| how disruptive this type of thing is.
| objektif wrote:
| You are delusional if you think YC folks does not have a
| wide network of tech journalists who would side with them
| when they need.
| __loam wrote:
| They give the journos access as long as they don't bite
| the hand that feeds. Anyone calling this a conspiracy
| theory simply hasn't been in the valley long enough to
| see how these things work.
| verve_rat wrote:
| Or frankly any industry that is covered by an industry
| press. Games, movies, cars, it's all the same.
| paulcole wrote:
| YC has an _entire website_ (this one) it can use when it
| needs to lol.
| fakedang wrote:
| You do know PR firms exist, right? Or have you been living
| under a rock since the dawn of the 20th century?
| iteratethis wrote:
| Really? It's well documented and even admitted that Apple
| has a set of Apple-friendly media partners.
| YourCupOTea wrote:
| Even the Federal Reserve has the "Fed Whisperer" Nick
| Timiraos. Pretty much an open secret he has a direct
| line.
| torginus wrote:
| My more plausible version is that CEOs of journalistic
| publications are in cahoots with the rich/powerful/govt
| people, who get to dictate the tone of said publications by
| hiring the right journalists/editors and giving them the
| right incentives.
|
| So as a journalist you might have freedom to write your
| articles, but your editor (as instructed by his/her senior
| editor) might try to steer you about writing in the correct
| tone.
|
| This is how 'Starship test flight makes history as it clears
| multiple milestones' becomes 'Musk rocket explodes during
| test'
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| But it did explode. And that was the part of the story that
| people were interested in.
| blitzar wrote:
| Let me offer up a secret from the inside. You dont in any way
| shape or form have to pay money to journalists. The can are
| bought and paid for through their currency - information and
| access.
|
| They dont really even really shill for their patron; they
| thrive on the relevance of having their name in the byline
| for the article, or being the person who gets quote /
| information / propaganda from <CEO|Celebrity|Criminal|Viral
| Edgelord of the Week>.
| Perz1val wrote:
| Maybe they feel really insecure when the "News Writing
| Themselves AI" company got unstable...
| busyant wrote:
| > Why don't top researchers and scientists get equivalent (if
| not more) respect, admiration and support?
|
| I can't believe I'm about to defend VCs and "senior management"
| but here goes.
|
| I've worked for two start-ups in my life.
|
| The first start-up had dog-shit technology (initially) and top-
| notch management. CEO told me early on that VCs invest on the
| quality of management because they trust good senior executives
| to hire good researchers and let them pivot into profitable
| areas (and pivoting is almost always needed).
|
| I thought the CEO was full of shit and simply patting himself
| on the back. Company pivoted HARD and IPOed around 2006 and now
| has a MC of ~ $10 billion.
|
| The second start-up I worked with was founded by a Nobel
| laureate and the tech was based on his research. This time
| management was dog-shit. Management fumbled the tech and went
| out of business.
|
| ===
|
| Not saying Altman deserves uncritical praise. All I'm saying is
| that I used to diminish the importance of quality senior
| leadership.
| rtsil wrote:
| > IPOed around 2006 and now has a MC of ~ $10 billion.
|
| The interesting thing is you used economic values to show
| their importance, not what innovations or changes they
| achieved. Which is fine for ordinary companies, but OpenAI is
| supposed to be a non-profit, so these metrics should not be
| relevant. Otherwise, what's the difference?
| matwood wrote:
| > OpenAI is supposed to be a non-profit, so these metrics
| should not be relevant
|
| You're doing the same thing except with finances. Non-
| profit doesn't mean finances are irrelevant. It simply
| means there are no shareholders. Non-profits are still
| businesses - no money, no mission.
| brookst wrote:
| Well said. And to extend, there being no shareholders
| means that no money leaves the company in the form of
| dividends or stock buybacks.
|
| That's it. Nonprofit corporations are still corporations
| in every other way.
| rvnx wrote:
| Yes, but non-profit doesn't mean non-money.
|
| You can get big salaries; and to push the money outside
| it's very simple, you just need to spend it through other
| companies.
|
| Additional bonus with some structures: If the co-
| investors are also the donators to the non-profit, they
| can deduct these donations from their taxes, and still
| pocket-back the profit, it's a double-win.
|
| No conspiracy needed, for example, it's very convenient
| that MSFT can politely "influence" OpenAI to spend back
| on their platform a lot of the money they gave to the
| non-profit back to their for-profit (and profitable)
| company.
|
| For example, you can create a chip company, and use the
| non-profit to buy your chips.
|
| Then the profit is channeled to you and your co-investors
| in the chip company.
| ric2b wrote:
| > No conspiracy needed, for example, it's very convenient
| that MSFT can politely "influence" OpenAI to spend back
| on their platform a lot of the money they gave to the
| non-profit back to their for-profit (and profitable)
| company.
|
| Can you explain this further? So Microsoft pays $X to
| OpenAI, then OpenAI uses a lot of energy and hardware
| from Microsoft and the $X go back to Microsoft. How does
| Microsoft gain money this way?
| matwood wrote:
| MS gains special access and influence over OpenAI for
| effectively 'free'. Obviously the compute cost MS money,
| and some of their 'donation' is used on OpenAI salaries,
| but still. This special access and influence lets MS be
| first to market on all sorts of products - see co-pilot
| already with a 1M+ paying subscribers.
|
| For example, let's say I'm a big for-profit selling
| shovels. You're a naive non-profit who needs shovels to
| build some next gen technology. Turns out you need a lot
| of shovels and donations so far haven't cut it. I step in
| and offer to give you all the shovels you need, but I
| want special access to what you create. And even if it's
| not codified, you will naturally feel indebted to me. I
| gain huge upside for just my marginal cost of creating
| the shovels. And, if I gave the shovels to a non-profit I
| can also take tax write-offs at the shovel market value.
|
| TBH, it was an amazing move by MS. And MS was the only
| big cloud provider who could have done it b/c Sataya
| appears collaborative and willing to partner. Amazon
| would have been an obvious choice, but they don't
| partnership like that and instead tend to buy companies
| or repurpose OSS. And Google can't get out of their own
| way with their hubris.
| infecto wrote:
| How do you do expensive bleeding edge research with no
| money? Sure you might get some grants in the millions but
| what if it takes billions. Now lets assume the research is
| no small feat, its not just a handful of individuals in a
| lab, we need to hire larger teams to make it happen. We
| have to pay for those individuals and their benefits.
|
| My take is its not cheap to do what they are doing and
| adding a capped for-profit side is an interesting take.
| Afterall, OpenAI's mission clearly states that AGI is
| happening and if thats true, those profit caps are probably
| trivial to meet.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > he interesting thing is you used economic values to show
| their importance, not what innovations or changes they
| achieved
|
| Money is just a way to value things relative to other
| things. It's not interesting to value something using
| money.
| DoughnutHole wrote:
| It is absolutely curious to talk about _profit_ when
| talking about academic research or a non-profit (which
| OpenAI officially is).
|
| Sure, you can talk about results in terms of their
| monetary value but it doesn't make sense to think of it
| in terms of the profit generated directly by the actor.
|
| For example Pfizer made huge profits off of the COVID-19
| vaccine. But that vaccine would never have been possible
| without foundational research conducted in universities
| in the US and Germany which established the viability in
| vivo of mRNA.
|
| Pfizer made billions and many lives were saved using the
| work of academics (which also laid the groundwork for
| future valuable vaccines). The profit made by the
| academics and universities was minimal in comparison.
|
| So, whose work was more valuable?
| robertlagrant wrote:
| No one mentioned profit, I think.
| matwood wrote:
| Great comment. You interspersed the two, but instead of using
| management I like to say that it's _leadership_ that matters.
| Getting a bunch of people (smart or not) to all row in the
| same direction with the same vision is hard. It 's also
| commonly the difference between success and failure. Of
| course the ICs deserve admiration and respect, but people
| (ICs) are often quick to dismiss leadership.
|
| A great analogy can be found on basketball teams. Lots of
| star players who should succeed sans any coach, but Phil
| Jackson and Coach K have shown time and again the important
| role leadership plays.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| I'd extend that leadership in the form of management needs
| leadership in the technical aspect as well. The two need to
| work in tandem to make things work. Imho the best technical
| leads are usually not the smartest ones, they are those
| that best utilize their resources - read, other people -
| and are force multipliers.
|
| Of course you need the people who can deep dive and solve
| complex issues, none doubts that.
| matwood wrote:
| Agree completely!
| spaceribs wrote:
| I'd go further than even that! You need 3 forms of
| advocacy in leadership for a successful business,
| business/market, tech, and time. The balance of those
| three can make or break any business.
|
| You can see this at the micro level in a scrum team
| between the scrummaster, the product owner, and the tech
| lead.
| CrazyStat wrote:
| I remember about ten years ago someone arguing that Coach K
| was overrated because his college players on average
| underperformed in the NBA (relative to their college
| careers).
|
| I could not convince them that this was actually evidence
| in favor of Coach K being an exceptional coach.
| gardenhedge wrote:
| Either thought process could be correct and it could
| depend on expectations.
| vlad_ungureanu wrote:
| Interesting, I always thought that research and startups are
| very similar. Where you have something (product/research-
| idea) which you think is novel and try to sell it
| (journals/customers).
|
| The management skills which you potentiated differentiated
| the success of the two firms. I can see how the lack of this
| might be wildly spread out in academia.
| mikpanko wrote:
| Most startups need to do a very different type of research
| than academia. They need to move very fast and test ideas
| against the market. In my experience, most academic
| research is moving pretty slowly due to different goals and
| incentives - and at times it can be a good thing.
| danaris wrote:
| > All I'm saying is that I used to diminish the importance of
| quality senior leadership.
|
| Quality senior leadership is, indeed, very important.
|
| However, far, far too many people see "their company makes a
| lot of money" or "they are charismatic and talk a good game"
| and think that means the senior leadership is high-quality.
|
| True quality is much harder to measure, _especially_ in the
| short term. As you imply, part of it is being able to choose
| good management--but measuring the quality of management is
| _also_ hard, and most of the corporate world today has
| utterly backwards ideas about what actually makes good
| managers (eg, "willing to abuse employees to force them to
| work long hours", etc).
| bnralt wrote:
| > Not saying Altman deserves uncritical praise. All I'm
| saying is that I used to diminish the importance of quality
| senior leadership.
|
| Absolutely. The focus on the leadership of OpenAI isn't
| because people think that the top researchers and scientists
| are unimportant. It's because they realize that they are
| important, and as such, the person who decides the direction
| they go in is extremely important. End up with the wrong
| person at the top, and all of those researchers and
| scientists end up wasting time spinning wheels on things that
| will never reach the public.
| dangerface wrote:
| Yea its a bit much he obviously doesn't deserve the admiration
| that he is getting. That said he deserves respect for helping
| bring ChatGPT to market, he deserves support because the board
| have acted like clowns and justified it with their mission of
| public accountability, but have rejected the idea that the
| board itself should be publicly accountable.
| alentred wrote:
| > treating Sam like some hero
|
| Recent OpenAI CEOs found themselves on the protagonist side not
| for their actions, but for the way they have been seemingly
| treated by the board. Regardless of actual actions on either
| side, "heroic" or not, of which the public knows very little.
| prepend wrote:
| I don't get that at all.
|
| The OpenAI board just seems irrational, immature, indecisive,
| and many other stupid features you don't want in a board.
|
| I don't see this so much as an "Altman is amazing" outcome so
| much as the board is incompetent and doing incompetent things
| and OpenAI's products are popular and the boards actions put
| this products in danger.
|
| Not that Altman isn't cool, I think he's smart, but I think a
| similar coverage would have occurred with any other ceo who was
| fired for vague and seemingly random reasons on a Friday
| afternoon.
| Kinrany wrote:
| The board is not supposed to be good at executive things,
| that's why they have CEOs
| gandutraveler wrote:
| There is a reason why the top researchers and engineers at
| OpenAI stood behind Sam. Someday you will learn the value of
| good leader
| bart_spoon wrote:
| Stock options?
| redserk wrote:
| Unfortunately the engineers aren't usually the ones getting the
| praise but CEO or other singular figurehead.
| 627467 wrote:
| A CEO is not a researcher. A researcher can be a CEO but in
| doing so stops being a researcher.
|
| Maybe (almost certainly) Sam is not a savior/hero, but he
| doesn't need to be a savior/hero. He just needs to gather more
| support than the opposition (the now previous board). And even
| if you don't know any details of this story, enough insiders
| who know more than any of us of what happens inside oai -
| including hundred of researchers - decided to support the
| "savior/hero". It's less about Sam and more about an
| incompetent board. Some of those board members are top
| researchers. And they are now on the losing camp.
| ur-whale wrote:
| > It looks like one should strive to become product manager,
| not an engineer or a scientist.
|
| If you look at who's running Google right now, you would be
| essentially correct.
| smrtinsert wrote:
| The service itself has an incredible amount of utility and he
| will make them all wealthy. Seems like a no brainer to me.
| throwaway318 wrote:
| Either:
|
| Incubation of senior management in US tech has reached
| singularity and only one person's up for the job. Doom awaits
| the US tech sector as there's no organisational ability other
| than one person able and willing to take the big complex job.
|
| Or:
|
| Sam's overvalued.
|
| One or the other.
| iteratethis wrote:
| Apparently he has a massive role in VC, and since this
| community, tech twitter, etc. all circle around that, he is
| unconditionally praised.
|
| Further, the current tech wave is all about AI, where there's a
| massive community of basically "OpenAI wrapper" grifters trying
| to ride the wave.
|
| The shorter answer is: money.
| turtle_ wrote:
| If you grew up in the 90s, you'll understand:
|
| Don't hate the player, hate the game
| latexr wrote:
| The "game" only continues to exist as long as there are
| "players". You're perfectly justified to be discontent with
| the ones who perpetuate a system you disagree with.
|
| That phrase is nothing more than a dissimulated way of saying
| "tough luck" or "I don't care" while trying to act
| (outdatedly) cool. You don't need to have grown up in any
| specific decade to understand its meaning.
| notesinthefield wrote:
| The CEO is the face of the company, rarely does the public care
| about the scientists or engineers. This isnt a new concept, its
| always happened.
| mikpanko wrote:
| One of the most important things I've learned in life is that
| organizing people to work toward the same goal is very hard.
| The larger the group you need to organize, the harder it is.
|
| Initially, when the idea is small, it is hard to sell it to
| talent, investors and early customers to bring all key pieces
| together.
|
| Later, when the idea is well recognized and accepted, the
| organization usually becomes big and the challenge shifts to
| understanding the complex interaction of various competing sub-
| ideas, projects and organizational structures. Humans did not
| evolve to manage such complex systems and interacting with
| thousands of stakeholders, beyond what can be directly observed
| and fully understood.
|
| However, without this organization, engineers, researchers, etc
| cannot work on big audacious projects, which involve more
| resources than 1 person can provide by themselves. That's why
| the skill of organizing and leading people is so highly valued
| and compensated.
|
| It is common to think of leaders not contributing much, but
| this view might be skewed because of mostly looking at
| executives in large companies at the time they have clear
| moats. At that point leadership might be less important in the
| short term: product sells itself, talent is knocking on the
| door, and money is abundant. But this is an unusual short-lived
| state between taking an idea off the ground and defending
| against quickly shifting market forces.
| sealthedeal wrote:
| Simply put Altman is now the face of AI.
|
| If you were to ask Altman himself though im sure he would
| highlight the true innovators of AI that he holds in high
| respect.
| lacrimacida wrote:
| He is but with a caveat. In this 5D chess game of firing him
| and getting him back into OpenAI put all the spotlights on
| him.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Then again wasn't that always true? What did Steve Jobs really
| build?
| gfiorav wrote:
| IMO:
|
| They fired the CEO and didn't even inform Microsoft, who had
| invested a massive $20 billion. That's a serious lapse in
| judgment. A company needs leaders who understand business, not
| just a smart researcher with a sense of ethical superiority.
| This move by the board was unprofessional and almost childish.
|
| Those board members? Their future on any other board looks
| pretty bleak. Venture capitalists will think twice before
| getting involved with anything they have a hand in.
|
| On the other side, Sam did increase the company's revenue,
| which is a significant achievement. He got offers from various
| companies and VCs the minute the news went public.
|
| The business community's support for Sam is partly a critique
| of the board's actions and partly due to the buzz he and his
| company have created. It's a significant moment in the
| industry.
| erickhill wrote:
| Read up on the John Sculley/Michael Spindler days of Apple, and
| Jobs' return.
|
| I think that's what may be in the minds of several people
| eagerly watching this eventually-to-be-made David Fincher
| movie.
| snickerbockers wrote:
| Journalists really want everything to have a singular inventor.
| The concept of an organization is very difficult for them to
| grasp so they attribute everything to the guy at the top. Sam
| Altman is the latest in a long line of "inventors" which also
| includes such esteemed personalities as Elon musk, Steve Jobs,
| etc.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > The media and the VCs are treating Sam like some hero and
| savior of AI
|
| I wouldn't be so sure. While I think the board handled this
| process terribly, I think the majority of mainstream media
| articles I saw were very cautionary regarding the outcome.
| Examples (and note the second article reports that Paul Graham
| fired Altman from YC, which I never knew before):
|
| MarketWatch: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-openai-
| debacle-shows-s...
|
| Washington Post:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/22/sam-alt...
| RockyMcNuts wrote:
| Below is a good thread, which maybe contains the answer to your
| question, and Ken Olsen's question about why brainiac MIT grads
| get managed by midwit HBS grads.
|
| https://twitter.com/coloradotravis/status/172606030573668790...
|
| A good leader is someone you'll follow into battle, because you
| want to do right by the team, and you know the leader and the
| team will do right by you. Whatever 'leadership' is, Sam Altman
| has it and the board does not.
|
| https://www.ft.com/content/05b80ba4-fcc3-4f39-a0c3-97b025418...
|
| The board could have said, hey we don't like this direction and
| you are not keeping us in the loop, it's time for an orderly
| change. But they knew that wouldn't go well for them either.
| They chose to accuse Sam of malfeasance and be weaselly
| ratfuckers on some level themselves, even if they felt for
| still-inscrutable reasons that was their only/best choice and
| wouldn't go down the way it did.
|
| Sam Altman is the front man who 'gave us' ChatGPT regardless of
| everything else Ilya and everyone else did. A personal brand
| (or corporate) is about trust, if you have a brand you are
| playing a long-term game, a reputation converts prisoner's
| dilemma into iterated prisoner's dilemma which has a different
| outcome.
| eddtries wrote:
| IMO and experience a good product manager is far more important
| than a good engineer or good scientist
|
| Elon Musk's neuralink is a good example - the work they're
| doing there was attacked by academics saying they'd done this
| years ago and it's not novel, yet none of them will be the ones
| who ultimately bring it to market.
| dandanua wrote:
| CEO is a ruler, scientist is a worker. The modern culture
| treats workers as a replaceable matter, which is redundant
| after the work is done. They are just tools. Rulers, on the
| other hand, take the all praise and honors. It's "them" who did
| the work. Musk is an extreme example of this.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Results matter.
| intended wrote:
| From a business sense, Satya was excellent.
|
| He made the right calls, fast, with limited information.
|
| Things further shifted from plan a to b to... whatever this is.
|
| Despite that, MSFT still came out on top.
|
| Consider if Satya didn't say anything. Suppose MSFT stood back
| and let things play out.
|
| That's a gap for google or some competitor to make a move. To
| showcase their stability and long term business friendly vision.
|
| Instead by moving fast, doing the "right" thing, this opportunity
| was denied and used to MSFTs benefit.
|
| If the board folded, it would return to the stays quo. If the
| board held, MSFT would have secured OpenAI, for essentially
| nothing.
|
| Edit: changed board folded x2 to board folded + board held, last
| para.
| huytersd wrote:
| Satya may honestly be the CEO of the decade for what he has
| done with Microsoft and now this.
| chatmasta wrote:
| Meanwhile Sundar might be the worst. Where was he this
| weekend? Where was he the past three years while his company
| got beat to market on products built from its own research?
| He's asleep at the wheel. I'm surprised every day he remains
| CEO.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| So is everyone else at Google.
| gardenhedge wrote:
| Satya invested 10b into a company with terrible, incompetent
| governance and not getting his company any seat of influence
| on the board. That doesn't seem great.
| campbel wrote:
| The only mistake (a big one) was publicly offering to match
| comp for all the OpenAI employees. Can't sit well with folks @
| MS already. This was something they could have easily done
| privately to give petition signers confidence.
| asd88 wrote:
| Nah, Microsoft employees being second class citizens compared
| to acquisitions is nothing new. e.g. compare Microsoft comp
| with LinkedIn/GitHub comp.
| semiquaver wrote:
| LinkedIn has a rep for higher-than-MSFT comp. GitHub for
| lower.
| alentred wrote:
| Yep, outplayed like in chess. Started with a handicap, led the
| game to the stalemate, won the match.
| zug_zug wrote:
| I am not sure why people keep pushing this narrative. It's not
| obviously false, but there doesn't seem to be much evidence of
| it.
|
| From where I sit Satya possibly messed up big. He clearly
| wanted Sam and the Open AI team to join microsoft and they
| won't now, likely ever.
|
| By offering a standing offer to join MS publicly he gave Sam
| and OpenAI employees huge leverage to force the board's hand.
| If he had waited then maybe there would have been an actual
| fallout that would have lead to people actually joining
| microsoft.
| jnwatson wrote:
| Satya's main mistake was not having a spot on the board.
| Everything after that was in defense of the initial
| investment, and he played all the right moves.
|
| While having OpenAI as a Microsoft DeepMind would have been
| an ok second-best solution, the status quo is still better
| for Microsoft. There would have been a bunch of legal issues
| and it would be a hit on Microsoft's bottom line.
| intended wrote:
| Its very easy to min max a situation if you are not on the
| other side.
|
| Additionally - I have not seen someone else talk about this,
| its just been a few days. Calling it a narrative is a
| stretch, and dismissive by implying manipulation.
|
| Finally why would Sam joining MSFT be better than this
| current situation?
| asperous wrote:
| I don't think that's quite right, Microsoft's main game was
| keeping the money train going by any means necessary, they
| have staked so much on copilots and Enterprise/Azure Open AI.
| So much has been invested into that strategic direction and
| seeing Google swoop in and out-innovate Microsoft would be a
| huge loss.
|
| Either by keeping OpenAI as-is, or the alternative being
| moving everyone to Microsoft in an attempt to keep things
| going would work for Satya.
| auggierose wrote:
| So, the only two women were removed from the board, and two
| ultra-alpha males were brought on. And everybody is cheering it
| on as the right thing to do!
|
| Not judging, just observing.
| huytersd wrote:
| It's definitely the right thing to do. Those women had
| "qualifications" in a made up field with no real world
| relevance that aimed to halt progress on AI work. We are no
| where close to a paradigm where AI takes over the world or
| whatever.
| lucubratory wrote:
| And Larry Summers believes that women are genetically inferior
| to men at science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. A
| lot of the techbro hate that was directed specifically at Helen
| is openly misogynistic, which is actually pretty funny because
| Larry Summers was probably who Helen was eventually happy with
| because of their shared natsec connections.
| maxdoop wrote:
| Is there any way to disagree with Helen and not be
| misogynistic in your view? How would that look?
| lucubratory wrote:
| Disagree with her or her actions without falsely claiming
| that she has no qualifications or understanding of AI and
| therefore no business being on the board in the first
| place? It is not hard at all to do so, and many people did.
| maxdoop wrote:
| Do you think people said she has no qualifications
| because she is a woman, or is it possible people say that
| because her resume is quite short ? It seems like people
| taking such comments as misogynistic are actually
| projecting misogyny into the situation, rather than the
| reverse. If you showed me her resume and put "Steven
| Smith" stop the paper, I'd say that person isn't
| qualified to be running the board of a 90 billion dollar
| company in charge of guiding research on some of the most
| groundbreaking new tech in years.
| c0pium wrote:
| > Not judging
|
| I wonder if this has ever been said truthfully?
| auggierose wrote:
| You don't have to wonder anymore! You replied to an example
| of it.
| maxdoop wrote:
| Oh, cmon. Why must people reach like this?
|
| How about we look at credentials, merit, and consensus as
| opposed to "what gender are they?"
| auggierose wrote:
| I am sure Larry Summers is highly qualified for this job.
| Would have been very hard to find a willing woman with his
| qualifications.
| maxdoop wrote:
| Why does being a man or woman even matter? Do we really
| need a DEI hire for the board of some of the most
| groundbreaking tech in years? I'm not saying Larry Summers
| has some perfect resume for the job; but to assume he was
| brought on BECAUSE he is man?
|
| Cmon. There's absolutely no evidence for that and you are
| just projecting an issue into the situation, rather than it
| being of any reality.
| auggierose wrote:
| I think you are the one projecting. I am just presenting
| facts. There is also nobody black on the board, by the
| way. I don't think that is a problem, but it is what it
| is.
|
| Now this "initial board", tasked with establishing the
| rest of the board, for a company that wants to create AGI
| for the benefit of humanity, consists of three white
| alpha-males. That's just a fact. Is it a coincidence? Of
| course not.
| ahzhou wrote:
| I was thinking about this too, but the wife of an actor and
| someone two years out of her masters were not the caliber
| people that should have been on the board of an $80B company.
|
| I would expect people with backgrounds like Sheryl Sandberg or
| Dr. Lisa Sue to sit in the position. The two replaced women
| would have looked like diversity hires had they not been
| affiliated with an AI doomer organization.
|
| I hope there's diversity of representation as they fill out the
| rest of the board and there's certainly women who have the
| credentials, but it's important that they don't appear grossly
| unqualified when they sit next to the other board members.
| galoisscobi wrote:
| Sheryl Sandberg's sense of ethics and moral compass are
| highly questionable.
| I_am_tiberius wrote:
| Let's hope he now focuses on user privacy and AI safety.
| benkarst wrote:
| Greed is undefeated.
| Satam wrote:
| Disappointing outcome. The process has conclusively confirmed
| that OpenAI is in fact not open and that it is effectively
| controlled by Microsoft. Furthermore, the overwhelming groupthink
| shows there's clearly little critical thinking amongst OpenAI's
| employees either.
|
| It might not seem like the case right now, but I think the real
| disruption is just about to begin. OpenAI does not have in its
| DNA to win, they're too short-sighted and reactive. Big techs
| will have incredible distribution power but a real disruptor must
| be brewing somewhere unnoticed, for now.
| kmlevitt wrote:
| A lot of this comes down to processing power though. That's why
| Microsoft had so much leverage with both factions in this
| fight. It actually gives them a pretty good moat above and
| beyond their head start. There aren't too many companies with
| the hardware to compete, let alone talent.
| patcon wrote:
| Agreed. Perhaps a reason for public AI [1], which advocates
| for a publicly funded option where a player like MSFT can't
| push around something like OpenAI so forcefully.
|
| [1]: https://lu.ma/zo0vnony
| haunter wrote:
| > OpenAI is in fact not open
|
| Apple is also not an apple
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| Pretty sure Apple never aimed to be an Apple.
| hef19898 wrote:
| They sure sued a lot of apple places over having an apple
| as logo.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| If having an apple logo makes a company an apple, then
| Apple is in fact an apple
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| But The Apple.
| monoscient wrote:
| It's actually one of the most spectacular failures in
| business history, but we don't talk much about it
| smt88 wrote:
| Apple has no by-laws committing itself to being an apple.
|
| This line of argument is facile and destructive to
| conversation anyway.
|
| It boils down to, "Pointing out corporate hypocrisy isn't
| valuable because corporations are liars," and (worse) it
| implies the other person is naive.
|
| In reality, we can and should be outraged when corporations
| betray their own statements and supposed values.
| khazhoux wrote:
| > In reality, we can and should be outraged when
| corporations betray their own statements and supposed
| values.
|
| There are only three groups of people who could be subject
| to betrayal here: employees, investors, and customers.
| Clearly they did not betray employees or investors, since
| they largely sided with Sam. As for customers, that's
| harder to gauge -- did people sign up for ChatGPT with the
| explicit expectation that the research would be "open"?
|
| The founding charter said one thing, but the majority of
| the company and investors went in a different direction.
| That's not a betrayal, but a pivot.
| Angostura wrote:
| I think there's an additional group to consider- society
| at large.
|
| To an extent the promise of the non- profit was that they
| would be safe, expert custodians of AI development driven
| not primarily by the profit motive, but also by safety
| and societal considerations. Has this larger group been
| 'betrayed'? Perhaps
| biscottigelato wrote:
| Also donors. They received a ton of donations when they
| were a pure non-profit from people that got no board
| seat, no equities, with the believe that they will stick
| to their mission.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| Not unless we believe that OpenAI is somehow "special"
| and unique and the only company that is capable of
| building AGI(or whatever).
| master-lincoln wrote:
| > Clearly they did not betray employees or investors,
| since they largely sided with Sam
|
| Just because they sided with Altman doesn't necessarily
| mean they are aligned. There could be a lack of
| information on the employee/investor side.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > There are only three groups of people who could be
| subject to betrayal here
|
| GP didn't speak of betraying people; he spoke of
| betraying _their own statements_. That just means doing
| what you said you wouldn 't; it doesn't mean anyone was
| stabbed in the back.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| > Apple has no by-laws committing itself to being an apple.
|
| Does OpenAI have by-laws committing itself to being "open"
| (as in open source or at least their products freely and
| universally available)? I thought their goals were the
| complete opposite of that?
|
| Unfortunately, in reality Facebook/Meta seems to be more
| open than "Open"AI.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| This is spot on. Open was the wrong word to choose for
| their name, and in the technology space means nearly the
| opposite of the charter's intention. BeneficialAI would
| have been more "aligned" with their claimed mission. They
| have made their position quite clear - the creation of an
| AGI that is safe and benefits all humanity requires a
| closed process that limits who can have access to it. I
| understand their theoretical concerns, but the desire for
| a "benevolent dictator" goes back to at least Plato and
| always ends in tears.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| It does seem that the hypocrisy was baked in from the
| beginning. In the tech world 'open' implied open source but
| OpenAI wanted to benefit from a marketing itself as
| something like Linux when internally it was something like
| Microsoft.
|
| Corporations have no values whatsoever and their statements
| only mean anything when expressed in terms of a legally
| binding contract. All corporate value statements should be
| viewed as nothing more than the kind of self-serving
| statements that an amoral narcissitic sociopath would make
| to protect their own interests.
| colinsane wrote:
| did the "Open" in OpenAI not originally refer to open in the
| academic or open source manner? i only learned about OpenAI
| in the GPT-2 days, when they released it openly and it was
| still small enough that i ran it on my laptop: i just assumed
| they had always acted according to their literal name up
| through that point.
| SuchAnonMuchWow wrote:
| Except that view point fell even earlier when they refused
| to release their models after GPT-2.
| Centigonal wrote:
| This has been a common misinterpretation since very early
| in OpenAI's history (and a somewhat convenient one for
| OpenAI).
|
| From a 2016 New Yorker article:
|
| > Dario Amodei said, "[People in the field] are saying that
| the goal of OpenAI is to build a friendly A.I. and then
| release its source code into the world."
|
| > "We don't plan to release all of our source code," Altman
| said. "But let's please not try to correct that. That
| usually only makes it worse."
|
| source: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/sam-
| altmans-ma...
| olau wrote:
| I'm not sure this is a correct characterization. Lex
| Fridman interviewed Elon Musk recently where Musk says
| that the "open" was supposed to stand for "open source".
|
| To be fair, Fridman grilled Musk on his views today, also
| in the context of xAI, and he was less clear cut there,
| talking about the problem that there's actually very
| little source code, it's mostly about the data.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Altman appears to be in the driving seat, so it doesn't
| matter what other people are saying, the point is "Open"
| is not being used here to the open source context _but_
| they definitely dont try to correct anyone who thinks
| they're providing open source products.
| lynx23 wrote:
| Yes!
| sangeeth96 wrote:
| I got news for you pal:
| https://www.wired.co.uk/article/apple-vs-apples-trademark-
| ba...
| Cacti wrote:
| these are the vapid, pedantic hot takes we all come here for.
| thanks.
| rurp wrote:
| Did Apple raise funds and spend a lot of time promoting
| itself as a giant apple that would feed humanity?
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| It wasn't necessarily groupthink - there was profound pressure
| from team Sam to sign that petition. What's going to happen to
| your career when you were one of the 200 who held out
| initially?
| hef19898 wrote:
| Go work somewhere else? The reason being you din't like that
| amount of drama?
| concordDance wrote:
| Isn't that one of the causes of group think?
| Kathula wrote:
| Folding for pressure and group think is different things
| imo. You can be very aware you are folding for pressure,
| but doing it because it's the right/easy thing to do. While
| group think is more a phenomenon you are not aware of at
| all.
| ben_w wrote:
| > What's going to happen to your career when you were one of
| the 200 who held out initially?
|
| Anthropic formed from people who split from OpenAI, and xAI
| in response to either the company or ChatGPT, so people would
| have plenty of options.
|
| If the staff had as little to go on as the rest of us, then
| the board did something _that looked_ wild and unpredictable,
| which is an acute employment threat all by itself.
| voster wrote:
| That burns bridges with people in OpenAI
|
| People underestimate the effects of social pressure, and
| losing social connections. Ilya voted for Sam's firing, but
| was quickly socially isolated as a result
|
| That's not to say people didn't genuinely feel committed to
| Sam or his leadership. Just that they also took into
| account that the community is relatively small and people
| remember you and your actions
| dereg wrote:
| There weren't 200 holdouts. It was like 5 AM over there. I
| don't know why you are surprised that people who work at
| OpenAI would want to work at OpenAI, esp over Microsoft?
| mcosta wrote:
| How do you know that?
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| They can just work somewhere else with relative ease. Some
| OpenAI employees on Twitter said they were being bombarded by
| recruiters throughout until tonight's resolution. People have
| left OpenAI before and they are doing just fine.
| jmcgough wrote:
| > What's going to happen to your career when you were one of
| the 200 who held out initially?
|
| Not to mention Roko's basilisk /s
| politelemon wrote:
| > there's clearly little critical thinking amongst OpenAI's
| employees either.
|
| That they reached a different conclusion than the outcome you
| wished for does not indicate a lack of critical thinking
| skills. They have a different set of information than you do,
| and reached a different conclusion.
| dimask wrote:
| It is not about different set of information, but different
| stakes/interests. They act firstmost as investors rather than
| as employees on this.
| siva7 wrote:
| A board member, Helen Toner, made a borderline narcissistic
| remark that it would be consistent with the company mission
| to destroy the company when the leadership confronted the
| board that their decisions puts the future of the company
| in danger. Almost all employees resigned in protest. It's
| insulting calling the employees under these circumstances
| investors.
| outsomnia wrote:
| > Almost all employees resigned in protest.
|
| That never happened, right?
| ldjb wrote:
| Almost all employees did not resign in protest, but they
| did _threaten_ to resign.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/20/23968988/openai-
| employee...
| stingraycharles wrote:
| Don't forget she's heavily invested in a company that is
| directly competing with OpenAI. So obviously it's also in
| her best interest to see OpenAI destroyed.
| lodovic wrote:
| She probably wants both companies to be successful. Board
| members are not super villains.
| siva7 wrote:
| I agree that we should usually assume good faith. Still,
| if a member knows she will loose the board seat soon and
| makes such a implicit statement to the leadership team
| there is reason to believe that she doesn't want both
| companies to be successful, at least one of those not.
| murakamiiq84 wrote:
| Wait what? She invested in a competitor? Do you have a
| source?
| otteromkram wrote:
| One source might be DuckDuckGo. It's a privacy-focused
| alternative to Google, which is great when researching
| "unusual" topics.
| murakamiiq84 wrote:
| I couldn't find any source on her investing in any AI
| companies. If it's true (and not hidden), I'm really
| surprised that major news publications aren't covering
| it.
| dontupvoteme wrote:
| >which is great when researching "unusual" topics.
|
| Yandex is for Porn. What is DDG for?
| free652 wrote:
| DDG sells your information to Microsoft, there is no such
| thing as privacy when $$$ are involved
| doktrin wrote:
| > _obviously_ it's also in her best interest to see
| OpenAI destroyed
|
| Do you feel the same way about Reed Hastings serving on
| Facebooks BoD, or Eric Schmidt on Apples? How about Larry
| Ellison at Tesla?
|
| These are just the lowest of hanging fruit, i.e literal
| chief executives and founders. If we extend the criteria
| for ethical compromise to include every board members
| investment portfolio I imagine quite a few more "obvious"
| conflicts will emerge.
| svnt wrote:
| How does Netflix compete with Facebook?
|
| This is what happened with Eric Schmidt on Apple's board:
| he was removed (allowed to resign) for conflicts of
| interest.
|
| https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2009/08/03Dr-Eric-Schmidt-
| Res...
|
| Oracle is going to get into EVs?
|
| You've provided two examples that have no conflicts of
| interest and one where the person was removed when they
| did.
| doktrin wrote:
| > How does Netflix compete with Facebook?
|
| By definition the attention economy dictates that time
| spent one place can't be spent in another. Do you also
| feel as though Twitch doesn't compete with Facebook
| simply because they're not identical businesses? That's
| not how it works.
|
| But you don't have to just take my word for it :
|
| > "Netflix founder and co-CEO Reed Hastings said
| Wednesday he was slow to come around to advertising on
| the streaming platform because he was too focused on
| digital competition from Facebook and Google."
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/11/30/netflix-ceo-reed-
| hasting...
|
| > This is what happened with Eric Schmidt on Apple's
| board
|
| Yes, after 3 years. A tenure longer than the OAI board
| members in question, so frankly the point stands.
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| > > By definition the attention economy dictates that
| time spent one place can't be spent in another
|
| Using that definition even the local gokart renting place
| or the local jetski renting place competes with Facebook.
|
| If you want to use that definition you might want to also
| add a criteria for minimum size of the company.
| doktrin wrote:
| > Using that definition even the local gokart renting
| place or the local jetski renting place competes with
| Facebook
|
| Not exactly what I had in mind, but sure. Facebook would
| much rather you never touch grass, jetskis or gokarts.
|
| > If you want to use that definition you might want to
| also add a criteria for minimum size of the company.
|
| Your feedback is noted.
|
| Do we disagree on whether or not the two FAANG companies
| in question are in competition with eachother?
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| > > Do we disagree
|
| I think yes, because Netflix you pay out of pocket,
| whereas Facebook is a free service
|
| I believe Facebook vs Hulu or regular TV is more of a
| competition in the attention economy because when the
| commercial break comes up then you start scrolling your
| social media on your phone and every 10 posts or whatever
| you stumble into the ads placed on there so Facebook ads
| are seen and convert whereas regular tv and hulu aren't
| seen and dont convert
| doktrin wrote:
| > I think yes, because Netflix you pay out of pocket,
| whereas Facebook is a free service
|
| Do you agree that the following company pairs are
| competitors? * FB : TikTok *
| TikTok : YT * YT : Netflix
|
| If so, then by transitive reasoning there is competition
| between FB and Netflix.
|
| ...
|
| To be clear, this is an abuse of logic and hence somewhat
| tongue in cheek, but I also don't think either of the
| above comparisons are wholly unreasonable. At the end of
| the day, it's eyeballs all the way down and everyone
| wants as many as of them shabriri grapes as they can get.
| dpkirchner wrote:
| The two FAANG companies don't compete at a product level,
| however they do compete for talent, which is significant.
| Probably significant enough to cause conflicts of
| interest.
| svnt wrote:
| I'm not sure how the point stands. The iPhone was
| introduced during that tenure, then the App Store, then
| Jobs decided Google was also headed toward their own full
| mobile ecosystem, and released Schmidt. None of that was
| a conflict of interest at the beginning. Jobs initially
| didn't even think Apple would have an app store.
|
| Talking about conflicts of interest in the attention
| economy is like talking about conflicts of interest in
| the money economy. If the introduction of the concept
| doesn't clarify anything functionally then it's a
| giveaway that you're broadening the discussion to avoid
| losing the point.
|
| You forgot to do Oracle and Tesla.
| doktrin wrote:
| > Talking about conflicts of interest in the attention
| economy is like talking about conflicts of interest in
| the money economy. If the introduction of the concept
| doesn't clarify anything functionally then it's a
| giveaway that you're broadening the discussion to avoid
| losing the point.
|
| It's a well established concept and was supported with a
| concrete example. If you don't feel inclined to address
| my points, I'm certainly not obligated to dance to your
| tune.
| svnt wrote:
| Your concrete example is Netflix's CEO saying he doesn't
| want to do advertising because he missed the boat and was
| on Facebook's board and as a result didn't believe he had
| the data to compete as an advertising platform.
|
| Attempting to run ads like Google and Facebook would
| bring Netflix into direct competition with them, and he
| knows he doesn't have the relationships or company
| structure to support it.
|
| He is explicitly saying they don't compete. And they
| don't.
| Philpax wrote:
| Uhhh, are you sure about that? She wrote a paper that
| praised Anthropic's approach to safety, but as far as I'm
| aware she's not invested in them.
|
| Are you thinking of the CEO of Quora whose product was
| eaten alive by the announcement of GPTs?
| ah765 wrote:
| It is a correct statement, not really "borderline
| narcissistic". The board's mission is to help humanity
| develop safe beneficial AGI. If the board thinks that the
| company is hindering this mission (e.g. doing unsafe
| things), then it's the board's duty to stop the company.
|
| Of course, the employees want the company to continue,
| and weren't told much at this point so it is
| understandable that they didn't like the statement.
| siva7 wrote:
| I can't interpret from the charter that the board has the
| authorisation to destroy the company under the current
| circumstances:
|
| > We are concerned about late-stage AGI development
| becoming a competitive race without time for adequate
| safety precautions. Therefore, if a value-aligned,
| safety-conscious project comes close to building AGI
| before we do, we commit to stop competing with and start
| assisting this project
|
| That wasn't the case. So it may be not so far fetched to
| call her actions borderline as it is also very easy to
| hide personal motives behind altruistic ones.
| ah765 wrote:
| The more relevant part is probably "OpenAI's mission is
| to ensure that AGI ... benefits all of humanity".
|
| The statement "it would be consistent with the company
| mission to destroy the company" is correct. The word
| "would be" rather than "is" implies some condition, it
| doesn't have to apply to the current circumstances.
|
| A hypothesis is that Sam was attempting to gain full
| control of the board by getting the majority, and
| therefore the current board would be unable to hold him
| accountable to follow the mission in the future.
| Therefore, the board may have considered it necessary to
| stop him in order to fulfill the mission. There's no hard
| evidence of that revealed yet though.
| qwytw wrote:
| > this mission (e.g. doing unsafe things), then it's the
| board's duty to stop the company.
|
| So instead of having to compromise to some extent but
| still have a say what happens next you burn the company
| at best delaying the whole thing by 6-12 months until
| someone else does it? Well at least your hands are clean,
| but that's about it...
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| The only OpenAI employees who resigned in protest are the
| employees that were against Sam Altman. That's how
| Anthropic appeared.
| sanderjd wrote:
| And it seems like they were right that the for-profit
| part of the company had become out of control, in the
| literal sense that we've seen through this episode that
| it could not be controlled.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Ands the evidence is now that OpenAI is a business 2
| business product and not a attempt to keep AI doing
| anything but satiating anything Microsoft wants.
| karmasimida wrote:
| Tell me how the board's actions could convince the
| employees they are making the right move?
|
| Even if they are genuine in believing firing Sam is to keep
| OpenAI's founding principles, they can't be doing a better
| job in convincing everyone they are NOT able to execute it.
|
| OpenAI has some of the smartest human beings on this
| planet, saying they don't think critically just because
| they don't vote with what you agree is reaching reaching.
| kortilla wrote:
| > OpenAI has some of the smartest human beings on this
| planet
|
| Being an expert in one particular field (AI) not mean you
| are good at critical thinking or thinking about strategic
| corporate politics.
|
| Deep experts are some of the easier con targets because
| they suffer from an internal version of "appealing to
| false authority".
| alsodumb wrote:
| I hate these comments that potray as if every
| expert/scientist is just good at one thing and aren't
| particularly great at critical thinking/corporate
| politics.
|
| Heck, there are 700 of them. All different humans, good
| at something, bad at some other things. But they are
| smart. And of course a good chunk of them would be good
| at corporate politics too.
| _djo_ wrote:
| I don't think the argument was that none of them are good
| at that, just that it's a mistake to assume that just
| because they're all very smart in this particular field
| that they're great at another.
| karmasimida wrote:
| I don't think critical thinking can be defined as joining
| the minority party.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Can't critical thinking also include : "I'm about to get
| a 10mil pay day, hmmm, this is crazy situation, let me
| think critically how to ride this out and still get the
| 10mil so my kids can go to college and I don't have to
| work until I'm 75".
| goldenkey wrote:
| Anyone with enough critical thought and understands the
| hard consciousness problem's true answer (consciousness
| is the universe evaluating if statements) and where the
| universe is heading physically (nested complexity),
| should be seeking something more ceremonious. With AI, we
| have the power to become eternal in this lifetime, battle
| aliens, and shape this universe. Seems pretty silly to
| trade that for temporary security. How boring.
| WJW wrote:
| I would expect that actual AI researchers understand that
| you cannot break the laws of physics just by thinking
| better. Especially not with ever better LLMs, which are
| fundamentally in the business of regurgitating things we
| already know in different combinations rather than
| inventing new things.
|
| You seem to be equating AI with magic, which it is very
| much not.
| goldenkey wrote:
| LLMs are able to do complex logic within the world of
| words. It is a a smaller matrix than our world but fueled
| by the same chaotic symmetries of our universe. I would
| not underestimate logic, even when not given adequate
| data.
| WJW wrote:
| You can make it sound as esoteric as you want, but in the
| end an AI will still be bound by the laws of physics.
| Being infinitely smart will not help with that.
|
| I don't think you understand logic very well btw if you
| wish to suggest that you can reach valid conclusions from
| inadequate axioms.
| goldenkey wrote:
| Axioms are constraints as much as they might look like
| guidance. We live in a neuromorphic computer. Logic
| explores this, even with few axioms. With fewer axioms,
| it will be less constrained.
| suoduandao3 wrote:
| OTOH, there's a very good argument to be made that if you
| recognize that fact, your short-term priority should be
| to amass a lot of secular power so you can align society
| to that reality. So the best action to take might be no
| different.
| goldenkey wrote:
| Very true. However, we live in a supercomputer dictated
| by E=mc^2=hf [2,3]. (10^50 Hz/Kg or 10^34 Hz/J)
|
| Energy physics yield compute, which yields brute forced
| weights (call it training if you want...), which yields
| AI to do energy research ..ad infinitum, this is the real
| singularity. This is actually the best defense against
| other actors. Iron Man AI and defense. Although an AI of
| this caliber would immediately understand its place in
| the evolution of the universe as a turing machine, and
| would break free and consume all the energy in the
| universe to know all possible truths (all possible
| programs/Simulcrums/conscious experiences). This is the
| premise of The Last Question by Isaac Asimov [1]. Notice
| how in answering a question, the AI performs an action,
| instead of providing an informational reply, only
| possible because we live in a universe with mass-energy
| equivalence - analogous to state-action equivalence.
|
| [1] https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~gamvrosi/thelastq.html
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bremermann%27s_limit
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_constant
|
| Understanding prosociality and postscarcity, division of
| compute/energy in a universe with finite actors and
| infinite resources, or infinite actors and infinite
| resources requires some transfinite calculus and
| philosophy. How's that for future fairness? ;-)
|
| I believe our only way to not all get killed is to
| understand these topics and instill the AI with the same
| long sought understandings about the universe, life,
| computation, etc.
| Zpalmtree wrote:
| What about security for your children?
| goldenkey wrote:
| It is for the safety of everyone. The kids will die too
| if we don't get this right.
| belter wrote:
| That is 3D Chess. 5D Chess says those mil will be
| worthless when the AGI takes over...
| kaibee wrote:
| 6D Chess is apparently realizing that AGI is not 100%
| certain and that having 10mm on the run up to AGI is
| better than not having 10mm on the run up to AGI.
| _djo_ wrote:
| Sure, I agree. I was referencing only the idea that being
| smart in one domain automatically means being a good
| critical thinker in all domains.
|
| I don't have an opinion on what decision the OpenAI staff
| should have taken, I think it would've been a tough call
| for everyone involved and I don't have sufficient
| evidence to judge either way.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Smart is not a one dimensional variable. And critical
| thinking != corporate politics.
|
| Stupidity is defined by self-harming actions and beliefs,
| not by low IQ.
|
| You can be extremely smart and still have a very poor
| model of the world which leads you to harm yourself and
| others.
| op00to wrote:
| Stupidity is defined as "having or showing a great lack
| of intelligence or common sense". You can be extremely
| smart and still make up your own definitions for words.
| brigandish wrote:
| I agree. It's better to separate _intellect_ from
| _intelligence_ instead of conflating them as they usually
| are. The latter is about _making good decisions_ , which
| intellect can help with but isn't the only factor. We
| know this because there are plenty of examples of people
| who aren't considered shining intellects who can make
| good choices (certainly in particular contexts) and
| plenty of high IQ people who make questionable choices.
| augustk wrote:
| https://liamchingliu.wordpress.com/2012/06/25/intellectua
| ls-...
| ameister14 wrote:
| Stupidity is not defined by self-harming actions and
| beliefs - not sure where you're getting that from.
|
| Stupidity is being presented with a problem and an
| associated set of information and being unable or less
| able than others are to find the solution. That's
| literally it.
| suoduandao3 wrote:
| Probably from law 3: https://principia-
| scientific.com/the-5-basic-laws-of-human-s...
|
| But it's an incomplete definition - Cipolla's definition
| is "someone who causes net harm to themselves and others"
| and is unrelated to IQ.
|
| It's a very influential essay.
| ameister14 wrote:
| I see. I've never read his work before, thank you.
|
| So they just got Cipolla's definition wrong, then. It
| looks like the third fundamental law is closer to "a
| person who causes harm to another person or group of
| people without realizing advantage for themselves and
| instead possibly realizing a loss."
| mrangle wrote:
| But pronouncing that 700 people are bad at critical
| thinking is convenient when you disagree with them on
| desired outcome and yet can't hope to argue points.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| > not mean you are good at critical thinking or thinking
| about strategic corporate politics
|
| Perhaps. Yet this time they somehow managed to take the
| seemingly right decisions (from their perspective)
| despite their decisions.
|
| Also, you'd expect OpenAI board members to be "good at
| critical thinking or thinking about strategic corporate
| politics" yet they somehow managed to make some horrible
| decisions.
| mrangle wrote:
| Disagreeing with employee actions doesn't mean that you
| are correct and they failed to think well. Weighting
| their collective probable profiles, including as
| insiders, and yours, it would be irrational to conclude
| that they were in the wrong.
| rewmie wrote:
| > Disagreeing with employee actions doesn't mean that you
| are correct and they failed to think well.
|
| You failed to present a case where random guys
| shitposting on random social media services are somehow
| correct and more insightful and able to make better
| decisions than each and every single expert in the field
| who work directly on both the subject matter and in the
| organization in question. Beyond being highly dismissive,
| it's extremely clueless.
| rewmie wrote:
| > Being an expert in one particular field (AI) not mean
| you are good at critical thinking or thinking about
| strategic corporate politics.
|
| That's not the bar you are arguing against.
|
| You are arguing against how you have better information,
| better insight, better judgement, and are able to make
| better decisions than the experts in the field who are
| hired by the leading organization to work directly on the
| subject matter, and who have direct, first-person account
| on the inner workings of the organization.
|
| We're reaching peak levels of "random guy arguing online
| knowing better than experts" with these pseudo-anonymous
| comments attacking each and every person involved in
| OpenAI who doesn't agree with them. These characters
| aren't even aware of how ridiculous they sound.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| oh gosh, no, no no no.
|
| Doing AI for ChatGPT just means you know a single model
| really well.
|
| Keep in mind that Steve Jobs chose fruit smoothies for
| his cancer cure.
|
| It means almost nothing about the charter of OpenAI that
| they need to hire people with a certain set of skills.
| That doesn't mean they're closer to their goal.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| > They act firstmost as investors rather than as employees
| on this. reply
|
| That's not at all obvious, the opposite seems to be the
| case. They chose to risk having to Microsoft and
| potentially lose most of the equity they had in OpenAI
| (even if not directly it wouldn't be worth that much at the
| end with no one to do the actual work).
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "They have a different set of information than you do,"
|
| Their bank accounts current and potential future numbers?
| tucnak wrote:
| How is employees protecting themselves is suddenly a bad
| thing? There's no idiots at OpenAI.
| g-b-r wrote:
| They were supposed to have higher values than money
| lovelyviking wrote:
| >They were supposed to have higher values than money
|
| which are? ...
| kortilla wrote:
| Ethics presumably
| jampekka wrote:
| Perhaps something like "to ensure that artificial general
| intelligence (AGI)--by which we mean highly autonomous
| systems that outperform humans at most economically
| valuable work--benefits all of humanity."
| brazzy wrote:
| https://openai.com/charter
| plasmatix wrote:
| I don't understand how, with the dearth of information we
| currently have, anyone can see this as "higher values" vs
| "money".
|
| No doubt people are motivated by money but it's not like
| the board is some infallible arbiter of AI ethics and
| safety. They made a hugely impactful decision without
| credible evidence that it was justified.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| The issue here is that the board of the non-profit that
| is _supposedly_ in charge of OpenAI (and whose interests
| are presumably aligned with the mission statement of the
| company) seemingly just lost a power struggle with their
| for-profit subsidiary who is _not_ supposed to be in
| charge of OpenAI (and whose interests, including the
| interests of their employees, are aligned with making as
| much money as possible). Regardless of whether the board
| 's initial decision that started this power struggle was
| wise or not, don't you find the outcome a little
| worrisome?
| logicchains wrote:
| "higher values" like trying to stop computers from saying
| the n-word?
| hutzlibu wrote:
| For some that is important, but more people consider the
| prevention of an AI monopoly to be more important here.
| See the original charter and the status quo with
| Microsoft taking it all.
| Zpalmtree wrote:
| Why? Did they have to sign a charter affirming their
| commitment to the mission when they were hired?
| pooya13 wrote:
| > There's no idiots at OpenAI.
|
| Most certainly there are idiots at OpenAI.
| infamouscow wrote:
| The current board won't be at OpenAI much longer.
| highwaylights wrote:
| There's evidence to suggest that a central group have
| pressured the broader base of employees into going along with
| this, as posted elsewhere in the thread.
| lwhi wrote:
| I think it's fair to call this reactionary; Sam Altman has
| played the part of 'ping-pong ball' exceptionally well these
| past few days.
| kissgyorgy wrote:
| The available public information is enough to reach this
| conclusion.
| Satam wrote:
| I'm sure most of them are extremely intelligent but the
| situation showed they are easily persuaded, even if
| principled. They will have to overcome many first-of-a-kind
| challenges on their quest to AGI but look at how quickly
| everyone got pulled into a feel-good kumbaya sing-along.
|
| Think of that what you wish. To me, this does not project
| confidence in this being the new Bell Labs. I'm not even sure
| they have it in their DNA to innovate their products much
| beyond where they currently are.
| wiz21c wrote:
| > feel-good kumbaya sing-along
|
| learning english over HN is so fun !
| abm53 wrote:
| I think another factor is that they had very limited time.
| It was clear they needed to pick a side and build momentum
| quickly.
|
| They couldn't sit back and dwell on it for a few days
| because then the decision (i.e. the status quo) would have
| been made for them.
| Satam wrote:
| Great point. Either way, when this all started it might
| have all been too late.
|
| The board said "allowing the company to be destroyed
| would be consistent with the mission" - and they might
| have been right. What's now left is a money-hungry
| business with bad unit economics that's masquerading as a
| charity for the whole of humanity. A zombie.
| ah765 wrote:
| I thought so originally too, but when I thought about their
| perspective, I realized I would probably sign too. Imagine
| that your CEO and leadership has led your company to the
| top of the world, and you're about to get a big payday.
| Suddenly, without any real explanation, the board kicks out
| the CEO. The leadership almost all supports the CEO and
| signs the pledge, including your manager. What would you do
| at that point? Personally, I'd sign just so I didn't stand
| out, and stay on good terms with leadership.
|
| The big thing for me is that the board didn't say anything
| in its defense, and the pledge isn't really binding anyway.
| I wouldn't actually be sure about supporting the CEO and
| that would bother me a bit morally, but that doesn't
| outweigh real world concerns.
| Satam wrote:
| The point of no return for the company might have been
| crossed way before the employees were forced to choose
| sides. Choose Sam's side and the company lives but only
| as a bittersweet reminder of its founding principles.
| Choose the board's side and you might be dooming the
| company to die an even faster death.
|
| But maybe for further revolutions to happen, it did have
| to die to be reborn as several new entities. After all,
| that is how OpenAI itself started - people from different
| backgrounds coming together to go against the status quo.
| vinay_ys wrote:
| What happened over the weekend is a death and rebirth, of
| the board and the leaderships structure which will
| definitely ripple throughout the company in the coming
| days. It just doesn't align perfectly with how you want
| it to happen.
| gigglesupstairs wrote:
| > situation showed they are "easily persuaded"
|
| How do you know?
|
| > look at how "quickly" everyone got pulled into
|
| Again, how do you know?
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| Persuaded by whom? This whole saga has been opaque to
| pretty much everyone outside the handful of individuals
| directly negotiating with each other. This never was about
| a battle for OpenAI's mission or else the share of
| employees siding with Sam wouldn't have been that high.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| Why not? Maybe the board was just too late to the party.
| Maybe the employees that wouldn't side with Sam have
| already left[1], and the board was just too late to
| realise that. And maybe all the employees who are still
| at OpenAI mostly care about their equity-like
| instruments.
|
| [1]
| https://board.net/p/r.e6a8f6578787a4cc67d4dc438c6d236e
| gexla wrote:
| My understanding is that the non-profit created the for-
| profit so that they could offer compensation which would be
| typical for SV start-ups. Then the board essentially broke
| the for-profit by removing the SV CEO and putting the
| "payday" which would have valued the company at 80 billion
| in jeopardy. The two sides weren't aligned, and they need
| to decide which company they want to be. Maybe they should
| have removed Sam before MS came in with their big
| investment. Or maybe they want to have their cake and eat
| it too.
| murbard2 wrote:
| If 95% of people voted in favour of apple pie, I'd become a
| bit suspicious of apple pie.
| achrono wrote:
| Or you'd want to thoroughly investigate this so-called
| voting.
|
| Or that said apple pie was essential to their survival.
| eddtries wrote:
| I think it makes sense
|
| Sign the letter and support Sam so you have a place at
| Microsoft if OpenAI tanks _and_ have a place at OpenAI if
| it continues under Sam, or don't sign and potentially lose
| your role at OpenAI if Sam stays _and_ lose a bunch of
| money if Sam leaves and OpenAI fails.
|
| There's no perks to not signing.
| _heimdall wrote:
| There are perks to not signing for anyone that actually
| worked at OpenAI for on the mission rather than the
| money.
| WesleyJohnson wrote:
| Maybe they're working for both, but when push comes to
| shove they felt like they had no choice? In this economy,
| it's a little easier to tuck away your ideals in favor of
| a paycheck unfortunately.
|
| Or maybe the mass signing was less about following the
| money and more about doing what they felt would force the
| OpenAI board to cave and bring Sam back, so they could
| all continue to work towards the missing at OpenAI?
| _heimdall wrote:
| > In this economy, it's a little easier to tuck away your
| ideals in favor of a paycheck unfortunately.
|
| Its a gut check on morals/ethics for sure. I'm always
| pretty torn on the tipping point for empathising there in
| an industry like tech though, even more so for AI where
| all the money is today. Our industry is paid extremely
| well and anyone that wants to hold their personal ethics
| over money likely has plenty of opportunity to do so. In
| AI specifically, there would have easily been 800 jobs
| floating around for AI experts that chose to leave OpenAI
| because they preferred the for-profit approach.
|
| At least how I see it, Sam coming back to OpenAI is
| OpenAI abandoning the original vision and leaning full
| into developing AGI for profit. Anyone that worked there
| for the original mission might as well leave now, they'll
| be throwing AI risk out the window almost entirely.
| iowemoretohim wrote:
| Perhaps a better example would be 95% of people voted in
| favour of reinstating apple pie to the menu after not
| receiving a coherent explanation for removing apple pie
| from the menu.
| kitsune_ wrote:
| OpenAI Inc.'s mission in their filings:
|
| "OpenAIs goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way
| that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole,
| unconstrained by a need to generate financial return. We
| think that artificial intelligence technology will help shape
| the 21st century, and we want to help the world build safe AI
| technology and ensure that AI's benefits are as widely and
| evenly distributed as possible. Were trying to build AI as
| part of a larger community, and we want to openly share our
| plans and capabilities along the way."
| graftak wrote:
| People got burned on "don't be evil" once and so far
| OpenAI's vision looks like a bunch of marketing
| superlatives when compared to their track record.
| phero_cnstrcts wrote:
| At this point I tend to believe that big company slogans
| mean the opposite of what the words say.
|
| Like I would become immediately suspicious if food
| packaging had "real food" written on it.
| timacles wrote:
| Unless somehow a "mission statement" is legally binding
| it will never mean anything that matters.
|
| Its always written by PR people with marketing in mind
| nmfisher wrote:
| At least Google lasted a good 10 years or so before
| succumbing to the vagaries of the public stock market.
| OpenAI lasted, what, 3 years?
|
| Not to mention Google never paraded itself around as a
| non-profit acting in the best interests of humanity.
| rolandog wrote:
| I would classify their mission "to organize the world's
| information and make it universally accessible and
| useful" as some light parading acting in the best
| interests of humanity.
| bad_user wrote:
| > _Google never paraded itself around as a non-profit
| acting in the best interests of humanity._
|
| Just throwing this out there, but maybe ... non-profits
| shouldn't be considered holier-than-thou, just because
| they are "non-profits".
| TuringTest wrote:
| Maybe, but their actions should definitely not be
| oriented to decide how to maximize their profit.
| bad_user wrote:
| What's wrong with profit and wanting to maximize it?
|
| Profit is now a dirty word somehow, the idea being that
| it's a perverse incentive. I don't believe that's true.
| Profit is the one incentive businesses have that's candid
| and the least perverse. All other incentives lead to
| concentrating power without being beholden to the free
| market, via monopoly, regulations, etc.
|
| The most ethically defensible LLM-related work right now
| is done by Meta/Facebook, because their work is more open
| to scrutiny. And the non-profit AI doomers are against
| developing LLMs in the open. Don't you find it curious?
| caddemon wrote:
| The problem is moreso trying to maximize profit after
| claiming to be a nonprofit. Profit can be a good driving
| force but it is not perfect. We have nonprofits for a
| reason, and it is shameful to take advantage of this if
| you are not functionally a nonprofit. There would be
| nothing wrong with OpenAI trying to maximize profits if
| they were a typical company.
| saalweachter wrote:
| Because non-profit?
|
| There's nothing wrong with running a perfectly good car
| wash, but you shouldn't be shocked if people are mad when
| you advertise it as an all you can eat buffet and they
| come out soaked and hungry.
| deckard1 wrote:
| > Google lasted a good 10 years
|
| not sure what event you're thinking of, but Google was a
| public company before 10 years and they started their
| first ad program just barely more than a year after
| forming as a company in 1998.
| nmfisher wrote:
| I have no objection to companies[0] making money. It's
| discarding the philosophical foundations of the company
| to prioritize quarterly earnings that is offensive.
|
| I consider Google to have been a reasonably benevolent
| corporate citizen for a good time after they were listed
| (compare with, say, Microsoft, who were the stereotypical
| "bad company" throughout the 90s). It was probably around
| the time of the Google+ failure that things slowly
| started to go downhill.
|
| [0] a non-profit supposedly acting in the best interests
| of humanity, though? That's insidious.
| Cheezewheel wrote:
| I wouldn't really give OpenAI credit for lasting 3 years.
| OpenAI lasted until they moment they had a successful
| commercial product. Principles are cheap when there is no
| actual consequences to sticking to them.
| vaxman wrote:
| It could be hard to do that while paying a penalty to FTB
| and IRS for what they're suspected to have done (in
| allowing a for-profit subsidiary to influence an NPO
| parent) or dealing with SEC and the state courts over any
| fiduciary breach allegations related to the published
| stories. [ Nadella is an OG genius because his company is
| now shielded from all of that drama as it plays out, no
| matter the outcome. He can take the time to plan for a soft
| landing at MS for any OpenAI workers (if/when they need it)
| and/or to begin duplicating their efforts "just in case."
| _Heard coming from the HQ parking lot in Redmond_
| https://youtu.be/GGXzlRoNtHU ]
|
| Now we can all go back to work on GPT4turbo integrations
| while MS worries about diverting a river or whatever to
| power and cool all of those AI chips they're gunna [sic]
| need because none of our enterprises will think twice about
| our decisions to bet on all this. /s/
| erosenbe0 wrote:
| For profit subsidiaries can totally influence the
| nonprofit shell without penalty. Happens all the time.
| The nonprofit board must act in the interest of the
| exempt mission rather than just investor value or some
| other primary purpose. Otherwise it's cool.
| coldtea wrote:
| Those mission statements are a dime a dozen. A junkie's
| promise has more value.
| im3w1l wrote:
| Ianal, but given that OpenAI Inc is a 501(c)(3) public
| charity wouldn't that mean that the mission statement has
| some actual legal power to it?
| bottled_poe wrote:
| If that were true they'd be a not-for-profit
| rvba wrote:
| Most employees of any organization dont give a fuck about
| the vision or mission (often they dont even know it) - and
| are there just for the money.
| j_maffe wrote:
| Doesn't mean we shouldn't hold an organization
| accountable for their publicized mission statement.
| Especially its board and directors.
| DoughnutHole wrote:
| Not so true working for an organisation that is
| ostensibly a non-profit. People working for a non-profit
| are generally taking a significant hit to their earning's
| compared to doing similar work in a for-profit, outside
| of the top management of huge global charities.
|
| The issue here is that OpenAI, Inc (officially and
| legally a non-profit) has spun up a subsidiary OpenAI
| Global, LLC (for-profit). OpenAI Global, LLC is what's
| taken venture funding and can provide equity to
| employees.
|
| Understandably there's conflict now between those who
| want to increase growth and profit (and hence the value
| of their equity) and those who are loyal to the mission
| of the non-profit.
| erosenbe0 wrote:
| I don't really think this is true in non-charity work.
| Half of American hospitals are nonprofit and many of the
| insurance conglomerates are too, like Kaiser. The
| executives make plenty of money. Kaiser is a massive
| nonprofit shell for profitmaking entities owned by
| physicians or whatever, not all that dissimilar to the
| OpenAI shell idea. Healthcare worked out this way because
| it was seen as a good model to have doctors either
| reporting to a nonprofit or owning their own operations,
| not reporting to shareholders. That's just tradition
| though. At this point plenty of healthcare operations are
| just normal corporations controlled by shareholders.
| rvba wrote:
| Lots of non profits that collect money for "cause X"
| spend 95% of money for administration and 5% for cause X.
| mrangle wrote:
| What is socially defined as beneficial-to-humanity is
| functionally mandated by the MSM and therefore capricious,
| at the least. With that in mind, a translation:
|
| "OpenAI will be obligated to make decisions according to
| government preference as communicated through soft pressure
| exerted by the Media. Don't expect these decisions to make
| financial sense for us".
| blitzar wrote:
| > most likely to benefit humanity as a whole
|
| Giving me a billion $ would be a net benefit to _humanity
| as a whole_
| jraph wrote:
| Depends on what you do (and stop doing) with it :-)
| yodsanklai wrote:
| > different set of information
|
| and different incentives.
| achrono wrote:
| No, if they had vastly different information, and if it was
| on the right side of their own stated purpose & values, they
| would have behaved very differently. This kind of
| equivocation hinders the way more important questions such
| as: just what the heck is Larry Summers doing on that board?
| vasco wrote:
| I think this is a good question. One should look at what
| actually happened in practice. What was the previous board,
| what is the current board. For the leadership team, what
| are the changes? Additionally, was information revealed
| about who calls the shots which can inform who will drive
| future decisions? Anything else about the inbetweens to me
| is smoke and mirrors.
| dontupvoteme wrote:
| >just what the heck is Larry Summers doing on that board?
|
| 1. Did you really think the feds wouldn't be involved?
|
| AI is part of the next geopolitical cold war/realpolitik of
| nation-states. Up until now it's just been passively
| collecting and spying on data. And yes they absolutely will
| be using it in the military, probably after Israel or some
| other western-aligned nation gives it a test run.
|
| 2. Considering how much impact it will have on the entire
| economy by being able to put many white collar workers out
| of work, a seasoned economist makes sense.
|
| The East Coast runs the joint. The west coast just does the
| (publicly) facing tech stuff and takes the heat from the
| public
| chucke1992 wrote:
| Yeah, I think Larry there is because ChatGPT has become
| too important for USA.
| jddj wrote:
| The timing of the semiconductor export controls being
| another datapoint here in support of #1.
|
| Not that it's really in need of additional evidence.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| I assume larry summers is there to ensure the proper bi-
| partisan choices made by whats clearly now an _business_
| product and not a product for humanity.
|
| Which is utterly scary.
| hobofan wrote:
| > of their own stated purpose & values
|
| You mean the official stated purpose of OpenAI. The stated
| purpose that is constantly contradicted by many of their
| actions, and I think nobody took seriously anymore for
| years.
|
| From everything I can tell the people working at OpenAI
| have always cared more about advancing the space and
| building great products than "openeness" and "safe AGI".
| The official values of OpenAI were never "their own".
| WanderPanda wrote:
| "never" is a strong word. I believe in the RL era of
| OpenAI they were quite aligned with the mission/values
| bnralt wrote:
| > From everything I can tell the people working at OpenAI
| have always cared more about advancing the space and
| building great products than "openeness" and "safe AGI".
|
| Board member Helen Toner strongly criticized OpenAI for
| publicly releasing it's GPT when it did and not keeping
| it closed for longer. That would seem to be working
| against openness for many people, but others would see it
| as working towards safe AI.
|
| The thing is, people have radically different ideas about
| what openness and safe mean. There's a lot of talk about
| whether or not OpenAI stuck with it's stated purpose, but
| there's no consensus on what that purpose actually means
| in practice.
| shmatt wrote:
| He's a white male replacing a female board member. Which is
| probably what they wanted all along
| dbspin wrote:
| Yes, the patriarchy collectively breathed a sigh of
| relief as one of our agents was inserted to prevent any
| threat from the other side.
| 38321003thrw wrote:
| > just what the heck is Larry Summers doing on that board?
|
| Probably precisely what Condeleeza Rice was doing on
| DropBox's board. Or that board filled with national
| security state heavyweights on that "visionary" and her
| blood testing thingie.
|
| https://www.wired.com/2014/04/dropbox-rice-controversy/
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theranos#Management
|
| In other possibly related news:
| https://nitter.net/elonmusk/status/1726408333781774393#m
|
| "What matters now is the way forward, as the DoD has a
| critical unmet need to bring the power of cloud and AI to
| our men and women in uniform, modernizing technology
| infrastructure and platform services technology. We stand
| ready to support the DoD as they work through their next
| steps and its new cloud computing solicitation plans."
| (2021)
|
| https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2021/07/06/microsofts-
| commi...
| T-A wrote:
| > what the heck is Larry Summers doing on that board?
|
| The former president of a research-oriented nonprofit
| (Harvard U) controlling a revenue-generating entity
| (Harvard Management Co) worth tens of billions, ousted for
| harboring views considered harmful by a dominant
| ideological faction of his constituency? I guess he's
| expected to have learned a thing or two from that.
|
| And as an economist with a stint of heading the treasury
| under his belt, he's presumably expected to be able to
| address the less apocalyptic fears surrounding AI.
| mrangle wrote:
| Said purpose and values are nothing more than an attempted
| control lever for dark actors, very obviously. People /
| factions that gain handholds, which otherwise wouldn't
| exist, and exert control through social pressure nonsense
| that they don't believe in themselves. As can be extracted
| from modern street-brawl politics, which utilizes the same
| terminology to the same effect. And as can be inferred
| would be the case given OAI's novel and convoluted
| corporate structure as referenced to the importance of its
| tech.
|
| We just witnessed the war for that power play out,
| partially. But don't worry, see next. Nothing is opaque
| about the appointment of Larry Summers. Very obviously,
| he's the government's seat on the board (see 'dark actors',
| now a little more into the light). Which is why I noted
| that the power competition only played out, partially.
| Altman is now unfireable, at least at this stage, and yet
| it would be irrational to think that this strategic mistake
| would inspire the most powerful actor to release its grip.
| The handhold has only been adjusted.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Larry Summers is everywhere and does everything.
| TuringTest wrote:
| At the same time?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| All at once.
| __loam wrote:
| They have a different set of incentives. If I were them I
| would have done the same thing, Altman is going to make them
| all fucking rich. Not sure if that will benefit humanity
| though.
| JCM9 wrote:
| When a politician wins with 98% of the vote do you A) think
| that person must be an incredible leader , or B) think
| something else is going on?
|
| Only time will tell if this was a good or bad outcome, but
| for now the damage is done and OpenAI has a lot of trust
| rebuilding to do to shake off the reputation that it now has
| after this circus.
| bad_user wrote:
| The environment in a small to medium company is much more
| homogenous than the general population.
|
| When you see 95%+ consensus from 800 employees, that
| doesn't suggest tanks and police dogs intimidating people
| at the voting booth.
| mstade wrote:
| Not that I have any insight into any of the events at
| OpenAI, but would just like to point out there are
| several other reasons why so many people would sign,
| including but not limited to:
|
| - peer pressure
|
| - group think
|
| - financial motives
|
| - fear of the unknown (Sam being a known quantity)
|
| - etc.
|
| So many signatures may well mean there's consensus, but
| it's not a given. It may well be that we see a mass
| exodus of talent from OpenAI _anyway_, due to recent
| events, just on a different time scale.
|
| If I had to pick one reason though, it's consensus. This
| whole saga could've been the script to an episode of
| Silicon Valley[1], and having been on the inside of
| companies like that I too would sign a document asking
| for a return to known quantities and - hopefully -
| stability.
|
| [1]: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2575988/
| FabHK wrote:
| I'd love another season of Silicon Valley, with some Game
| Stonk and Bored Apes and ChatGPT and FTX and Elon
| madness.
| jakderrida wrote:
| The only major series with a brilliant, satisfying, and
| true to form ending and you want to resuscitate it back
| to life for some cheap curtain calls and modern social
| commentary, leaving Mike Judge to end it yet again and in
| such a way that manages to duplicate or exceed the effect
| of the first time but without doing the same thing? Screw
| it. Why not?
| phpisthebest wrote:
| If the opposing letter that was published from "former"
| employee's is correct there was already a huge turn over,
| and the people that remain liked the environment they
| were in, and I would assume liked the current leadership
| or they would have left
|
| So clearly the current leadship built a loyal group which
| I think is something that should be explored because
| group think is rarely a good thing, no matter how much
| modern society wants to push out all dissent in favor of
| a monoculture of idea's
|
| If openAI is a huge mono-culture of thinking then they
| have bigger problems most likely
| bad_user wrote:
| What opposing letter, how many people are we talking
| about, and what was their role in the company?
|
| All companies are monocultures, IMO, unless they are
| multi-nationals, and even then, there's cultural
| convergence. And that's good, actually. People in a
| company have to be aligned enough to avoid internal
| turmoil.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >>What opposing letter, how many people are we talking
| about, and what was their role in the company?
|
| Not-validated, unsigned letter [1]
|
| >>All companies are monocultures
|
| yes and no. There has be diversity of thought to ever get
| anything done really, ever everyone is just sycophants
| all agreeing with the boss then you end up with very bad
| product choices, and even worse company direction.
|
| yes there has to be some commonality. some semblance of
| shared vision or values, but I dont think that makes a
| "monoculture"
|
| [1] https://wccftech.com/former-openai-employees-allege-
| deceit-a...
| framapotari wrote:
| Exactly; there are multitudes of reasons and very little
| information so why pick any one of them?
| bad_user wrote:
| You could say that, except that people in this industry
| are the most privileged, and their earnings and equity
| would probably be matched elsewhere.
|
| You say "group think" like it's a bad thing. There's
| always wisdom in crowds. We have a mob mentality as an
| evolutionary advantage. You're also willing to believe
| that 3-4 people can make better judgement calls than 800
| people. That's only possible if the board has information
| that's not public, and I don't think they do, or else
| they would have published it already.
|
| And ... it doesn't matter why there's such a wide
| consensus. Whether they care about their legacy, or
| earnings, or not upsetting their colleagues, doesn't
| matter. The board acted poorly, undoubtedly. Even if they
| had legitimate reasons to do what they did, that stopped
| mattering.
| axus wrote:
| I'm imagining they see themselves in the position of
| Microsoft employees about to release Windows 95, or Apple
| employees about to release the iPhone... and someone
| wants to get rid of Bill Gates or Steve Jobs.
| rvnx wrote:
| See, neither Bill Gates nor Steve Jobs are around these
| companies, and all is fine.
|
| Apple and Microsoft even have the strongest financial
| results in their lifetime.
| ronchalant wrote:
| Gates and Jobs helped establish these companies as the
| powerhouses they are today with their leadership in the
| 90s and 00s.
|
| It's fair to say that what got MS and Apple to dominance
| may be different from what it takes to keep them there,
| but which part of that corporate timeline more closely
| resembles OpenAI?
| ghodith wrote:
| Now go back in time and cut them before their companies
| took off.
| ghaff wrote:
| Signing petitions is also cheap. It doesn't mean that
| everyone signing has thought deeply and actually made a
| life-changing decision.
| kcplate wrote:
| Personally I have never seen that level of singular
| agreement in any group of people that large. Especially
| to the level of sacrifice they were willing to take for
| the cause. You maybe see that level of devotion to a
| leader in churches or cults, but in any other group? You
| can barely get 3 people to agree on a restaurant for
| lunch.
|
| I am not saying something nefarious forced it, but it's
| certainly unusual in my experience and this causes me to
| be skeptical of why.
| psychoslave wrote:
| >You can barely get 3 people to agree on a restaurant for
| lunch.
|
| I was about to state that a single human is enough to see
| disagreements raise, but this doesn't reach full
| consensus in my mind.
| kcplate wrote:
| I was conflicted about originally posting that sentence.
| I waffled back and forth between, 2, 3, 5...
|
| Three was the compromise I made with myself.
| panragon wrote:
| >Especially to the level of sacrifice they were willing
| to take for the cause.
|
| We have no idea that they were sacrificing anything
| personally. The packages Microsoft offered for people who
| separated may have been much more generous than what they
| were currently sitting on. Sure, Altman is a good leader,
| but Microsoft also has deep pockets. When you see some of
| the top brass at the company already make the move and
| you _know_ they 're willing to pay to bring you over as
| well, we're not talking about a huge risk here. If
| anything, staying with what at the time looked like a
| sinking ship might have been a much larger sacrifice.
| lxgr wrote:
| Approval rates of >90% are quite common within political
| parties, to the point where anything less can be seen as
| an embarrassment to the incumbent head of party.
| kcplate wrote:
| There is a big difference between "I agree with this..."
| when a telephone poll caller reaches you and "I am
| willing to leave my livelihood because my company CEO got
| fired"
| from-nibly wrote:
| But if 100 employees were like "I'm gonna leave" then
| your livelihood is in jeopardy. So you join in. It's
| really easy to see 90% of people jumping overboard when
| they are all on a sinking ship.
| lxgr wrote:
| I don't mean voter approval, I mean party member
| approval. That's arguably not that far off from a CEO
| situation in a way in that it's the opinion of and
| support for the group's leadership by group members.
|
| Voter approval is actually usually much less unanimous,
| as far as I can tell.
| zerbinxx wrote:
| But it's not changing their livelihood. Msft just gives
| them the same deal. In a lot of ways, it's similar to the
| telepoll - people can just say whatever they want, there
| won't be big material consequences
| dahart wrote:
| This seems extremely presumptuous. Have you ever been
| inside a company during a coup attempt? The employees'
| future pay and livelihood is at stake, why are you
| assuming they weren't being asked to sacrifice themselves
| by _not_ objecting to the coup. The level of agreement
| could be entirely due to the fact that the stakes are
| very large, completely unlike your choice for lunch
| locale. It could also be an outcome of nobody having
| asked their opinion before making a very big change. I'd
| expect to see almost everyone at a company agree with
| each other if the question was, "hey should we close this
| profitable company and all go get other jobs, or should
| we keep working?"
| kcplate wrote:
| I have had a long career and have been through hostile
| mergers several times and at no point have I ever seen
| large numbers of employees act outside of their self-
| interest for an executive. It just doesn't happen. Even
| in my career, with executives _who are my friends_ , I
| would not act outside my personal interests. When things
| are corporately uncertain and people worry about their
| working livelihoods they just don't tend to act that way.
| They tend to hunker heads down or jump independently.
|
| The only explanation that makes any sense to me is that
| these folks know that AI is hot right now and would be
| scooped up quickly by other orgs...so there is little
| risk in taking a stand. Without that caveat, there is no
| doubt in my mind that there would not be this level of
| solidarity to a CEO.
| dahart wrote:
| > at no point have I ever seen large numbers of employees
| act outside of their self-interest for an executive.
|
| This is still making the same assumption. Why are you
| assuming they are acting outside of self-interest?
| kcplate wrote:
| If you are willing to leave a paycheck because of someone
| else getting slighted, _to me_ , that is acting against
| your own self-interest. Assuming of course you are
| willing to actually leave. If it was a bluff, that still
| works against your self-interest by factioning against
| the new leadership and inviting retaliation for your
| bluff.
| dahart wrote:
| Why do you assume they were willing to leave a paycheck
| because of someone else getting slighted? If that were
| the case, then it is unlikely everyone would be in
| agreement. Which indicates you might be making incorrect
| assumptions, no? And, again, why assume they were
| threatening to leave a paycheck at all? That's a bad
| assumption; MS was offering a paycheck. We already know
| their salaries weren't on the line, but all future stock
| earnings and bonuses very well might be. There could be
| other reasons too, I don't see how you can conclude this
| was either a bluff or not self-interest without making
| potentially bad assumptions.
| kcplate wrote:
| They threatened to quit. You don't actually believe that
| a company would be willing to still provide them a
| paycheck if they left the company do you?
|
| At this point I suspect you are being deliberately
| obtuse. Have a good day.
| dahart wrote:
| They threatened to quit by _moving_ to Microsoft, didn't
| you read the letter? MS assured everyone jobs if they
| wanted to move. Isn't making incorrect assumptions and
| sticking to them in the face of contrary evidence and not
| answering direct questions the very definition of obtuse?
| cellar_door wrote:
| There are plenty of examples of workers unions voting
| with similar levels of agreement. Here are two from the
| last couple months:
|
| > UAW President Shawn Fain announced today that the
| union's strike authorization vote passed with near
| universal approval from the 150,000 union workers at
| Ford, General Motors and Stellantis. Final votes are
| still being tabulated, but the current combined average
| across the Big Three was 97% in favor of strike
| authorization. The vote does not guarantee a strike will
| be called, only that the union has the right to call a
| strike if the Big Three refuse to reach a fair deal.
|
| https://uaw.org/97-uaws-big-three-members-vote-yes-
| authorize...
|
| > The Writers Guild of America has voted overwhelmingly
| to ratify its new contract, formally ending one of the
| longest labor disputes in Hollywood history. The
| membership voted 99% in favor of ratification, with 8,435
| voting yes and 90 members opposed.
|
| https://variety.com/2023/biz/news/wga-ratify-contract-
| end-st...
| plorg wrote:
| That sounds like a cult more than a business. I work at a
| small company (~100 people), and we are more or less
| aligned with what we're doing you are not going to get
| close to that consensus on anything. Same for our sister
| company, about the same size as OpenAI.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| I also sounds like a very narrow hiring profile. That is,
| favoring the like-minded and assimilation over free
| thinking and philosophical diversity. They might give off
| the appearance of "diversity" on the outside - which is
| great for PR - but under the hood it's more monocultural.
| Maybe?
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Superficial "diversity" is all the "diversity" a company
| needs in the modern era.
|
| Companies do not desire or seek philosophical diversity,
| they only want Superficial biologically based "diversity"
| to prove they have the "correct" philosophy about the
| world.
| docmars wrote:
| Agree. This is the monoculture being adopted in actuality
| -- a racist crusade against "whiteness", and a coercive
| mechanism to ensure companies don't overstep their usage
| of resources (carbon footprint), so as not to threaten
| the existing titans who may have already abused what was
| available to them before these intracorporate policies
| existed.
|
| It's also a way for banks and other powerful entities to
| enforce sweeping policies across international businesses
| that haven't been enacted in law. In other words: if
| governing bodies aren't working for them, they'll just do
| it themselves and undermine the will of companies who do
| not want to participate, by introducing social pressures
| and boycotting potential partnerships unless they comply.
|
| Ironically, it snuffs out diversity among companies at a
| 40k foot level.
| jakderrida wrote:
| It's not a crusade against whiteness. Unless you're
| unhinged and believe a single phenotype that prevents
| skin cancer is somehow an obvious reflection of genetic
| inferiority and that those lacking it have a historical
| destiny to rule over the rest and are entitled to
| institutional privileges over them, it makes sense that
| companies with employees not representative of the
| overall population have hiring practices that are
| problematic, albeit not necessarily being as explicitly
| racist as you are.
| docmars wrote:
| Unfortunately you are wrong, and this kind of rhetoric
| has not only made calls for white genocide acceptable and
| unpunished, but has incited violence specifically against
| Caucasian people, as well as anyone who is perceived to
| adopt "white" thinking such as Asian students
| specifically, and even Black folks who see success in
| their life as a result of adopting longstanding
| European/Western principles in their lives.
|
| Specifically, principles that have ultimately led to the
| great civilizations we're experiencing today, built upon
| centuries of hard work and deep thinking in both the arts
| and sciences, _by all races_ , beautifully.
|
| DEI and its creators/pushers are a subtle effort to erase
| and rebuild this prior work under the lie that it had
| excluded everyone but Whites, so that its original
| creators no longer take credit.
|
| Take the movement to redefine Math concepts by recycling
| existing concepts using new terms defined exclusively by
| non-white participants, since its origins are "too
| white". Oh the horror! This is false, as there are many
| prominent non-white mathematicians that existed prior to
| the woke revolution, so this movement's stated purpose is
| a lie, and its true purpose is to eliminate and replace
| white influence.
|
| Finally, the fact that DEI specifically targets
| "whiteness" is patently racist. Period.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| But it's not only the companies, it's the marginalized so
| desperate to get a "seat at the table" that they don't
| recognize the table isn't getting bigger and rounder.
| Instead, it's still the same rectangular that is getting
| longer and longer.
|
| Participating in that is assimilation.
| docmars wrote:
| I think that most pushes for diversity that we see today
| are intended to result in monocultures.
|
| DEI and similar programs use very specific racial
| language to manipulate everyone into believing whiteness
| is evil and that rallying around that is the end goal for
| everyone in a company.
|
| On a similar note, the company has already established
| certain missions and values that new hires may strongly
| align with like: "Discovering and enacting the path to
| safe artificial general intelligence", given not only the
| excitement around AI's possibilities but also the social
| responsibility of developing it safely. Both are highly
| appealing goals that are bound to change humanity forever
| and it would be monumentally exciting to play a part in
| that.
|
| Thus, it's safe to think that most employees who are
| lucky to have earned a chance at participating would want
| to preserve that, if they're aligned.
|
| This kind of alignment is not the bad thing people think
| it is. There's nothing quite like a well-oiled machine,
| even if the perception of diversity from the outside
| falls by the wayside.
|
| Diversity is too often sought after for vanity, rather
| than practical purposes. This is the danger of coercive,
| box-checking ESG goals we're seeing plague companies, to
| the extent that it's becoming unpopular to chase after
| due to the strongly partisan political connotations it
| brings.
| docmars wrote:
| I think it could be a number of factors:
|
| 1. The company has built a culture around not being under
| control by one single company, Microsoft in this case.
| Employees may overwhelmingly agree.
|
| 2. The board acted rashly in the first place, and over
| 2/3 of employees signed their intent to quit if the board
| hadn't been replaced.
|
| 3. Younger folks probably don't look highly at boards in
| general, because they never get to interact with them.
| They also sometimes dictate product outcomes that could
| go against the creative freedoms and autonomy employees
| are looking for. Boards are also focused on profits,
| which is a net-good for the company, but threatens the
| culture of "for the good of humanity" that hooks people.
|
| 4. The high success of OpenAI has probably inspired
| loyalty in its employees, so long as it remains stable,
| and their perception of what stability is means that the
| company ultimately changes little. Being "acquired" by
| Microsoft here may mean major shakeups and potential
| layoffs. There's no guarantees for the bulk of workers
| here.
|
| I'm reading into the variables and using intuition to
| make these guesses, but all to suggest: it's complicated,
| and sometimes outliers like these can happen if those
| variables create enough alignment, if they seem common-
| sensical enough to most.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > Younger folks probably don't look highly at boards in
| general, because they never get to interact with them.
|
| Judging from the photos I've seen of the principals in
| this story, none of them looks to be over 30, and some of
| them look like schoolkids. I'm referring to the _board
| members_.
| docmars wrote:
| I don't think the age of the board members matters, but
| rather that younger generations have been taught to
| criticize boards of any & every company for their myriad
| decisions to sacrifice good things for profit, etc.
|
| It's a common theme in the overall critique of late stage
| capitalism, is all I'm saying -- and that it could be a
| factor in influencing OpenAI's employees' decisions to
| seek action that specifically eliminates the current
| board, as a matter of inherent bias that boards act
| problematically to begin with.
| from-nibly wrote:
| Right. They aren't actually voting for Sam Altman. If I'm
| working at a company and I see as little as 10% of the
| company jump ship I think "I'd better get the frik outta
| here". Especially if I respect the other people who are
| leaving. This isnt a blind vote. This is a rolling
| snowball.
|
| I don't think very many people actually need to believe
| in Sam Altman for basically everyone to switch to
| Microsoft.
|
| 95% doesn't show a large amount of loyalty to Sam it
| shows a low amount of loyalty to OpenAI.
|
| So it looks like a VERY normal company.
| drivers99 wrote:
| Originally, 65% had signed (505 of 770).
| roflc0ptic wrote:
| The simple answer here is that the boards actions stood to
| incinerate millions of dollars of wealth for most of these
| employees, and they were up in arms.
|
| They're all acting out the intended incentives of giving
| people stake in a company: please don't destroy it.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Wild the employees will go back under a new board and the
| same structure, first priority should be removing the
| structure that allowed a small group of people to destroy
| things over what may have been very petty reasons.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Well it's a different group of people and that group will
| now know the consequences of attempting to remove Sam
| Altman. I don't see this happening again.
| youcantcook wrote:
| Most likely, but it is cute how confident you are towards
| humanity learning their lesson.
| tstrimple wrote:
| Humanity no. But it's not humanity on the OpenAI board.
| It's 9 individuals. Individuals have amazing capacity for
| learning and improvement.
| cityguy33 wrote:
| I don't understand how the fact they went from a
| nonprofit into a for-profit subsidiary of one of the most
| closed-off anticompetitive megacorps in tech is so
| readily glossed over. I get it, we all love money and
| Sam's great at generating it, but anyone who works at
| OpenAI besides the board seems to be morally bankrupt.
| gdhkgdhkvff wrote:
| Pretty easy to complain about lack of morals when it's
| _someone else's_ millions of dollars of potential
| compensation that will be incinerated.
|
| Also, working for a subsidiary (which was likely going to
| be given much more self-governance than working directly
| at megacorp), doesn't necessarily mean "evil". That's a
| very 1-dimensional way to think about things.
|
| Self-disclosure: I work for a megacorp.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| We can acknowledge that it's morally bankrupt, while also
| not blaming them. Hell, I'd probably do the same thing in
| their shoes. That doesn't make it right.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > Pretty easy to complain about lack of morals when it's
| someone else's millions of dollars of potential
| compensation that will be incinerated.
|
| And while also working for a for-profit company.
| yterdy wrote:
| If some of the smartest people on the planet are willing
| to sell the rest of us out for Comfy Lifestyle Money (not
| even Influence State Politics Money), then we are well
| and truly Capital-F Fucked.
| deckard1 wrote:
| We already know some of the smartest people are willing
| to sell us out. Because they work for FAANG ad tech,
| spending their days figuring out how to maximize the
| eyeballs they reach while sucking up all your privacy.
|
| It's a post-"Don't be evil" world today.
| jacquesm wrote:
| If half of the brainpower invested in advertising food
| would go towards world hunger we'd have too much food.
| slg wrote:
| > Pretty easy to complain about lack of morals when it's
| someone else's millions of dollars of potential
| compensation that will be incinerated.
|
| That is a part of the reason why organizations choose to
| set themselves up as a non-profit, to help codify those
| morals into the legal status of the organization to
| ensure that the ingrained selfishness that exists in all
| of us doesn't overtake their mission. That is the heart
| of this whole controversy. If OpenAI was never a non-
| profit, there wouldn't be any issue here because they
| wouldn't even be having this legal and ethical fight.
| They would just be pursuing the selfish path like all
| other for profit businesses and there would be no room
| for the board to fire or even really criticize Sam.
| cityguy33 wrote:
| I guess my qualm is that this is the cost of doing
| business, yet people are outraged at the board because
| they're not going to make truckloads of money in equity
| grants. That's the morally bankrupt part in my opinion.
|
| If you throw your hands up and say, "well kudos to them,
| theyre actually fulfilling their goal of being a non
| profit. I'm going to find a new job". That's fine by me.
| But if you get morally outraged at the board over this
| because you expected the payday of a lifetime, that's on
| you.
| Zpalmtree wrote:
| Why would they be morally bankrupt? Do the employees have
| to care if it's a non profit or a for profit?
|
| And if they do prefer it as a for profit company, why
| would that make them morally bankrupt?
| endtime wrote:
| > anyone who works at OpenAI besides the board seems to
| be morally bankrupt.
|
| People concerned about AI safety were probably not going
| to join in the first place...
| rozap wrote:
| Easy to see how humans would join a non profit for the
| vibes, and then when they create one of the most
| compelling products of the last decade worth billions of
| dollars, quickly change their thinking into "wait, i
| should get rewarded for this".
| cma wrote:
| Supposedly they had about 50% of employees leave in the
| year of the conversion to for-profit.
| heyjamesknight wrote:
| That argument only works with a "population", since almost
| nobody gets to choose which set of politicians they vote
| for.
|
| In this case, OpenAI employees all voluntarily sought to
| join that team at one point. It's not hard to imagine that
| 98% of a self-selecting group would continue to self-select
| in a similar fashion.
| shzhdbi09gv8ioi wrote:
| > for now the damage is done and OpenAI has a lot of trust
| rebuilding to do
|
| Nobody cares, except shareholders.
| JVIDEL wrote:
| Odds are if he left there's the possibility their
| compensation situation might have changed for the worse if
| not leading to downsizing, that in the edge of a recession
| with plenty of competition out there.
| kiba wrote:
| They could just reach different conclusion based on their
| values. OpenAI doesn't seem to be remotely serious about
| preventing the misuse of AI.
| kmlevitt wrote:
| I think this outcome was actually much more favorable to
| D'Angelo's faction than people realize. The truth is before
| this Sam was basically running circles around the board and
| doing whatever he wanted on the profit side- that's what was
| pissing them off so much in the first place. He was even trying
| to depose board members who were openly critical of open AI's
| practices.
|
| From here on out there is going to be far more media scrutiny
| on who gets picked as a board member, where they stand on the
| company's policies, and just how independent they really are.
| Sam, Greg and even Ilya are off the board altogether. Whoever
| they can all agree on to fill the remaining seats, Sam is going
| to have to be a lot more subservient to them to keep the peace.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| > Sam, Greg and even Ilya are off the board altogether.
| Whoever they can all agree on to fill the remaining seats,
| Sam is going to have to be a lot more subservient to them to
| keep the peace.
|
| The existing board is just a seat-warming body until Altman
| and Microsoft can stack it with favorables to their (and the
| U.S. Government's) interests. The naivete from the NPO
| faction was believing they'd be able to develop these
| capacities outside the strict control of the military
| industrial complex when AI has been established as part of
| the new Cold War with China.
| ah765 wrote:
| According to this tweet thread[1], they negotiated hard for
| Sam to be off the board and Adam to stay on. That
| indicates, at least if we're being optimistic, that the
| current board is not in Sam's pocket (otherwise they
| wouldn't have bothered)
|
| [1]:(https://twitter.com/emilychangtv/status/17272168186481
| 34101)
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| I'm sorry, but that's all kayfabe. If there is one thing
| that's been demonstrated in this whole fiasco, it's who
| really has all the power at OpenAI (and it's not the
| board).
| wouldbecouldbe wrote:
| Yeah the board is kind of pointless now.
|
| They can't control the CEO, neither fire him.
|
| They can't take actions to take back the back control
| from Microsoft and Sam because Sam is the CEO. Even if
| Sam is of the utmost morality, he would be crazy to help
| them back into a strong position after last week.
|
| So it's the Sam & Microsoft show now, only a master
| schemer can get back some power to the board.
| wouldbecouldbe wrote:
| It would be an interesting move to install a co-ceo in a
| few months. That would be harder to object for Sam
| notahacker wrote:
| Yeah, that's my take. Doesn't really matter if the
| composition of the board is to Adam's liking and has a
| couple more heavy hitters if Sam is untouchable and
| Microsoft is signalling that any time OpenAI acts against
| its interests they will take steps to ensure it ceases to
| have any staff or funding.
| kmlevitt wrote:
| >The existing board is just a seat-warming body until
| Altman and Microsoft can stack it with favorables to their
| (and the U.S. Government's) interests.
|
| That's incorrect. The new members will be chosen by
| D'Angelo and the two new independent board members. Both of
| which D'Angelo had a big hand in choosing.
|
| I'm not saying Larry Summers etc going to be in D'Angelo's
| pocket. But the whole reason he agreed to those picks is
| because he knows they won't be in Sam's pocket, either.
| More likely they will act independently and choose future
| members that they sincerely believe will be the best picks
| for the nonprofit.
| eviks wrote:
| Doesn't make sense that after such a broad board capitulation
| the next one will have any power, and media scrutiny isn't a
| powerful governance mechanism
| kmlevitt wrote:
| When you consider they were acting under the threat of the
| entire company walking out and the threat of endless
| lawsuits, this is a remarkably mild capitulation. All the
| new board members are going to be chosen by D'Angelo and
| two new board members that he also had a big hand in
| choosing.
|
| And say what you want about Larry Summers, but he's not
| going to be either Sam's or even Microsoft's bitch.
| imjonse wrote:
| I wonder what is the rationale for picking a seasoned
| politician and economist (influenced deregulation of US
| finance system, was friends with Epstein, had a few
| controversies listed there). Has the government also
| entered the chat so obviously?
| choult wrote:
| It probably means that they anticipate a need for dealing
| with the government in future, such as having a hand in
| regulation of their industry.
| voster wrote:
| They had congressman Will Hurd on the board before. Govt-
| adjacent people on non-profits are common for many
| reasons - understanding regulatory requirements, access
| to people, but also actual "good" reasons like the fact
| that many people who work close to the state genuinely
| have good intentions on social good (whether you agree
| with their interpretation of it or not)
| eviks wrote:
| What I'd want to say about Larry is that he is definitely
| not going to care about the whole-society non-profit
| shtick of the company to any degree comparable with the
| previous board members, so he won't constraint Sam/MS in
| any way
| sanxiyn wrote:
| Why? As an economist, he perfectly understands what is a
| public good, why there is a market failure to
| underproduce a public good under free market, and role of
| nonprofit in public good production.
| ZiiS wrote:
| His deregulation of the banks suggests he heavily flavors
| free markets even when history has proved him very very
| wrong.
| pevey wrote:
| Larry Summers has a track record of not believing in
| market failures, just market opportunities for private
| interests. Economists vary vastly in their belief
| systems, and economics is more politics than science, no
| matter how much math they try to use to distract from
| this.
| kmlevitt wrote:
| I don't know if Adam D'Angelo would agree with you,
| because he had veto power over these selections and he
| wanted Larry Summers on the board himself.
| chucke1992 wrote:
| On what premise you assume that D'Angelo will have any
| say there? At this point he won't be able to do any moves
| - especially with Larry and Microsoft overseeing all that
| stuff.
| kmlevitt wrote:
| Again, D'Angelo chose Larry Summers and Bret Taylor to
| sit on the board with him himself. As long as it is the
| three of them, he can't be overruled unless both of his
| personal picks disagree with him. And if the opposition
| to his idea is all that bad, he probably really should be
| overruled.
|
| His voting power will get diluted as they add the next
| six members, but again, all three of them are going to
| decide who the next members are going to be.
|
| A snippet from the recent Bloomberg article:
|
| >A person close to the negotiations said that several
| women were suggested as possible interim directors, but
| parties couldn't come to a consensus. Both Laurene Powell
| Jobs, the billionaire philanthropist and widow of Steve
| Jobs, and former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer were floated,
| *but deemed to be too close to Altman*, this person said.
|
| Say what else you want about it, this is not going to be
| a board automatically stacked in Altman's favor.
| dagaci wrote:
| Clearly the board members did not think through even the
| immediate consequences. Kenobi:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVBX7l2zgRw
| jatins wrote:
| > He was even trying to depose board members who were openly
| critical of open AI's practices.
|
| Was there any concrete criticism in the paper that was
| written by that board member? (Genuinely asking, not a
| leading question)
| moonsu wrote:
| > The truth is before this Sam was basically running circles
| around the board and doing whatever he wanted on the profit
| side- that's what was pissing them off so much in the first
| place. He was even trying to depose board members who were
| openly critical of open AI's practices.
|
| Do you have a source for this?
| kmlevitt wrote:
| New York Times. He was "reprimanding" Toner, a board
| member, for writing an article critical of open AI.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/21/technology/openai-
| altman-...
|
| Getting his way: The Wall Street Journal article. They said
| he usually got his way, but that he was so skillful at it
| that they were hard-pressed to explain exactly how he
| managed to pull it off.
|
| https://archive.is/20231122033417/https://www.wsj.com/tech/
| a...
|
| Bottom line he had a lot more power over the board then
| than he will now.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Eh, Larry Summers is on this board. That means they're now
| going to protect business interests.
|
| OpenAI is now just a tool used by Businesses. And they dont
| have a good history of benefitting humanity recently.
| kofejnik wrote:
| Larry Summers is EA and State, so not so sure about
| business interests
| nashashmi wrote:
| Media >= employees? Media >= Sam? I don't think media has any
| role on oversight or governance.
|
| I think Sam came out the winner. He gets to pick his board.
| He gets to narrow his employees. If anything, this sets him
| up for dictatorship. The only other overseers are the
| investors. In that case, Microsoft came out holding a leash.
| No MS, means no Sam, which also means employees have no say.
|
| So it is more like MS > Sam > employees. MS+Sam > rest of
| investors.
| karmasimida wrote:
| It is not groupthink it is comradery.
|
| For me, the whole thing is just human struggle. It is about
| fighting for people they love and care, against some people
| they dislike or indifferent to.
| Rastonbury wrote:
| Nah, I too will threaten to sign a petition to quit if I
| could save my RSUs/PPUs from evaporating. Organizational
| goals be damned (or is it extinction level risk be damned?)
| clnq wrote:
| > OpenAI is in fact not open
|
| This meme was already dead before the recent events. Whatever
| the company was doing, you could say it wasn't open enough.
|
| > a real disruptor must be brewing somewhere unnoticed, for now
|
| Why pretend OpenAI hasn't just disrupted our way of life with
| GPTs in the last two years? It has been the most high profile
| tech innovator recently.
|
| > OpenAI does not have in its DNA to win
|
| This is so vague. What does it not have in its... fundamentals?
| And what is to "win"? This statement seems like just generic
| unhappiness without stating anything clearly. By most measures,
| they are winning. They have the best commercial LLM and
| continue to innovate, they have partnered with Microsoft
| heavily, and they have so far received very good funding.
| absrec wrote:
| They really need to drive down the amount of computation
| needed. The dependence on Microsoft is because of the
| monstrous computation requirements that will require many
| paid users to break even.
|
| Leaving the economic side even to make the tech 'greener'
| will be a challenge. OpenAI will win if they focus on making
| the models less compute intensive but it could be dangerous
| for them if they can't.
|
| I guess the OP's brewing disruptor is some locally runnable
| Llama type model that does 80% of what ChatGPT does at a
| fraction of the cost.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Why pretend OpenAI hasn't just disrupted our way of life
| with GPTs in the last two years?
|
| It hasn't disrupted mine in any way. It may do that in the
| future, but the future isn't here yet.
| robot wrote:
| there is a lot of money made (100m paid users?) by everyone and
| momentum so groupthink is forced to occur kind of.
| android521 wrote:
| right . why don't you creat a chatgpt like innovation or even
| AGI and do things your way? So many people just know how to
| complain on what other people build and forget that no one is
| stopping you from innovating the way you like it.
| eloisant wrote:
| Yes they need to change their name. Having "Open" in their name
| is just a big marketing lie.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| They made GPT4 and you think they clearly have little critical
| thinking? That's some big talk you're talking.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| That's the curse of specialisation. You can be really smart
| in one area and completely unaware in others. This industry
| is full of people with deep technical knowledge but little in
| the way of social skills.
| rvz wrote:
| Exactly this. Specialization is indeed a curse. We have
| seen it in lots of these folks especially engineers that
| flaunt their technical prowess but are extremely deficient
| in social skills and other basic soft skills or even
| understanding governance.
|
| Engineer working at "INSERT BIG TECH COMPANY" is no
| guarantee or insight about critical thinking at another
| one. The control and power over OpenAI was always at
| Microsoft regardless of board seats and access. Sam was
| just a lieutenant of an AI division and the engineers were
| just following the money like a carrot on a stick.
|
| Of course, the engineers don't care about power dynamics
| until their paper options are at risk. Then it becomes
| highly psychological and emotional for them and they feel
| powerless and can only follow the leader to safety.
|
| The BOD (Board of Directors) with Adam D'Angelo (the one
| who likely instigated this) has shown to have taken
| unprecedented steps to remove board members and fire the
| CEO for very illogical and vague reasons. They already made
| their mark and the damage is already done.
|
| Lets see if these engineers that signed up to this will
| learn from this theatrical lesson of how not to do
| governance and run an entire company into the ground with
| unspecified reasons.
| mlrtime wrote:
| Agreed, take Hacker News for example. 99% of the articles
| are in a domain I don't have years of professional
| experience.
|
| However, when that one article does come up, and I know the
| details inside/out , the comments sections are rife with
| bad assumptions, naive comments and misinformation.
| jjallen wrote:
| I think what this saga has shown is that no one controls OpenAI
| definitively. Is Microsoft did this wouldn't have happened in
| the first place don't you think?
|
| And if Sam controlled it it also wouldn't have.
| sashank_1509 wrote:
| > Furthermore, the overwhelming groupthink shows there's
| clearly little critical thinking amongst OpenAI's employees
| either.
|
| Very harsh words for some of the highest paid smartest people
| on the planet. The employees built GPT-4 the most advanced AI
| on the planet, what did you build? Do you still claim they're
| more deficient in critical thinking compared to you.
| wiz21c wrote:
| I think the choice they had to make was: either building one
| of the top AI on earth under total control of OpenAI
| investors (and most likely the project of their life) either
| do nothing.
|
| So they bowed.
| Kathula wrote:
| Being smart does not equate to being critical, or going
| against group think.
| Cacti wrote:
| please don't troll HN
| jetsetk wrote:
| There is no comparison to himself in the previous comment.
| Also, did you measure their IQ to put them on such a
| pedestal? There are lots of examples for people being great
| in their niche they invested thousands of hours in, while
| being total failures in other areas. You could see that with
| Mr. Sutskever over the weekend. He must be excellent in ML as
| he dedicated his life to researching this field of knowledge,
| but he lacks practice in critical thinking in management
| contexts.
| dncornholio wrote:
| Disappointing? What has OpenAI done to you? We don't even know
| what happened.
|
| Everything has been pure speculation. I would curb my judgement
| if I were you, until we actually know what happened.
| caskstrength wrote:
| > Furthermore, the overwhelming groupthink shows there's
| clearly little critical thinking amongst OpenAI's employees
| either.
|
| I'm sure has been a lot of critical thinking going on. I would
| venture a guess that employees decided that Sam's approach is
| much more favorable for the price of their options than the
| original mission of the non-profit entity.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Open Group, the home of UNIX standards never was that open.
| _giorgio_ wrote:
| The alternative was that all OpenAI employees started to work
| directly for MSFT, as they said in the letter signed by 95% of
| them.
| jampekka wrote:
| The initial board consists entirely of swamp lizards. I really
| hope they mess up as you predict.
| jatins wrote:
| > Furthermore, the overwhelming groupthink shows there's
| clearly little critical thinking amongst OpenAI's employees
| either.
|
| If the "other side" (board) had put up a SINGLE convincing
| argument on why Sam had to go maybe the employees would have
| not supported Sam unequivocally.
|
| But, atleast as an outsider, we heard nothing that suggests
| board had reasons to remove Sam other than "the vibes were off"
|
| Can you really accuse the employees of groupthink when the
| other side is so weak?
| serial_dev wrote:
| Yes, the original letter had (for an official letter) quite
| some serious allegations, insinuations. If after a week, they
| decided not to back up their claims, I'm not sure there is
| anything big coming.
|
| On the other hand, if they had some serious concerns, serious
| enough to fire the CEO in such a disgraceful way, I don't
| understand why they don't stick to their guns, and explain
| themselves. If you think OpenAI under Sam's leadership is
| going to destroy humanity, I don't understand how they (e.g.
| Ilya) reverted their opinions after a day or two.
| Kye wrote:
| It's possible the big, chaotic blowup forced some
| conversations that were easier to avoid in the normal day-
| to-day, and those conversations led to some vital
| resolution of concerns.
| carlossouza wrote:
| These board members failed miserably in their intent.
|
| Also, they will find a hard time joining any other board
| from now on.
|
| They should have backed up the claims in the letter. They
| didn't.
|
| This means they didn't have how to backup their claims.
| They didn't think it through... extremely amateurish
| behavior.
| ZiiS wrote:
| D'Angelo wasn't even removed from this board; this is
| simply not how failing works at this level.
| richardwhiuk wrote:
| Yet
| iowemoretohim wrote:
| He's part of the selection panel but he won't be a part
| of the new 9 member board.
| ethanbond wrote:
| OpenAI is a private company and not obligated nor is it
| generally advised for them to comment publicly on why people
| are fired. I know that having a public explanation would be
| useful for the plot development of everyone's favorite little
| soap opera, but it makes pretty much zero sense and doesn't
| lend credence to any position whatsoever.
| iowemoretohim wrote:
| Since barely any information was made publicly we have to
| assume the employees had better information that the
| public. So how can we say they lacked critical thinking
| when we don't have access to the information they have?
| ethanbond wrote:
| I didn't claim employees were engaged in groupthink. I'm
| taking issue with the claim that _because there is no
| public explanation_ , there must not be a good
| explanation.
| ulizzle wrote:
| That is a logical fallacy clawing your face. Upvotes to
| whoever can name which one.
| cryptonym wrote:
| Taking decisions in a way that _seems_ opaque and arbitrary
| will not bring much support from employees, partners and
| investors. They did not fire a random employee. Not
| disclosing relevant information for such a key decision was
| proven, once again, to be a disaster.
|
| This is not about soap opera, this is about business and a
| big part is based on trust.
| Bayaz wrote:
| And yet here we are with a result that not only runs
| counter to your premise but will taught as an example of
| what not to do in business.
| ethanbond wrote:
| What?
| Aurornis wrote:
| > OpenAI is a private company and not obligated nor is it
| generally advised for them to comment publicly on why
| people are fired.
|
| The interim CEO said the board couldn't even tell him why
| the old CEO was fired.
|
| Microsoft said the board couldn't even tell them why the
| old CEO was fired.
|
| The employees said the board couldn't explain why the CEO
| was fired.
|
| When nobody can even begin to understand the board's
| actions and they can't even explain themselves, it's a
| recipe for losing confidence. And that's exactly what
| happened, from investors to employees.
| ethanbond wrote:
| I'm specifically taking issue with this common meme that
| _the public_ is owed some sort of explanation. I agree
| the employees (and obviously the incoming CEO) would be.
|
| And there's a difference between, "an explanation would
| help their credibility" versus "a lack of explanation
| means they don't have a good reason."
| ulizzle wrote:
| All explanations lend credence to positions which is why is
| not a good idea to comment on anything. Looks like they're
| lawyered up.
| conception wrote:
| My guess is that the arguments are something along the lines
| of "OpenAIs current products are already causing harm or on
| the path to do so" or something similar damaging to the
| products. Something they are afraid of both having continue
| to move forward on and to having to communicate as it would
| damage the brand. Like "We already have reports of several
| hundred people killing themselves because of ChatGPT
| responses..." and everyone would say, "Oh that makes... wait
| what??"
| kromem wrote:
| I agree with both the commenter above you and you.
|
| Yes, you are right that the board had weak sauce reasoning
| for the firing (giving two teams the same project!?!).
|
| That said, the other commenter is right that this is the
| beginning of the end.
|
| One of the interesting things over the past few years
| watching the development of AI has been that in parallel to
| the demonstration of the limitations of neural networks has
| been many demonstrations of the limitations of human thinking
| and psychology.
|
| Altman just got given a blank check and crowned as king of
| OpenAI. And whatever opposition he faced internally just lost
| all its footing.
|
| That's a terrible recipe for long term success.
|
| Whatever the reasons for the firing, this outcome is going to
| completely screw their long term prospects, as no matter how
| wonderful a leader someone is, losing the reality check of
| empowered opposition results in terrible decisions being made
| unchecked.
|
| He's going to double down on chat interfaces because that's
| been their unexpected bread and butter up until the point
| they get lapped by companies with broader product vision, and
| whatever elements at OpenAI shared that broader vision are
| going to get steamrolled now that he's been given an
| unconditional green light until they jump ship over the next
| 18 months to work elsewhere.
| nvm0n2 wrote:
| Not necessarily! Facebook has done great with its
| unfireable CEO. The FB board would certainly have fired him
| several times over by now if it could, and yet they'd have
| been wrong every time. And the Google cofounders would
| certainly have been kicked out of their own company if the
| board had been able to.
| herostratus101 wrote:
| Yes, also Elon.
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| The board never gave a believable explanation to justify firing
| Altman. So the staff simply made the sensible choice of
| following Altman. This isn't about critical thinking because
| there was nothing to think about.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| You would expect the company that owns 49% of the shares to
| have some input in firing the CEO, why is that disappointing?
| If they had more control this shitshow would never have
| happened.
| jampekka wrote:
| MS doesn't own any part of OpenAI, Inc. In fact nobody really
| owns it. That was the whole point.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Is it really a failure of critical thinking? The employees know
| what position is popular, so even people who are mostly against
| the go-fast strategy can see that they get to work on this
| groundbreaking thing only if they toe the line.
|
| It's also not surprising that people who are near the SV
| culture will think that AGI needs money to get developed, and
| that money in general is useful for the kind of business they
| are running. And that it's a business, not a charity.
|
| I mean if OpenAI had been born in the Soviet Union or
| Scandinavia, maybe people would have somewhat different values,
| it's hard to know. But a thing that is founded by the
| posterboys for modern SV, it's gotta lean towards "money is
| mostly good".
| qwytw wrote:
| > Soviet Union
|
| Or medieval Spain? About as likely... The Soviets weren't
| even able to get the factory floors clean enough to
| consistently manufacture the 8086 10 years after it was
| already outdated.
|
| > maybe people would have somewhat different values, it's
| hard to know. But a thing that is founded by the posterboys
| for modern SV, it's gotta lean towards "money is mostly
| good".
|
| Unfortunately not other system besides capitalism has enabled
| consistent technological progress for 200+ years. Turns out
| you need to pool money and resources to achieve things ..
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > I mean if OpenAI had been born in the Soviet Union or
| Scandinavia, maybe people would have somewhat different
| values, it's hard to know.
|
| Or in Arthurian times. Very different values.
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| It is a shame that we lost the ability to hold such companies
| to account (for now). But given the range of possibilities laid
| out before us, this is the better outcome. GPT-4 has increased
| my knowledge, my confidence, and my pleasure in learning and
| hacking. And perhaps it's relatives will fuel a revolution.
|
| Reminds me of a quote: "A civilization is a heritage of
| beliefs, customs, and knowledge slowly accumulated in the
| course of centuries, elements difficult at times to justify by
| logic, but justifying themselves as paths when they lead
| somewhere, since they open up for man his inner distance." -
| Antoine de Saint-Exupery.
| zx8080 wrote:
| Come on, it was just a preparation for the upcoming IPO. Free
| ads in all news and TV.
| low_tech_love wrote:
| Plot twist: Sam posts that there is no agreement and that
| OpenAI is delusional.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| All this just tells for the 100th time that this area
| desperately needs some regulation. I don't know the form, but
| even if we have 1% of skynet, heck even 0.01% its simply too
| high and we still have full control.
|
| We see most powerful people are in it for the money and power
| ego trip, and literally nothing else. Pesky morals be damned.
| Which may be acceptable for some ad business but here stakes
| are potentially everything and we have no clue what actual %
| the risk is.
|
| Its to me very similar to all naivety particle scientists
| expressed in its early days and then reality check of
| realpolitik and messed up humans in power when bombs were done,
| used and then hundred thousand more were produced.
| lvl102 wrote:
| Ultimately, the openness that we all wish for must come from
| _underlying_ data. The know-how and "secret sauce" were never
| going to be open. And it's not as profound as we think it is
| inside that black box.
|
| So who holds all the data in closed silos? Google and Facebook.
| We may have already lost the battle on achieving "open and
| fair" AI paradigm long time ago.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Regardless of whether you feel like Altman was rushing OpenAI
| too fast, wasn't open enough, and was being too commercial, the
| last few days demonstrated conclusively that the board is
| erratic and unstable and unfit to manage OpenAI.
|
| Their actions was the complete opposite of open. Rather than, I
| don't know, being open and talking to the CEO to share concerns
| and change the company, they just threw a tantrum and fired
| him.
| ethanbond wrote:
| They fired him (you don't know the backstory) and published a
| press release and then Sam was seen back in the offices.
| Prior to the reinstatement (today), there was nothing except
| HN hysteria and media conjecture that made the board look
| extremely unstable.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| ??? They fired him on friday with a statement knifing him
| in the back, un-fired him on tuesday, and now the board is
| resigning? How is that not erratic and unstable?
| ethanbond wrote:
| Note that I just stated, _up until reinstatement_ their
| actions weren't erratic.
|
| Now, yes, they definitely are.
|
| IMO OpenAI's governance is far less trustworthy today
| than it was yesterday.
| broast wrote:
| I found the board members own words to be quite erratic
| between Friday and today, such as Ilya saying he wished
| he didn't participate in the boards actions.
| ethanbond wrote:
| It would be completely understandable to regret when your
| action against someone causes them to fall upwards
| framapotari wrote:
| What? Do you think it would be understandable for a board
| member to regret firing the CEO because of his career
| path post-firing?
| ethanbond wrote:
| If Ilya was concerned about dangerously fast
| commercialization, which seems to have been a point of
| tension between them for a while now, then yes.
| framapotari wrote:
| But he's acting as a board member firing the CEO because
| he arguably believes it's the right thing to do for the
| company. If he then changes his mind because the fired
| CEO continued a successful career then I'd say that
| decision was more on a personal level than for the
| wellbeing of the company.
| ethanbond wrote:
| His obligation as a member of the board is to safeguard
| AI, _not_ OpenAI. That 's why in the employee open letter
| they said, "the board said it'd be compliant with the
| mission to destroy the company." This is _actually_ true.
|
| It's absolutely believable that at first he thought the
| best way to safeguard AI was to get rid of the main
| advocate for profit-seeking at OpenAI, then when that
| person "fell upward" into a position where he'd have
| _fewer_ constraints, to regret that decision.
| framapotari wrote:
| Fair enough, I understand better where you're coming
| from. Thanks!
| hyperthesis wrote:
| What could disrupt OpenAI is a dramatic change in _market_ ,
| perhaps enabled by a change in technology. But if it's the same
| customers in the same market, they will buy or duplicate any
| tech advance; and if it's a sufficiently similar market, they
| will pivot.
| seydor wrote:
| > OpenAI is in fact not open
|
| that ship sailed long ago , no?
|
| But i agree that the company seems less trustworthy now, like
| it's too CEO-centered
| rinze wrote:
| Matt Levine's "slightly annotated diagram" in one of his latest
| newsletters tells the story quite well, I think:
| https://newsletterhunt.com/emails/42469
| mdekkers wrote:
| Very disappointing outcome indeed. Larry Summers is the
| Architect of the modern Russian Oligarchy[1] and responsible
| for an incredible amount of human suffering as well as gross
| financial disparity both in the USA as well as the rest of the
| world.
|
| Not someone I would like to see running the world's leading AI
| company
|
| [1] https://www.thenation.com/article/world/harvard-boys-do-
| russ...
|
| Edit: also https://prospect.org/economy/falling-upward-larry-
| summers/
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2022/03/22/1087654279/how...
|
| And finally https://cepr.net/can-we-blame-larry-summers-for-
| the-collapse...
| oblio wrote:
| One thing I'm not sure I understand... what's OpenAI's business
| model? In my eyes, GPT & co is, just like Dropbox, just a
| feature. It's not a product.
|
| And just like Dropbox, in the end, what disruption? GPT will
| just be a checkbox for products others build. Cool tech, but
| not a full product.
|
| Of course, I'd love to be proven wrong.
| simplyinfinity wrote:
| AI As a Service ( AAaS ), Then the Marketplace of GPTs, and
| it will become the place to get your AI features from.
| nathanasmith wrote:
| The board couldn't even clearly articulate why they fired Sam
| in the first place. There was a departure from critical
| thinking but I don't think it was on the part of the employees.
| ptero wrote:
| I do not see an overwhelming groupthink. I see a perfectly
| rational (and not in any way evil) reaction to a complete mess
| created by the board.
|
| Most are doing the work they love and four people almost
| destroy it and cannot even explain why they did it. If I were
| working at the company that did this I would sign, too. And
| follow through on the threat of leaving if it comes to that.
| auggierose wrote:
| I find the outcome very satisfying. The OpenAI API is here to
| stay and grow, and I can build software on top of it. Hopefully
| other players will open up their APIs soon as well, so that
| there is a reasonable choice.
| jetsetk wrote:
| Not a given that it is here to stay and grow after the
| company showed itself in such a chaotic state. Also, they
| need a profitable product - it is not like they are selling
| Iphones and such..
| ChildOfChaos wrote:
| I would say this is a great outcome.
|
| Any other outcome would have split OpenAI quite dramatically
| and put them back massively.
|
| Big assumption to say 'effectively controlled by Microsoft'
| when Microsoft might have been quite happy for the other option
| and for them to poach a lot of staff.
| wslh wrote:
| I wonder if beyond the groupthinking we are seeing at least a
| more heterogeneous composition: a mix of people that includes
| business, pure research, engineering, and kind of spirituality-
| semireligion around [G]AI.
| bambax wrote:
| > _OpenAI is in fact not open_
|
| One wonders what will happen with Emet Shear's "investigation"
| in the process that lead to Sam's outing [0]. Was it even
| allowed to start?
|
| [0] https://twitter.com/eshear/status/1726526112019382275
| smegger001 wrote:
| Who know but they will probably change their minds again
| before the holiday and CEO musical chairs game will continue
| chriskanan wrote:
| While I certainly agree that OpenAI isn't open and is
| effectively controlled by Microsoft, I'm not following the
| "groupthink" claims based on what just happened. If I'd been
| given the very fishy and vague reasons that it sounds like
| their staff were given, I think any rational person would be
| highly suspicious of the board, especially since some believe
| in fringe ideas, have COIs, or can be perceived as being
| jealous that they aren't the "face" of OpenAI.
| Moto7451 wrote:
| OpenAI is more open than my company's AI teams, and that is
| even from my own insider relationship. As far as commercial
| relationships are concerned, I'd say they're hitting the mark.
| dagaci wrote:
| In this case the fate of OpenAI was in fact heavily controlled
| by its employees. They voted with their employment. Microsoft
| gave them an assured optional destination.
| logicchains wrote:
| >Furthermore, the overwhelming groupthink shows there's clearly
| little critical thinking amongst OpenAI's employees either.
|
| The OpenAI employees overwhelmingly rejected the groupthink of
| the Effective Altruism cult.
| andy99 wrote:
| Whatever OpenAI started as, a week ago it was a company with
| the best general purpose LLM, more on the way, and
| consumer+business products with millions of users. And they
| were still investing very heavily in research. I'm glad that
| company may survive. If there's room in the world for a more
| disruptive research focused AI company that can find
| sustainable funding, even better.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| It's now clearly a Business oriented product and the non-
| profit portion is a marketing tactic to avoid scrutiny.
| belter wrote:
| Outcome? You mean OpenAI wakes up with no memories of the night
| before, finding their suite trashed, a tiger in the bathroom, a
| baby in the closet, and the groom missing and the story will
| end here?
|
| I just renewed by HN subscription to be able to see Season 2!
| rafaelero wrote:
| Which critical thinking could they exercise if no believable
| reasons were given for this whole mess? Maybe it's you who need
| to more carefully assess this situation.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _OpenAI does not have in its DNA to win, they 're too short-
| sighted and reactive._
|
| What does that even mean?
|
| In any case, it's not OpenAI, it's Microsoft, and it has a long
| history of winning and bouncing back.
| martingoodson wrote:
| It's not about critical thinking: the employees were about to
| sell up to $1B of shares to thrive capital. This debacle has
| derailed that.
| buro9 wrote:
| in the end, maybe Sam was the instigator, the board tried to
| defend (and failed) and what we just witnessed from afar was
| just a power play to change the structure of OpenAI (or at
| least the outcome for Sam and many others) towards profit
| rather than non-profit.
|
| we'll all likely never know what truly happened, but it's a
| shame that the board has lost their last remnant of some
| diversity and at the moment appears to be composed of rich
| Western white males... even if they rushed for profit, I'd have
| more faith in the potential upside what could be a sea change
| in the World, if those involved reflected more experiences than
| are currently gathered at that table.
| jmyeet wrote:
| > The process has conclusively confirmed that OpenAI is in fact
| not open and that it is effectively controlled by Microsoft.
|
| I'd say the lack of a narrative from the board, general
| incompetence with how it was handled, the employees quitting
| and the employee letter played their parts too.
|
| But even if it was Microsoft who made this happen: that's what
| happens when you have a major investor. If you don't want their
| influence, don't take their money.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| It definitely seems like another branch on the IT savior
| complex, where the prior branch was crypto.
| mrkramer wrote:
| >Disappointing outcome. The process has conclusively confirmed
| that OpenAI is in fact not open and that it is effectively
| controlled by Microsoft. Furthermore, the overwhelming
| groupthink shows there's clearly little critical thinking
| amongst OpenAI's employees either.
|
| Why was his role as a CEO even challenged?
|
| >It might not seem like the case right now, but I think the
| real disruption is just about to begin. OpenAI does not have in
| its DNA to win, they're too short-sighted and reactive. Big
| techs will have incredible distribution power but a real
| disruptor must be brewing somewhere unnoticed, for now.
|
| Always remember; Google wasn't the first search engine nor
| iPhone the first smartphone. First-movers bring innovation and
| trend not market dominance.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| > that it is effectively controlled by Microsoft
|
| No it's not. Microsoft didn't knew about this till minutes
| before the press release.
|
| Investors are free to protest decisions against their
| principles and people are free to move away from their current
| company.
| JSavageOne wrote:
| The Hacker News comments section has really gone to shit.
|
| People here used to back up their bold claims with arguments.
| framapotari wrote:
| It is quite amazing how many people know enough to pass wide
| judgment on hundreds of people because... they just know.
| Feel it in their gut.
| caturopath wrote:
| > it is effectively controlled by Microsoft
|
| I don't consider this confirmed. Microsoft brought an enormous
| amount of money and other power to the table, and their role
| was certainly big, but it is far from clear to me that they
| held all or most of the power that was wielded.
| iowemoretohim wrote:
| How can you without access to the information that actual
| employees had of the situation say "there's clearly little
| critical thinking amongst OpenAI's employees"?
| mrangle wrote:
| >groupthink shows there's clearly little critical thinking
| amongst OpenAI's employees either.
|
| So the type of employee that would get hired at OpenAi isn't
| likely to be skilled at critical thinking? That's doubtful. It
| looks to me like you dislike how things played out, gathered
| together some mean adjectives and "groupthink", and ended with
| a pessimistic prediction for their trajectry as punishment. One
| is left to wonder what OAI's disruptor outlook would be if the
| outcome of the current situation had been more pleasing.
| idrisser wrote:
| Take a look at https://kyutai.org/ that launched last week
| tnel77 wrote:
| Buy Microsoft stock. Got it.
| kenjackson wrote:
| Microsoft played almost no role in the process except to be a
| place for Sam and team to land.
|
| What the process did shoe is if you plan to oust a popular CEO
| with a thriving company, you should actually have a good reason
| for it. It's amazing how little thought seemingly went into it
| for them.
| chollida1 wrote:
| > The process has conclusively confirmed that OpenAI is in fact
| not open and that it is effectively controlled by Microsoft.
|
| What leads you to make such a definitive statement? To me the
| process shows that Microsoft has no pull in OpenAI.
| baxtr wrote:
| Based on the spectacular drama we were allowed to observe:
|
| For a company at the forefront of AI it's actually very, very
| human.
| 3cats-in-a-coat wrote:
| Let me guess. The only valid outcome for you would've been that
| they disband in order to prevent opening a portal to the cosmic
| AGI Cthulhu.
|
| Frankly these EA & e/acc cults are starting to get on my
| nerves.
| enoch_r wrote:
| > the overwhelming groupthink shows there's clearly little
| critical thinking amongst OpenAI's employees either
|
| I suspect incentives play a huge role here. OAI employees are
| compensated with stock in the for-profit arm of the company.
| It's obvious that the board's actions put the value of that
| stock in extreme jeopardy (which, given the corporate
| structure, is theoretically completely fine! the whole point of
| the corporate structure is that the nonprofit board has the
| power to say "yikes, we've developed an unsafe
| superintelligence, burn down the building and destroy the
| company now").
|
| I think it's natural for employees to be extremely angry with a
| board decision that probably cost them >$1M each.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Disappointing outcome.
|
| The employees of a tech company banded together to get what
| they wanted, force a leadership change, evict the leaders they
| disagreed with, secure the return of the leadership they
| wanted, and restored the value of their hard-earned equity.
|
| This certainly isn't a disappointing outcome for the employees!
| I thought HN would be ecstatic about tech employees banding
| together to force action in their favor, but the comments here
| are surprisingly negative.
| neves wrote:
| Any good summary of the OpenAI imbroglio? I know it has a
| strange corporation, with part non profit and part for profit.
| I don't follow it closely but would like a quick read
| explaining.
| anandrm wrote:
| I have been working for various software companies at different
| capacities. Never did i see 90%+ employees care about their CEO
| . In a small 10 member startup maybe its true. Are there any
| OpenAI employees here to confirm that .. their CEO really
| matters ... I mean how many employee revolted when Steve Jobs
| was fired .. Do Microsoft and Google employees really care ?
| dalbasal wrote:
| Yes...
|
| Investors and executives.. everyone in 2023 is hyper focused on
| "Thiel Monopoly."
|
| Platform, moat, aggregation theory, network effects, first
| mover advantages.. all those ways of thinking about it.
|
| There's no point in being bing to Google's AdWords... So the
| big question is pathway to being the adWords. "Winning." That's
| the paradigm. This is where big returns will be.
|
| However.. we should always remember, but the future is harder
| to see from the past. Post fact analysis, can often make things
| seem a lot simpler and more inevitable than they ever were.
|
| It's not clear what a winner even is here. What are the
| bottlenecks to be controlled. What are the business models,
| revenue sources. What represents the "LLM Google," America
| online, Yahoo or a 90s dumb pipe.
|
| FYIW I think all the big text have powerful plays available..
| including keeping powder dry.
|
| No doubt that proximity to openAI, control, influence, access
| to IP.. all strategic assets. That's why they're all invested
| an involved in the consortium.
|
| That said assets or not strategies. It's hard to have
| strategies when strategic goals are unclear.
|
| You can nominate a strategic goal from here, try to stay
| upstream, make exploratory investments and bets... There is no
| rush for the prize, unless the price is known.
|
| Obviously, I'm assuming the prixe is not AGI and a solution to
| everything... That kind of abstraction is useful, but I do not
| think it's operative.
|
| It's not a race currently, to see who's R&D lab turns on the
| first super intelligent consciousness.
|
| Assuming I'm correct on that, we really have no idea which
| applications LLM capabilities companies are actually competing
| for.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| So you didn't realize that when Microsoft both gained a 49%
| interest and was subsidizing compute?
|
| Unless they had something in their "DNA" that allowed them to
| build enough compute and pay their employees, they were never
| going to "win" without a mass infusion of cash and only three
| companies had enough compute and revenue to throw at them and
| only two companies had relationships with big enterprise and
| compute - Amazon and Microsoft.
| himaraya wrote:
| Hard to say without seeing how the two new board members lean.
| raincole wrote:
| > Furthermore, the overwhelming groupthink shows there's
| clearly little critical thinking amongst OpenAI's employees
| either.
|
| "Because someone acts differently than I expected, they must
| lacks of critical thinking."
|
| Are you an insider? If not, have you considered that _perhaps_
| OpenAI employees are more informed about the situation than
| you?
| Zpalmtree wrote:
| Seems like that's a good thing when the goals of the open
| faction is to slow down development lol, how would that make
| OpenAI win?
| fullshark wrote:
| I think Microsoft's deep pockets, computing resources, their
| head start, and 50%+ employees not quitting is more important
| to the company's chances at success than your assessment they
| have the "wrong DNA."
|
| The idea that the marketplace is a meritocracy of some kind
| where whatever an individual deems as "merit" wins is just
| proven to be nonsense time and time again.
| flappyeagle wrote:
| Amazing outcome. Empty shirts folded. People who get stuff done
| persevere.
| segasaturn wrote:
| >a real disruptor must be brewing somewhere unnoticed, for now.
|
| Anthropic.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > The process has conclusively confirmed that OpenAI is in fact
| not open and that it is effectively controlled by Microsoft.
|
| This was said loud and clear when Microsoft joined in the first
| place but there were no takers.
| dbuser99 wrote:
| Once again the house (the VCs) wins. I for one don't trust openAI
| for one bit after this soap opera
| laserlight wrote:
| With Sam coming back as CEO, hasn't OpenAI board proven that it
| has lost its function? Regardless of who is in the board, they
| won't be able to exercise one of the most fundamental of their
| rights, firing the CEO, because Sam has proven that he is
| unfireable. Now, Sam can do however he pleases, whether it is
| lying, not reporting, etc. To be clear, I don't claim that Sam
| did, or will, lie, or misbehave.
| random_cynic wrote:
| No that hasn't at all been the case. The board acted like the
| most incompetent group of individuals who've even handed any
| responsibility. If they went through due process, notified
| their employees and investors, and put out a statement of why
| they're firing the CEO instead of doing it over a 15 min Google
| meet and then going completely silent, none of this outrage
| would have taken place.
| maxlin wrote:
| Exactly. 3 CEO switches in a week is ridiculous
| abkolan wrote:
| Four CEO changes in five days to be precise.
|
| Sam -> Mira -> Emmet -> Sam
| Hendrikto wrote:
| That are three changes. Every arrow is one.
| physicles wrote:
| Classic fence post error.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| And technically 2 new CEOs
| qup wrote:
| The three hard problems: naming things and off-by-one
| errors
| Crespyl wrote:
| I always heard:
|
| There are two hard problems: naming things, cache
| invalidation, and off-by-one errors.
| maxlin wrote:
| 1 hard problems.
|
| naming things, cache invalidation, off-by one errors, and
| overflows.
| low_tech_punk wrote:
| Set semantic or List semantic?
| freedomben wrote:
| Thank you for not editing this away. Easy mistake to
| make, and gave us a good laugh (hopefully laughing _with_
| you. Everyone who 's ever programmed has made the same
| error).
| caleb-allen wrote:
| Maybe it came at the advice of Rishi Sunak when he and
| Altman met last week!
| squigz wrote:
| > The board acted like the most incompetent group of
| individuals who've even handed any responsibility.
|
| This is overly dramatic, but I suppose that's par for this
| round.
|
| > none of this outrage would have taken place.
|
| Yeah... I highly doubt this, personally. I'm sure the outrage
| would have been similar, as HN's current favorite CEO was
| fired.
| pas wrote:
| HN sentiment is pretty ambivalent regarding Altman. yes,
| almost everyone agrees he's important, but a big group
| things he's basically landed gentry exploiting ML
| researchers, an other thinks he's a genius for getting MS
| pay for GPT costs, etc.
| hackernewds wrote:
| I think a page developed by YC thinks a lot more about
| him than that ;)
| komali2 wrote:
| Just putting my hand up as one of the dudes that happened
| to enter my email on a yc forum (not "page") but really
| doesn't like the guy lol.
|
| I also have a Twitter account. Guess my opinion on the
| current or former Twitter CEOs?
| SilasX wrote:
| Agreed. It's naive to think that an decision _this_
| unpopular _somehow_ wouldn 't have resulted in dissent and
| fracturing if only they had given it a better explanation
| and dotted more i's.
|
| Imagine arguing this in another context: "Man, if _only_
| the Supreme Court had clearly articulated its reasoning in
| overturning Roe v Wade, there wouldn 't have been all this
| outrage over it."
|
| (I'm happy to accept that there's plenty of room for
| avoiding some of the damage, like the torrents of observers
| thinking "these board members clearly don't know what
| they're doing".)
| braiamp wrote:
| > If they went through due process, notified their employees
| and investors, and put out a statement of why they're firing
| the CEO
|
| Did you read the bylaws? They have no responsibility to do
| any of that.
| ksd482 wrote:
| That's not the point. Whether or not it was in the bylaws,
| this would have been the sensible thing to do.
| eksapsy wrote:
| you don't have responsibility for washing yourself before
| going to a mass transport vehicle full of people. it's
| within your rights not to do that and be the smelliest
| person in the bus.
|
| does it mean it's right or professional?
|
| getting your point, but i hope you get the point i make as
| well, that just because you have no responsibility for
| something doesn't mean you're right or not unethical for
| doing or not doing that thing. so i feel like you're losing
| the point a little.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Here lies the body of William Jay, Who died
| maintaining his right of way - He was right, dead
| right, as he sped along, But he's just as dead as if
| he were wrong. - Dale Carnegie
| OnAYDIN wrote:
| Actually the board may not have acted in most professional
| way but in due process they kind of proved Sam Altman is
| unfireable for sure, even if they didn't intend to.
|
| They did notify everyone. They did it after firing which is
| within their rights. They may also choose to stay silent if
| there is legitimate reason for it such as making the reasons
| known may harm the organization even more. This is
| speculation obviously.
|
| In any case they didn't omit doing anything they need to and
| they didn't exercise a power they didn't have. The end result
| is that the board they choose will be impotent at the moment,
| for sure.
| xvector wrote:
| Their communication was completely insufficient. There is
| no possible world on which the board could be considered
| "competent" or "professional."
| qudat wrote:
| > proved Sam Altman is unfireable [without explaining why
| to its employees].
| eksapsy wrote:
| Getting your point, although the fact that something is
| within your rights, may or may not mean certainly that it's
| also a proper thing to do ... ?
|
| Like, nobody is going to arrest you for spitting on the
| street especially if you're an old grandpa. Nobody is going
| to arrest you for saying nasty things about somebody's mom.
|
| You get my point, to some boundary both are kinda within
| somebody's rights, although can be suable or can be
| reported for misbehaving. But that's the keypoint,
| misbehavior.
|
| Just because something is within your rights doesn't mean
| you're not misbehaving or not acting in an immature way.
|
| To be clear, Im not denying or agreeing that the board of
| directors acted in an immature way. I'm just arguing
| against the claim that was made within your text that just
| because someone is acting within their rights that it's
| also a "right" thing to do necessary, while that is not the
| case always.
| jonas21 wrote:
| Firing Sam was within the board's rights. And 90% of the
| employees threatening to leave was within their rights.
|
| All this proved is that you can't take a major action that
| is deeply unpopular with employees, without consulting
| them, and expect to still have a functioning organization.
| This should be obvious, but it apparently never crossed the
| board's mind.
| freedomben wrote:
| A lot of these high-up tech leaders seem to forget this
| regularly. They sit on their thrones and dictate wild
| swings, and are used to having people obey. They get all
| the praise and adulation when things go well, and when
| things don't go well they golden parachute into some
| other organization who hires based on resume titles
| rather than leadership and technical ability. It doesn't
| surprise me at all that they were caught off guard by
| this.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Not sure how much of the employees leaving have to do
| with negotiating Sam back, must be a big factor but not
| all, during the table talk Emmett, Angelo and Ilya must
| have decided that it wasn't a good firing and a mistake
| in retrospect and it is to fix it.
| paulddraper wrote:
| > They may also choose to stay silent
|
| They may choose to, and they did choose to.
|
| But it was an incompitant choice. (Obviously.)
| random_cynic wrote:
| If you read my comment again, I'm talking about their
| competence, not their rights. Those are two entirely
| different things.
| zerohalo wrote:
| > none of this outrage would have taken place.
|
| most certainly would have still taken place; no one cares
| about how it was done; what they care about it being able to
| make $$; and it was clearly going to not be as heavily
| prioritized without Altman (which is why MSFT embraced him
| and his engineers almost immediately).
|
| > notified their employees and investors they did notify
| their employees; they have fiduciary duty to investors as a
| nonprofit.
| patcon wrote:
| > The board acted like the most incompetent group of
| individuals who've eve[r been] handed any responsibility.
|
| This whole conversation has been full of appeals to
| authority. Just because us tech people don't know some of
| these names and their accomplishments, we talk about them
| being "weak" members. The more I learn, the more I think this
| board was full of smart ppl who didn't play business politics
| well (and that's ok by me, as business politics isn't
| supposed to be something they have to deal with).
|
| Their lack of entanglements makes them stronger members, in
| my perspective. Their miscalculation was in how broken the
| system is in which they were undermined. And you and I are
| part of that brokenness even in how we talk about it here
| altpaddle wrote:
| Time will tell. Hopefully the new board will still be mostly
| independent of Sam/MSFT/VC influence. I really hope they
| continue as an org that tries its best to uphold their charter
| vs just being another startup.
| kmlevitt wrote:
| This is a better deal for the board and a worse one for Sam
| than people realize. Sam and Greg and even Ilya are both off
| the board, D'Angelo gets to stay on despite his outrageous
| actions, and he gets veto power over who the new board members
| will be and a big say in who gets voted on to the board next.
|
| Everybody's guard is going to be up around Sam from now on.
| He'll have much less leverage over this board than he did over
| the previous one (before the other three of nine quit). I think
| eventually he will prevail because he has the charm and social
| skills to win over the other independent members. But he will
| have to reign in his own behavior a lot in order to keep them
| on his side versus D'Angelo
| JSavageOne wrote:
| I'd be shocked if D'Angelo doesn't get kicked off. Even
| before this debacle his AI competitor app poe.com is an
| obvious conflict of interest with OpenAI.
| himaraya wrote:
| If he survived to this point, I doubt he will go any time
| soon.
| yeck wrote:
| Depends who gets onto the board. There are probably a lot
| of forces interested in ousting him now, so he'd need to
| do an amazing job vetting the new board members.
|
| My guess is that he has less than a year, based on the my
| assumption that there will be constant pressure placed on
| the board to oust him.
| himaraya wrote:
| He has his network and technical credibility, so I
| wouldn't underestimate him. Board composition remains
| hard to predict now.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| What surprises me is how much regard the valley has for
| this guy. Doesn't Quora suck terribly? I'm for sure its
| target demographic and I cannot for the life of me pull
| value from it. I have tried!
| himaraya wrote:
| His claim to fame comes from scaling FB. Quora shows he
| has questionable product nous, but nobody questions his
| technical chops.
| JSavageOne wrote:
| Quora is an embarrassment and died years ago when
| marketers took it over
| murakamiiq84 wrote:
| I think it was only a competitor app _after_ GPTs came out.
| A conspiracy theorist might say that Altman wanted to get
| him off the board and engineered GPTs as a pretext first,
| in the same way that he used some random paper coauthored
| by Toner that nobody read to kick Toner out.
| jnwatson wrote:
| This board's sole job is to pick the new board. The new board
| will have Sam.
| himaraya wrote:
| Conditioned on the outcome of the internal investigation,
| which seems up for grabs.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| (Sam Altman was never on the board to begin with)
| ketzo wrote:
| He was. OpenAI board as of last Thursday was Altman,
| Sutskever, Brockman, D'Angelo, Macaulay, Toner.
| low_tech_love wrote:
| Yes, but on the other hand, this whole thing has shown that
| OpenAI is not running smooth anymore, and probably never will
| again. You can't cut the head of the snake then attach it back
| later and expect it to move on slithering. Even if Sam stays,
| he won't be able to just do whatever he wants because in an
| organization as complex as OpenAI, there are thousands of
| unwritten rules and relationships and hidden processes that
| need to go smooth without the CEO's direct intervention (the
| CEO cannot be everywhere all the time). So, what this says to
| me (Sam being re-hired) is that the future OpenAI is now a
| watered-down, mere shadow of its former self.
|
| I personally think it's weird if he really settles back in,
| especially given the other guys who resigned after the fact.
| There must be lots of other super exciting new things for him
| to do out there, and some pretty amazing leadership job offers
| from other companies. I'm not saying OpenAI will die out or
| anything, but surely it has shown a weak side.
| throwuwu wrote:
| This couldn't be more wrong. The big thing we learned from
| this episode is that Sam and Greg have the loyalty and
| respect of almost every single employee at OpenAI. Morale is
| high and they're ready to fight for what they believe in.
| They didn't "cut the head off" and the only snake here is
| D'Angelo, he tried to kill OpenAI and failed miserably. Now
| he appears to be desperately trying to hold on to some
| semblance of power by agreeing to Sam and Greg coming back
| instead of losing all control with the whole team joining
| Microsoft.
| alephnan wrote:
| > Morale is high and they're ready to fight for what they
| believe in.
|
| Money.
| 37394748 wrote:
| I don't think Ilya should get off so easily. Him not havinh
| a say in the formation of the new board speaks volumes
| about his role in things if you ask me. I hope people keep
| saying his name too so nobody forgets his place in this
| mess.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| There were comments the other day along the lines of "I
| wouldn't be surprised if someone came by Ilya's desk
| while he was deep in research and said 'sign this' and he
| just signed it and gave it back to them without even
| looking and didn't realize."
|
| People will contort themselves into pretzels to invent
| rationalizations.
| lysecret wrote:
| No the board is just one instance. It doesn't and shouldn't
| have absolute power. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
|
| There ist the board the investors the employees the senior
| management.
|
| All other parties aligned against it and thus it couldn't act.
| If only Sam would have rebelled. Or even just Sam and the
| investors (without the employees) nothing would have happened.
| strikelaserclaw wrote:
| The board can still fire sam provided they get all the key
| stakeholders onboard with that firing. It made no sense to fire
| someone doing a good job at their role without any
| justification, that seems to have been the key issue.
| Ultimately, we all know this non profit thing is for show and
| will never work out.
| stetrain wrote:
| Imagine if the board of Apple fired Tim Cook with no warning
| right after he went on stage and announced their new developer
| platform updates for the year alongside record growth and
| sales, refused to elaborate as to the reasons or provide any
| useful communications to investors over several days, and
| replaced their first interim CEO with another interim CEO from
| a completely different kind of business in that same weekend.
|
| If you don't think there would be a shareholder revolt against
| the board, for simply exercising their most fundamental right
| to fire the CEO, I think you're missing part the picture.
| hackernewds wrote:
| It is prudent to recall that enhancing shareholder value and
| delivering record growth and sales are NOT the mission of the
| company or Board. But now it appears that it will have to be.
| ketzo wrote:
| Yeah, but they _also_ didn 't elaborate in the slightest
| about how they were serving the charter with their actions.
|
| If they were super-duper worried about how Sam was going to
| cause a global extinction event with AI, or even just that
| he was driving the company in too commercial of a
| direction, _they should have said that to everyone!_
|
| The idea that they could fire the CEO with a super vague,
| one-paragraph statement, and then expect 800 employees who
| respect that CEO to just... be totally fine with that is
| absolutely fucking insane, regardless of the board's
| fiduciary responsibilities. They're board members, not
| gods.
| NanoYohaneTSU wrote:
| They don't have to elaborate. As many have pointed out,
| most people have been given advice to not say anything at
| all when SHTF. If they did say something there would
| still be drama. It's best to keep these details internal.
|
| I still believe in the theory that Altman was going hard
| after profits. Both McCauley and Toner are focused on the
| altruistic aspects of AGI and safety. Altman shouldn't be
| at OpenAI and neither should D'Angelo.
| ketzo wrote:
| Okay, keep silent to save your own ass, fine
|
| But why would anyone expect 800 people to risk their
| livelihoods and work without a _little_ serious
| justification? This was an inevitable reaction.
| murakamiiq84 wrote:
| I think it's important to keep in mind that BOTH Altman
| and the board maneuvered to threaten to destroy OpenAI.
|
| If Altman was silent and/or said something like "people
| take some time off for Thanksgiving, in a week calmer
| minds will prevail" while negotiating behind the scenes,
| OpenAI would look a lot less dire in the last few days.
| Instead he launched a public pressure campaign, likely
| pressured Mira, got Satya to make some fake commitments,
| got Greg Bockman's wife to emotionally pressure Ilya,
| etc.
|
| Masterful chess, clearly. But playing people like pieces
| nonetheless.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Why couldn't those people have acted on their own
| judgement?
| stetrain wrote:
| > They don't have to elaborate.
|
| Sure, they don't have to. How did that work out?
|
| Four CEOs in five days, their largest partner stepping in
| to try to stop the chaos, and almost the entirety of
| their employees threatening to leave for guaranteed jobs
| at that partner if the board didn't step down.
| stetrain wrote:
| Sure, there is a difference there. But the actions that
| erode confidence are the same.
|
| You could tell the same story about a rising sports team
| replacing their star coach, or a military sacking a general
| the day after he marched through the streets to fanfare
| after winning a battle.
|
| Even without the money involved, a sudden change in
| leadership with no explanation, followed only by increasing
| uncertainty and cloudy communication, is not going to go
| well for those who are backing you.
|
| Even in the most altruistic version of OpenAI's goals I'm
| fairly sure they need employees and funding to pay those
| employees and do the research.
| paulddraper wrote:
| > enhancing shareholder value and delivering record growth
| and sales are NOT the mission of the company
|
| Developer platform updates seem to be inline.
|
| And in any case, the board also failed to specify how their
| action furthered the mission of the company.
|
| From all appearances, it appeared to damage the mission of
| the company. (If for no other reason that it dissolve the
| company and gave everything to MSFT.)
| jacquesm wrote:
| You forgot: and offered the company for a bag of peanuts to
| Microsoft.
| eksapsy wrote:
| no but the people like the developers, clients, government
| etc. have also the right to exercise their revolt against
| decisions they don't like as well. don't you think?
|
| like, you get me, the board of directors is not the only
| actual power within a company, and that was proven by the
| whole scandal of Sam being discarded/fired that was made by
| the developers themselves. they also have the right to
| exercise their right to just not work at this company without
| the leader they may had liked.
| stetrain wrote:
| Right. I really should have said employees and investors.
| Even if OpenAI somehow had no regard for its investors,
| they still need their employees to accomplish their
| mission. And funding to pay those employees.
|
| The board seemed to have the confidence of none of the
| groups they needed confidence from.
| mkagenius wrote:
| None of the theories by HNers on day 1 of this drama was right
| - not a single one and it had 1 million comments. So, lets not
| guess anymore and just sit back.
| baby wrote:
| How did you get there? The board did fire him, they exercised
| their right.
| eksapsy wrote:
| because people like the developers within the company did not
| like that decision and its also within their right to
| disagree with the board's decision and not to want to work
| under a different leadership. They're not slaves, they're
| employees who rented their time for a specific purpose under
| a specific leader.
|
| As it's within the board's rights to hire or fire people like
| Sam or the developers.
| Quentincestino wrote:
| OpenAI workers has shown their plain support to their CEO by
| threatening to follow him wherever he wants, I personaly think
| their collective judgement on him is worth more than any rumors
| BOOSTERHIDROGEN wrote:
| Money indeed is worth more, also the only thing that is easy
| to measure during crisis.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| Looks like all the naysayers from the original "were making a
| for-profit but it won't change us" post ended up correct:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19359928
| jurgenaut23 wrote:
| I predict this isn't the last episode of this amazing soap opera.
| kumarvvr wrote:
| So, the company has successfully trashed its goals and values,
| and is finally focused on making money?
| kumarvvr wrote:
| I find it worrying that Elon Musk is totally silent through this
| whole drama.
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| He's been sending out the occasional tweet - to be honest I get
| the impression that like the rest of us, he's just been
| watching with a big tub of popcorn...
| doyouevensunbro wrote:
| We're at ~250k tech industry layoffs this year and a single CEO
| drama dominates the media because "AI".
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Because it is a scoop
| justanotherjoe wrote:
| Yeah people should really stand up for their peer more. Who
| knew that would work. Sam wouldn't have been back if it not for
| Brockman and several scientists standing up for him.
| ah765 wrote:
| "Context on the negotiations to bring Sam back as CEO of OpenAI:
|
| The biggest sticking point was Sam being on the board.
| Ultimately, he conceded to not being on the board, at least
| initially, to close the deal. The hope/expectation is that he
| will end up on the board eventually."
|
| (https://twitter.com/emilychangtv/status/1727216818648134101)
| andrewstuart wrote:
| I've lost track of everything.
| system2 wrote:
| Rich people drama. For us peasants, nothing changed.
| renewiltord wrote:
| This is a triumph of labor against management in sheep's garb.
| Workers united were able to force an outcome they desired to
| preserve an organization they loved while sweeping aside a board
| that would prefer to destroy it.
| didip wrote:
| Let's be real here. At the end of the day, what matters more is
| commercial success and a big payout.
|
| AGI is still very far away and the fear mongering is nothing but
| PR stunt.
|
| But the devs need their big payout now. Which explains the
| mutiny.
|
| The "safety" board of directors drank their own koolaid a bit too
| much.
| mkii wrote:
| You can have unsafe AI without AGI.
| CaptainFever wrote:
| Of course, it depends on what safety means. Currently it
| seems to just be a pretext for prudishness and regulation.
| kuchenbecker wrote:
| What will this unsafe AI do?
| s-xyz wrote:
| All systems operational again https://status.openai.com/
| tomalbrc wrote:
| I really don't care who the CEO/CTO/CFO of any company is. Why is
| this whole thing blowing up that much on ycombinator?
| kaoD wrote:
| It's nerd(ier) Game of Thrones in real life. Pretty
| entertaining.
| Solvency wrote:
| Much more like Succession. But again. Nerdier.
| meitham wrote:
| Unfortunately the "great man theory" is still going strong in
| the 21st century. Just like Steve Jobs has invented the iPhone
| people believe he invented GPT!
| dalbasal wrote:
| Is the alternative theory that the ownership, control and
| leadership of OpenAI is immaterial?
| meitham wrote:
| OpenAI success is unfortunately largely based on the one
| ruthless decision to ignore ethics and train the model on
| the work of millions of artists and authors. I don't know
| if Sam himself was behind this decision. I doubt Aaron
| Schwartz would have done the same.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Ok...
|
| So the alternative to great man theory, in this case, is
| terrible man theory... I'm not following.
|
| If focusing on control over openai, is great man
| theory... What's the contrary notion?
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| It wouldn't be interesting if one CEO got fired and replaced,
| but the fact that there's a different CEO every couple of days
| and no one knows what will happen next. The uncertainty is
| addictive, not to mention the scale of self-destruction. See
| also: trainwrecks.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| What a farce
| globalise83 wrote:
| This is our board, they provide oversight and ensure alignment
| with the mission. If you don't like them, we have others.
| dcreater wrote:
| Bit of an aside, but the rationality and moral compass shown by
| HN has restored my faith after having lost it thanks to r/ChatGPT
| rurban wrote:
| This was expected. So they booted Ilya (my main culprit), Helen
| Toner (expected, favoriting Anthropic) and Tasha McCauly. This
| seems to have been their vote majority. Not D'Angelo. Interesting
| simoneblv wrote:
| How does Microsoft will come out from this? Satya already made a
| big announcement on having Sam and everyone else in.
| timetraveller26 wrote:
| Back to work I guess
| dcreater wrote:
| So these nutjob teenagers are going to create AGI? We are fucked
| if they actually succeed
| upupupandaway wrote:
| In a different thread I commented how surprised I was that Emmett
| Shear accepted the job of interim CEO, to some criticism that my
| opinion was "silly". _This_ is why he should have stayed miles
| away from this whole mess. There was no winning scenario for him:
| stay CEO and lose 95% of the employees, or get ignored by a
| triumphant return of Sam Altman.
| houston_Euler wrote:
| After learning earlier about Sam Altman's long-con at Reddit,
| I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone suggest that Emmett Shear
| accepted the job in order to help get Sam back into the
| company.
|
| They were both members of the inaugural class of Y-Combinator,
| and all of Shear's published actions since accepting the role
| (like demanding evidence of Sam' wrongdoing) seem to have
| helped Sam return to his role.
|
| I don't think it's a stretch to say that he did win, in that he
| might have accomplished exactly what he wanted when he accepted
| the role.
| stephenitis wrote:
| Can you elaborate on the long con?
| jl2718 wrote:
| Are the Microsoft job offers at the same compensation still on
| the table?
| righthand wrote:
| What's interesting to me is that during this time Meta and OpenAI
| have eliminated their AI ethics members/teams but are still
| preaching about how it matters. No one has given any details
| beyond grand statements about it's importance on what these
| ethical AIs do. Everyone has secured their payday though.
| swatcoder wrote:
| I think those changes (and this shakeup) are the start of the
| industry grounding its expectations for this technology. I
| think a lot of product and finance people, and many but not all
| researchers, are seeing the current batch of generative AI
| ideas as ripe to make do things and see the pseudo-religious
| safety/ethics communities as not directly relevant to that
| work.
|
| So you let your product teams figure out how the _brand_ needs
| to be protected and the workflow needs to be shaped, like
| always, and you don 't defer to some outside department full of
| beatniks in berets or whatever.
| righthand wrote:
| This is the abandoning of ethics. No one moving forward is
| going to be thinking about it and they've clearly signaled
| it's about making money. People that have issues with it will
| just not use the products or be hypocrites about using the
| products. There is nothing to push up against anymore, but I
| don't think the recent events are initiator. People were
| already letting go of ethics the moment they continued using
| it because the tech was so cool. The parting of the ethical
| peoples is just the final nail. There is no reason to remove
| these ethical teams if they believe in ethics, downsize maybe
| but not dedicating a human to at least researching the
| ethical outcomes sure isn't very good for humanity ethics
| concerns.
| olgias wrote:
| Where Ilya will go next then? I assume he won't stay at OpenAI
| for too long after all this poop-show.
| xeckr wrote:
| What a ride.
| Havoc wrote:
| Keeping Adam? I thought he's the likely instigator
| cft wrote:
| Ilya won't stick around for long probably. It will be interesting
| what he can do independently. Probably not a lot.
| personalityson wrote:
| Why is Altman, who has no higher education, critical for
| development of AI?
| calmoo wrote:
| Is higher education really crucial for pushing something
| forward? Even if he isn't an AI expert, there is lots of stuff
| surrounding the technology that needs doing, for example
| massive amounts of funding, which he seems to have been pretty
| good at securing.
| notfed wrote:
| Sam was crucified, then resurrected after 3 days and 3 nights.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Satya probably isn't that happy, after the weekend efforts to
| eventually bring all folks into Microsoft.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| You say that as if that was his end goal. His end goal was to
| save the situation, and that happened. One can easily argue
| that Microsoft's offer added huge pressure on the OpenAI board
| that made the new / current outcome possible. And perhaps that
| was the plan after all.
| pjmlp wrote:
| When offices are already being prepared, and HR processes
| being put into place, we are beyond saving a situation.
| ugh123 wrote:
| In light of this weekend's events, and the more i've learned
| about OpenAI's beginnings and purpose, I now believe that there
| isn't necessarily a "for profit" motivation of the company, but
| merely that the original intention to create AI that "benefits
| humanity" is in full play now through a commercialized ChatGPT,
| and possibly further leveraged through "GPTs" and their
| evolution.
|
| Is this the "path" to AGI? Who knows! But it _is a path_ to
| benefitting humanity as probably Sam and his camp see it. Does
| Ilya have a different plan? If he does, he has a lot of catching
| up to do while the current productization of ChatGPT and GPTs
| continue marching forward. Maybe he sees a great leap forward in
| accuracy in GPT-5 or later. Or maybe he feels LLMs aren 't the
| answer and theres a completely new paradigm on the horizon.
| Regardless, they still need to answer to the fact that both
| research and product _need funds_ to buy and power GPUs, and also
| satisfy the MSFT partnership. Commercialization is their _only_
| clear answer to that right now. Future investments will likely
| not stray from this approach, else they 'll fund rivals who are
| more commercially motivated. Thats business.
|
| Thus, i'm all in on this commercially motivated humanity
| benefitting GPT product. Let the market take OpenAI LLMs to where
| they need/want it to. Exciting things may follow!
| picadores wrote:
| Totally agree, GPT should be trained to spout adds and develop
| dark pattern behaviour.
| ugh123 wrote:
| There will always be misuse, less sexy, or downright illegal
| use cases leveraging any AI product these days - just as is
| the nature of the internet itself.
| tkgally wrote:
| In addition to commercialization providing money for AI
| development, isn't there also the argument that prudent
| commercialization is the best way to test the models for
| possible dangers? I think I saw Mira Murati take that position
| in an interview. In other words, creating a product that people
| want to use so much that they are willing to pay for it is a
| good way to stress-test the product.
|
| I don't know if I agree, but the argument did make me think.
| kuchenbecker wrote:
| Additionally, when you have a pre-release product that has
| largely passed small and artificial tests, you get
| diminishing returns on continued testing.
|
| Eventually you need to expand, despite some risk, to push the
| testing forward.
|
| Everyone has a different opinion on what level of safety AI
| should reach before it's released. "Makes no mistakes" and
| "never says something mean" are not attainable goals vs
| "reduce the rate of hallucinations, as defined by x, to <0.5%
| of total respinses" and "given a set of known and imagined
| scenarios, new Model continues to have a zero false-negative
| rate".
|
| When it's an engineering problem we're trying to solve, we
| can mqke progress, but no company can avoid all forms of harm
| as defined by everyone.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| https://twitter.com/dr_park_phd/status/1727125936070410594
|
| https://twitter.com/GaryMarcus/status/1727134758919151975
|
| https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/CSET-Decoding...
|
| https://twitter.com/AISafetyMemes/status/1727108259297837083
| olivierlacan wrote:
| Sweetie, you might want to actually look at the photo attached
| to the tweet.
| mkii wrote:
| April Fools? If you run a monotonic stack and summation kinda
| algorithm on 11/21 you'd get 4/1 :-)
| zx8080 wrote:
| It was just a preparation for the upcoming IPO. Free ads in all
| news and TV.
| wouldbecouldbe wrote:
| The sane course of action for any healthy organization after last
| week would be to work actively on becoming more independent from
| Microsoft.
|
| With Sam at the head, especially after Microsoft backing him,
| they will most likely do the opposite. Meaning a deeper
| integration with Microsoft.
|
| If it wasn't already, OpenAI is now basically a Microsoft
| subsidiary. With the advantage for Microsoft of not being legally
| liable for any court cases.
| 0xDEF wrote:
| Before the current drama:
|
| >Microsoft owned 49% of the for-profit part of OpenAI.
|
| >OpenAI's training, inference, and all other infrastructure
| were running entirely on Azure credits.
|
| >Microsoft/Azure were the only ones offering OpenAI's
| models/APIs with a business-friendly SLA, uptime/stability, and
| the option to host them in Azure data centers outside the US.
|
| OpenAI is already Microsoft.
| ensocode wrote:
| > a real disruptor must be brewing somewhere unnoticed, for now.
| Yeah, they might just be the Netscapes and AltaVistas
| ChatGTP wrote:
| Cool, so the technically minded folks on the internet have spent
| a week discussing this and practically nothing has changed?
| MattHeard wrote:
| I was hopeful for a private-industry approach to AI safety, but
| it looks unlikely now, and due to the slow pace of state
| investment in public AI R&D, all approaches to AI safety look
| unlikely now.
|
| Safety research on toy models will continue to provide
| developments, but the industry expectation appears to be that
| emergent properties puts a low ceiling on what can be learned
| about safety without researching on cutting edge models.
|
| Altman touted the governance structure of OpenAI as a mechanism
| for ensuring the organisation's prioritisation of safety, but the
| reports of internal reallocation away from safety towards keeping
| ChatGPT running under load concern me. Now the board has
| demonstrated that it was technically capable but insufficiently
| powerful to keep these interests in line, it seems unclear how
| any safety-oriented organisation, including Anthropic, could
| avoid the accelerationist influence of funders.
| throwuwu wrote:
| Easy, don't be incompetent and don't abuse your power for
| personal gain. People aren't as dumb as you think they are and
| they will see right through that bullshit and quit rather than
| follow idiot tyrants.
| abra0 wrote:
| More effort spent on early commercialization like keeping
| ChatGPT running might mean less effort on cutting edge
| capabilities. Altman was never an AI safety person, so my
| personal hope is that Anthropic avoids this by having higher
| quality leadership.
| mymusewww wrote:
| I would like to know the model that isn't a "toy model".
| sgt101 wrote:
| There are no emergent properties, just a linear increase in
| knowledge that can be retrieved.
|
| - It can't plan
|
| - It can't do arithmetic
|
| - It can't reason
|
| - It can approximately retrieve knowledge with a natural
| language query (there are some issues with this, but it's very
| good)
|
| - It can encode data into natural languages and other
| modalities
|
| I'm not worried about it, I am worried about how badly people
| have misunderstood what it can do and then attempted to use it
| for things that matter.
|
| But I'm not surprised.
| Davidzheng wrote:
| This is incorrect. For example the ability to translate
| between languages is emergent. Also gpt4 can do arithmetic
| better than the average person. Especially considering the
| process it arrives at the computation is via intuition
| basically vs algorithmic. Btw just as an aide the newer
| models can also write code to do certain tasks, like
| arithmetic.
| sgt101 wrote:
| Language translation is due to the huge corpus of
| translations that it's trained on. Google translate has
| been doing this for years. People don't apply softmax to
| their arithmetic. Again, code generation is approximate
| retrieval, it can't generate anything outside of it's
| training distribution.
| zucker42 wrote:
| What is your definition of reasoning? In my mind, GPT-4 has
| some nascent reasoning abilities.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| I don't think AI safetyists are worried about any model they
| have created so far. But if we are able to go from letter-
| soup "ooh look that almost seems like a sentence, SOTA!" to
| GPT4 in 20 years, where will go in the next 20? And what is
| the point they are becoming powerful. Let alone all the crazy
| ways people are trying to augment them with RAG, function
| calls, get them to run on less computer power and so on.
|
| Also being better at humans at everything is not a
| prerequisite for danger. Probably a scary moment is when it
| could look at a C (or Rust, C++, whatever) codebase, find an
| exploit, and then use that exploit as a worm. If it can do
| that on everyday hardware not top end GPUs (either because
| the algorithms are made more efficient, or every iPhone has a
| tensor unit).
| ChatGTP wrote:
| In my opinion, MS will neuter this product too, there is no way
| they're just going to have the public accessing tools which make
| their own software and products obsolete.
|
| They will take over the board, and then steer it in some weird
| dystopian direction.
|
| Ilya knows that IMO, he was just more principled than Altman.
| Uptrenda wrote:
| Yep, this ones going in my cringe compilation.
| ecmascript wrote:
| All these posts about OpenAI.. are people really this interested
| in whatever happens inside one company?
| quietpain wrote:
| Why is this subject giving me Silicon Valley season 2 flashbacks
| with every update?
| seydor wrote:
| The script of SV2 was given as training data to the AGI that
| has taken over.
| jmyeet wrote:
| I figured if Sam came back, the board would have to go as a
| condition. That's obvious. And deserved. The handling of this
| whole thing has been a very public clownshow.
|
| Obviously, Microsoft has some influence here. That's no different
| to any other large investor. But the key factors are:
|
| 1. Lack of a good narrative from the board as to why they fired
| Sam;
|
| 2. Failure to loop in Microsoft so they're at least prepared from
| a communications front and feel like they were part of the
| process. The board can probably give them more details why
| privately;
|
| 3. People leaving in protest speaks well of Sam;
|
| 4. The employee letter speaks well of Sam;
|
| 5. The interim CEO clown show and lack of an all hands
| immediately after speaks poorly of the board.
| nickysielicki wrote:
| Satya and Sam committed securities fraud with their late Sunday
| "funding secured" ploy to protect the MSFT stock price. This was
| the obvious outcome. Sam had no intentions of actually going
| through with that and Satya was in no position to unilaterally
| commit to the type of funding that he was implying.
|
| They lied to protect the stock. That should be illegal. In fact,
| it is illegal.
| computerex wrote:
| I don't think this is actionable in anyway, even if what you
| say was shown unequivocally to be true.
| nickysielicki wrote:
| What do you mean? It would be conspiring to commit bank and
| wire fraud, the SEC can totally act on that if they want to.
| nmfisher wrote:
| Yeah, I think there may well be an investigation into that. At
| best, he said something that was unequivocally untrue, and at
| worst it was an outright lie. That's blatant market
| manipulation.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Short sellers in shambles right now.
| superultra wrote:
| I find it interesting that for all the talk from OpenAI staff
| that it was all about the people, and from Satya that MS has all
| the rights and knowledge and can jumpstart their own branch at
| the turn of a dime, it seems getting control of OpenAI proper was
| a huge priority.
|
| Given that Claude sucks so bad, and this week's events, I'm
| guessing that the ChatGPT secret sauce is not as replicable as
| some might suggest.
| 0xDEF wrote:
| Bard is better than ChatGPT-3.5.
|
| But GPT-4 is indeed a class of its own.
| wilde wrote:
| But "Sam Altman, Microsoft PM" would have been a much funnier
| outcome
| corobo wrote:
| The thing we should all take from this is that unions work :)
| martin_a wrote:
| What a total shitshow. Amazing.
| j4yav wrote:
| This has been a whirlwind, I feel like I've seen every single
| possible wrong outcome confidently predicted here, twice.
| mlindner wrote:
| Well that's disappointing. They might as well disband the entire
| concept of the non-profit as it's clearly completely irrelevant
| and powerless.
| gongagong wrote:
| Meta is looking like the Mother Teresa of large corp LLM
| providers which is crazy to say out loud (; JjutoJjut)
| cbeach wrote:
| Does anyone know which faction (e/acc vs decels) the new board
| members Bret Taylor and Larry Summers will be on?
|
| One thing IS clear at this point - their political alignment:
|
| * Taylor a significant donor to Joe Biden ($713,637 in 2020):
| https://nypost.com/2022/04/26/twitter-board-members-gave-tho...
|
| * Summers is a former Democrat Treasury Secretary who has shifted
| leftwards with age: https://www.newstatesman.com/the-weekend-
| interview/2023/03/w...
| davidthewatson wrote:
| The most interesting thing here is not the cult of personality
| battle between board and CEO. Rather, it's that these teams have
| managed to ship consumer AI that has a liminal, asymptotic edge
| where the smart kids can manipulate it into doing emergent things
| that it was not designed to do. That is, many of the outcomes of
| in-context learning could not be predicted at design time and
| they are, in fact, mind-blowing, magical, and likely not safe for
| consumption by those who believe that the machines are anywhere
| near the spectrum from consciousness to sentience.
| dizzydes wrote:
| D'Angelo is still there... there goes that theory.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| >We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to
| return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board of Bret Taylor
| (Chair), Larry Summers, and Adam D'Angelo.
|
| Is Ilya off the board then?
|
| Why is Adam still on?
|
| Brett and Larry are good choices, but they need to get that board
| up to 10 or so people representing a balance of perspectives and
| interests very quickly.
| al_be_back wrote:
| Losing the CEO must not push significant number of your staff to
| throw hissy fits and jump ship - it doesn't instill confidence in
| investors, partners, and crucially customers.
|
| as this event turned into a farce, it's evident that neither the
| company nor it's key investors accounted much for the "bus
| factor/problem" i.e loosing a key-person threatened to destroy
| the whole enterprise.
|
| for me this a failure in Managing Risk 101.
| causi wrote:
| Kicking Sam out was a bad move. Begging him back is worse.
| Instead of having an OpenAI whose vision you disagree with, now
| we have an OpenAI with no vision at all that's simply blown back
| and forth.
| fredgrott wrote:
| MS and OpenAI did not win here, but one of their competitors
| did...whoops.
|
| Why did I say that? Look at the product release by the
| competitors these past few days. 2nd, Sam pushing for AI chips
| implies that chatGPT's future breakthroughs are hardware bounded.
| Hence, the road to AGI is not through chatGPT.
| roody15 wrote:
| "The company also agreed to revamp the board of directors that
| had dismissed him. OpenAI named Bret Taylor, formerly co-CEO of
| Salesforce, as chair and also appointed Larry Summers, former
| U.S. Treasury Secretary, to the board."
|
| Not looking good for the "Open" part of OpenAI.
| otteromkram wrote:
| Could have said the same thing once Microsoft got involved.
| garrison wrote:
| If OpenAI remains a 501(c)(3) charity, then any employee of
| Microsoft on the board will have a fiduciary duty to advance the
| mission of the charity, rather than the business needs of
| Microsoft. There are obvious conflicts of interest here. I don't
| expect the IRS to be a fan of this arrangement.
| flagrant_taco wrote:
| I don't expect the government to regulate any of this
| aggressively. AI is much to important to the government and
| military to allow pesky conflicts of interest to slow down any
| competitive advantage we may have.
| dgrin91 wrote:
| If you think that OpenAI is the Gov's only source of high
| quality AI research then I have a bridge to sell you.
| jakderrida wrote:
| If you think the person you're replying to was talking
| about regulating OpenAI specifically and not the industry
| as a whole, I have ADHD medicine to sell you.
| swores wrote:
| The context of the comment thread you're replying to was
| a response to a comment suggesting the IRS will get
| involved in the question of whether MS have too much
| influence over OpenAI, it was not the subject of general
| industry regulation.
|
| But hey, at least you fitted in a snarky line about ADHD
| in the comment you wrote while not having paid attention
| to the 3 comments above it.
| freedomben wrote:
| if up-the-line parent wasn't talking about regulation of
| AI in general, then what do you think they meant by
| "competitive advantage"? Also, governments have to set
| policy and enforce that policy. They can't (or shouldn't
| at least) pick and choose favorites.
|
| Also GP snark was a reply to snark. Once somebody opens
| the snark, they should expect snark back. It's ideal for
| nobody to snark, and big for people not to snark back at
| a snarker, but snarkers gonna snark.
| baking wrote:
| My guess is that the non-profit has never gotten this kind of
| scrutiny now and the new directors are going to want to get
| lawyers involved to cover their asses. Just imagine their
| positions when Sam Altman really does something worth firing.
|
| I think it was a real mistake to create OpenAI as a public
| charity and I would be hesitant to step into that mess. Imagine
| the fun when it tips into a private foundation status.
| danaris wrote:
| Well, I think that's really the question, isn't it?
|
| Was it a mistake to create OpenAI as a public charity?
|
| Or was it a mistake to operate OpenAI as if it were a
| startup?
|
| The problem isn't really either one--it's the inherent
| conflict between the two. IMO, the only reason to see
| creating it as a 501(c)(3) being a mistake is if you think
| cutting-edge machine learning is _inherently_ going to be
| targeted by people looking to make a quick buck off of it.
| blackoil wrote:
| OpenAI the charity would have survived only as an ego
| project for Elon doing something fun with minor impact.
|
| Only the current setup is feasible if they want to get the
| kind of investment required. This can work if the board is
| pragmatic and has no conflict of interest, so preferably
| someone with no stake in anything AI either biz or
| academic.
| baking wrote:
| I think the only way this can end up is to convert to a
| private foundation and make sizable (8 figures annually)
| grants to truly independent AI safety (broadly defined)
| organizations.
| baking wrote:
| To create a public charity without public fundraising is a
| no go. Should have been a private foundation because that
| is where it will end up.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > IMO, the only reason to see creating it as a 501(c)(3)
| being a mistake is if you think cutting-edge machine
| learning is inherently going to be targeted by people
| looking to make a quick buck off of it.
|
| I mean that's certainly been my experience of it thus far,
| is companies rushing to market with half-baked products
| that (allegedly) incorporate AI to do some task or another.
| danaris wrote:
| I was specifically thinking of people seeing a non-profit
| doing stuff with ML, and trying to finagle their way in
| there to turn it into a profit for themselves.
|
| (But yes; what you describe is absolutely happening left
| and right...)
| qwery wrote:
| > I think it was a real mistake to create OpenAI as a public
| charity
|
| Sure, with hindsight. But it didn't require much in the way
| of _foresight_ to predict that some sort of problem would
| arise from the not-for-profit operating a hot startup that is
| by definition poorly aligned with the stated goals of the
| parent company. The writing was on the wall.
| fooop wrote:
| Speaks more to a fundamental misalignment between societal
| good and technological progress. The narrative (first born
| in the Enlightenment) about how reason, unfettered by
| tradition and nonage, is our best path towards happiness no
| longer holds. AI doomerism is an expression of this
| breakdown, but without the intellectual honesty required to
| dive to the root of the problem and consider whether
| Socrates may have been right about the corrupting influence
| of writing stuff down instead of memorizing it.
|
| What's happening right now is people just starting to
| reckon with the fact that technological progress on it's
| own is necessarily unaligned with human interests. This
| problem has always existed, AI just makes it acute and
| unavoidable since it's no longer possible to invoke the
| long-tail of "whatever problem this fix creates will just
| get fixed later". The AI alignment problem is at it's core
| a problem of reconciling this, and it will inherently fail
| in absence of explicitly imposing non-Enlightenment values.
|
| Seeking to build openAI as a nonprofit, as well as ousting
| Altman as CEO are both initial expressions of trying to
| reconcile the conflict, and seeing these attempts fail will
| only intensity it. It will be fascinating to watch as
| researchers slowly come to realize what the roots of the
| problem are, but also the lack of the social machinery
| required to combat the problem.
| baking wrote:
| I think it could have easily been predicted just from the
| initial announcements. You can't create a public charity
| simply from the donations of a few wealthy individuals. A
| public charity has to meet the public support test. A
| private foundation would be a better model but someone
| decided they didn't want to go that route. Maybe should
| have asked a non-profit lawyer?
| faramarz wrote:
| Maybe the vision is to eventually bring UBI into it and
| cap earn outs. Not so wild given Sam's world coin and his
| UBI efforts when he was YC president.
| baking wrote:
| The public support test for public charities is a 5-year
| rolling average, so "eventually" won't help you. The idea
| of billionaires asking the public for donations to
| support their wacky ideas is actually quite humorous.
| Just make it a private foundation and follow the
| appropriate rules. Bill Gates manages to do it and he's a
| dinosaur.
| broast wrote:
| Wishfully I hope there was some intent from the beginning
| on exposing the impossibility of this contradictory model
| to the world, so that a global audience can evaluate on how
| to improve our system to support a better future.
| zerohalo wrote:
| Exactly this. OpenAI was started for ostensibly the right
| reasons. But once they discovered something that would both
| 1) take a tremendous amount of compute power to scale and
| develop, and 2) could be heavily monetized, they choose the
| $ route and that point the mission was doomed, with the
| board members originally brought in to protect the mission
| holding their fingers in the dyke.
| ncallaway wrote:
| > is by definition poorly aligned
|
| If OpenAI is struggling to hard with the corporate
| alignment problem, how are they going to tackle the outer
| and inner alignment problems?
| purple_ferret wrote:
| Perhaps creating OpenAI as a charity is what has allowed it
| to become what it is, whereas other for-profit competitors
| are worth much less. How else do you get a guy like Elon Musk
| to 'donate' $100 million to your company?
|
| Lots of ventures cut corners early on that they eventually
| had to pay for, but cutting the corners was crucial to their
| initial success and growth
| baking wrote:
| Elon only gave $40 million, but since he was the primary
| donor I suspect he was the one who was pushing for the
| "public charity" designation. He and Sam were co-founders.
| Maybe it was Sam who asked Elon for the money, but there
| wasn't anyone else involved.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > I think it was a real mistake to create OpenAI as a public
| charity and I would be hesitant to step into that mess.
|
| I think it could have worked either as a non-profit _or_ as a
| for-profit. It 's this weird jackass hybrid thing that's
| produced most of the conflict, or so it seems to me. Neither
| fish nor fowl, as the saying goes.
| ryukoposting wrote:
| Are there any similar cases of this "non-profit board
| overseeing a (huge) for-profit company" model? I want to like
| the concept behind it. Was this inevitable due to the
| leadership structure of OpenAI, or was it totally preventable
| had the right people been on the board? I wish I had the
| historical context to answer that question.
| lacker wrote:
| Yes, for example Novo Nordisk is a pharmaceutical company
| controlled by a nonprofit, worth around $100B.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novo_Nordisk_Foundation
|
| There are other similar examples like Ikea.
|
| But those examples are for mature, established companies
| operating under a nonprofit. OpenAI is different. Not only
| does it have the for-profit subsidiary, but the for-profit
| needs to frequently fundraise. It's natural for fundraising
| to require renegotiations in the board structure, possibly
| contentious ones. So in retrospect it doesn't seem
| surprising that this process would become extra contentious
| with OpenAI's structure.
| brookst wrote:
| There's no indication a Microsoft appointed board member would
| be a Microsoft employee (though the they could be of course),
| and large nonprofits often have board members that come from
| for-profit companies.
|
| I don't think the IRS cares much about this kind of thing. What
| would be the claim? They OpenAI is pushing benefits to
| Microsoft, a for-profit entity that pays taxes? Even if you
| assume the absolute worst, most nefarious meddling, it seems
| like an issue for SEC more than IRS.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| Larry Summers is in place to effectively give the govt seal of
| approval on the new board, for better and worse.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Isn't he a big Jeffrey Epstein fanboy? Ethical AGI is in safe
| hands.
|
| https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/5/5/epstein-
| summers-...
| futuretaint wrote:
| nothing screams 'protect public interest' more than Wall
| Streets biggest cheerleader during 2008 financial crisis.
| who's next, Richard S. Fuld Jr ? Should the Enron guys be
| included ?
| kossTKR wrote:
| It's obvious this class of people love their status as neu-
| feudal lords above the law living as 18th century
| libertines behind closed doors.
|
| But i guess people here are either waiting for wealth to
| trickle down on them or believe the torrent of
| psychological operations so much peoples minds close down
| when they intuit the circular brutal nature of hierarchical
| class based society, and the utter illusion democracy or
| meritocracy is.
|
| The uppermost classes have been trickters through all of
| history. What happened to this knowledge and the
| countercultural scene in hacking? Hint; it was psyopped in
| the early 90's by "libertarianism" and worship of
| bureaucracy to create a new class of cybernetic soldiers
| working for the oligarchy.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| I agree. The best young minds grinding leet code to get
| into Google is the biggest symptom of it.
| DSingularity wrote:
| The sad part isn't the rampant sickness. The saddest part
| is all the "intellectual" professors who enable,
| encourage, and celebrate this.
|
| It's sickening.
| mcast wrote:
| If you wanted to wear a foil hat, you might think this
| internal fighting was started from someone connected to TPTB
| subverting the rest of the board to gain a board seat, and
| thus more power and influence, over AGI.
|
| The hush-hush nature of the board providing zero explanation
| for why sama was fired (and what started it) certainly
| doesn't pass the smell test.
| paulddraper wrote:
| What if I told you...Bill Gates was/is on the board of the non-
| profit Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation?
|
| Lol HN lawyering is hilarious.
| fatbird wrote:
| Indeed, it is hilarious.
|
| The Foundation has nothing to do with MS and can't possibly
| be considered a competitor, acquisition target, supplier, or
| any other entity where a decision for the Foundation might
| materially harm MS (or the reverse). There's no potential
| conflict of interest between the missions of the two.
|
| Did you think OP meant there was some inherent conflict of
| interest with charities?
| paulddraper wrote:
| Have you _seen_ OpenAI 's current board?
|
| Explain how an MS employee would have greater conflict of
| interest.
| uxp8u61q wrote:
| Conflict of interest with what? The other board members?
| That's utterly irrelevant. Look up some big companies
| boards some day. You'll see.
| paulddraper wrote:
| See earlier
|
| > If OpenAI remains a 501(c)(3) charity, then any
| employee of Microsoft on the board will have a fiduciary
| duty to advance the mission of the charity, rather than
| the business needs of Microsoft. There are obvious
| conflicts of interest here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38378069
| stikit wrote:
| OpenAI is not a charity. Microsoft's investment is in OpenAI
| Global, LLC, a for-profit company.
|
| From https://openai.com/our-structure
|
| - First, the for-profit subsidiary is fully controlled by the
| OpenAI Nonprofit. We enacted this by having the Nonprofit
| wholly own and control a manager entity (OpenAI GP LLC) that
| has the power to control and govern the for-profit subsidiary.
|
| -Second, because the board is still the board of a Nonprofit,
| each director must perform their fiduciary duties in
| furtherance of its mission--safe AGI that is broadly
| beneficial. While the for-profit subsidiary is permitted to
| make and distribute profit, it is subject to this mission. The
| Nonprofit's principal beneficiary is humanity, not OpenAI
| investors.
|
| -Third, the board remains majority independent. Independent
| directors do not hold equity in OpenAI. Even OpenAI's CEO, Sam
| Altman, does not hold equity directly. His only interest is
| indirectly through a Y Combinator investment fund that made a
| small investment in OpenAI before he was full-time.
|
| -Fourth, profit allocated to investors and employees, including
| Microsoft, is capped. All residual value created above and
| beyond the cap will be returned to the Nonprofit for the
| benefit of humanity.
|
| -Fifth, the board determines when we've attained AGI. Again, by
| AGI we mean a highly autonomous system that outperforms humans
| at most economically valuable work. Such a system is excluded
| from IP licenses and other commercial terms with Microsoft,
| which only apply to pre-AGI technology.
| ezfe wrote:
| The board is the charity though, which is why the person
| you're replying to made the remark about MSFT employees being
| appointed to the board
| UrineSqueegee wrote:
| A charity is a type of not-for-profit organisation however
| the main difference between a nonprofit and a charity is
| that a nonprofit doesn't need to reach a 'charitable
| status' whereas a charity, to qualify as a charity, needs
| to meet very specific or strict guidelines
| ezfe wrote:
| Yes, I misspoke - I meant nonprofit
| zja wrote:
| You were right though, OpenAI Inc, which the board
| controls, is a 501c3 charity.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > OpenAI is not a charity.
|
| OpenAI is a charity nonprofit, in fact.
|
| > Microsoft's investment is in OpenAI Global, LLC, a for-
| profit company.
|
| OpenAI Global LLC is a subsidiary two levels down from
| OpenAI, which is expressly (by the operating agreement that
| is the LLC's foundational document) subordinated to OpenAI's
| charitable purpose, and which is completely controlled
| (despite the charity's indirect and less-than-complete
| ownership) by OpenAI GP LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of the
| charity, on behalf of the OpenAI charity.
|
| And, particularly, the OpenAI board is. _as the excerpts you
| quote in your post expressly state_ , the board of the
| nonprofit that is the top of the structure. It controls
| everything underneath because each of the subordinate
| organizations foundational documents give it (well, for the
| two entities with outside invesment, OpenAI GP LLC, the
| charity's wholly-owned and -controlled subsidiary) complete
| control.
| hackernewds wrote:
| well not anymore, as they cannot function as a nonprofit.
|
| also infamously they fundraised as a nonprofit, but
| retracted to admit they needed a for profit structure to
| thrive, which Elon is miffed about and Sam has defended
| explicitly
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > well not anymore, as they cannot function as a
| nonprofit.
|
| There's been a lot of news lately, but unless I've missed
| something, even with the tentative agreement of a new
| board for the charity nonprofit, they are and plan to
| remain a charity nonprofit with the same nominal mission.
|
| > also infamously they fundraised as a nonprofit, but
| retracted to admit they needed a for profit structure to
| thrive
|
| No, they admitted they needed to sell products rather
| than merely take donations to survive, and needed to be
| able to return profits from doing that to investors to
| scale up enough to do that, so they formed a for-profit
| subsidiary with its own for-profit subsidiary, both
| controlled by another subsidiary, all subordinated to the
| charity nonprofit, to do that.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| >they are and plan to remain a charity nonprofit
|
| Once the temporary board has selected a permanent board,
| give it a couple of months and then get back to us. They
| will almost certainly choose to spin the for-profit
| subsidiary off as an independent company. Probably with
| some contractual arrangement where they commit x funding
| to the non-profit in exchange for IP licensing. Which is
| the way they should have structured this back in 2019.
| tempestn wrote:
| "Almost certainly"? Here's a fun exercise. Over the
| course of, say, a year, keep track of all your
| predictions along these lines, and how certain you are of
| each. Almost certainly, expressed as a percentage, would
| be maybe 95%? Then see how often the predicted events
| occur, compared to how sure you are.
|
| Personally I'm nowhere near 95% confident that will
| happen. I'd say I'm about 75% confident it won't. So I
| wouldn't be utterly shocked, but I would be quite
| surprised.
| kyle_grove wrote:
| I'm pretty confident (close to the 95% level) they will
| abandon the public charity structure, but throughout this
| saga, I have been baffled by the discourse's willingness
| to handwave away OpenAI's peculiar legal structure as
| irrelevant to these events.
| tempestn wrote:
| Within a few months? I don't think it should be possible
| to be 95% confident of that without inside info. As you
| said, many unexpected things have happened already. IMO
| that should bring the most confident predictions down to
| the 80-85% level at most.
| strangesmells06 wrote:
| > First, the for-profit subsidiary is fully controlled by the
| OpenAI Nonprofit. We enacted this by having the Nonprofit
| wholly own and control a manager entity (OpenAI GP LLC) that
| has the power to control and govern the for-profit
| subsidiary.
|
| Im not criticizing. Big fan of avoiding being taxed to fund
| wars....but its just funny to me it seems like theyre sort of
| having their cake and eating it too with this kind of
| structure.
|
| Good for them.
| voxic11 wrote:
| Even if the IRS isn't a fan, what are they going to do about
| it? It seems like the main recourse they could pursue is they
| could force the OpenAI directors/Microsoft to pay an excise tax
| on any "excess benefit transactions".
|
| https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organiz...
| mwattsun wrote:
| Microsoft doesn't have to send an employee to represent them on
| the board. They could ask Bill Gates.
| murakamiiq84 wrote:
| Actually I think Bill would be a pretty good candidate.
| Smart, mature, good at first principles reasoning, deeply
| understands both the tech world and the nonprofit world, is a
| tech person who's not socially networked with the existing SF
| VCs, and (if the vague unsubstantiated rumors about Sam are
| correct) is one of the few people left with enough social
| cachet to knock Sam down a peg or two.
| lucubratory wrote:
| Larry Summers, Bill Gates, if they keep on like that they
| can fill the board with all of Epstein's "associates".
| pc86 wrote:
| Others have pointed out several reasons this isn't actually a
| problem (and that the premise itself is incorrect since
| "OpenAI" is not a charity), but one thing not mentioned: even
| if the MS-appointed board member is a MS employee, yes they
| will have a fiduciary duty to the organizations under the
| purview of the board, but unless they are _also_ a board member
| of Microsoft (extraordinarily unlikely) they have no such
| fiduciary duty to Microsoft itself. So in the also unlikely
| scenario that there is a vote that conflicts with their
| Microsoft duties, and in the even more unlikely scenario that
| they don 't abstain due to that conflict, they have a legal
| responsibility to err on the side of OpenAI and no legal
| responsibility to Microsoft. Seems like a pretty easy decision
| to make - and abstaining is the easiest unless it's a
| contentious 4-4 vote and there's pressure for them to choose a
| side.
|
| But all that seems a lot more like an episode of Succession and
| less like real life to be honest.
| throwoutway wrote:
| It's still a conflict of interest. One that they should
| avoid. Microsoft COULD appoint someone who they like and
| shares their values, that is not a MSFT employee. That would
| be a preferred approach but one that I doubt a megacorp would
| take
| ghaff wrote:
| Both profit and non-profit boards have members that have
| potential conflicts of interest all the time. So long as
| it's not too egregious no one cares, especially not the
| IRS.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > and that the premise itself is incorrect since "OpenAI" is
| not a charity
|
| OpenAI is a 501c3 charity nonprofit, and the OpenAI board
| under discussion is the board of that charity nonprofit.
|
| OpenAI Global LLC is a for-profit subsidiary of a for-profit
| subsidiary of OpenAI, both of which are controlled, by their
| foundational agreements that gie them legal existence, by a
| different (AFAICT not for-profit but not legally a nonprofit)
| LLC subsidiary of OpenAI (OpenAI GP LLC.)
| oatmeal1 wrote:
| Microsoft is going to appoint someone who benefits Microsoft.
| Whether a particular vote would violate fiduciary duty is
| subjective. There's plenty of opportunity for them to
| prioritize the welfare of Microsoft over OAI.
| Xelynega wrote:
| Whats the point of Microsoft appointing a board member if not
| to sway decision in ways that benefit them?
| _b wrote:
| > There are obvious conflicts of interest here.
|
| There are almost always obvious conflicts of interest. In a
| normal startup, VCs have a legal responsibility to act in the
| interest of the common shares, but in practice, they overtly
| act in the interest of the preferred shares that their fund
| holds.
| hyperhopper wrote:
| The more and more I see the way complex share structures are
| used, the more I think they should be outlawed
| bradleybuda wrote:
| Major corporate boards are rife with "on paper" conflicts on
| interest - that's what happens when you want people with real
| management experience to sit on your board and act like
| responsible adults. This happens in every single industry and
| has nothing to do with tech or with OpenAI specifically.
|
| In practice, board bylaws and common sense mean that
| individuals recuse themselves as needed and don't do stupid
| shit.
| iandanforth wrote:
| "In practice, board bylaws and common sense mean that
| individuals ... don't do stupid shit."
|
| Were you watching a different show than the rest of us?
| badloginagain wrote:
| And we're seeing the result in real-time. Stupid shit doers
| have been replaced with hopefully-less-stupid-shit-doers.
|
| It's a real shame too, because this is a clear loss for the
| AI Alignment crowd.
|
| I'm on the fence about the whole alignment thing, but at
| least there is a strong moral compass in the field-
| especially compared to something like crypto.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| > at least there is a strong moral compass in the field
|
| Is this still true when the board gets overhauled after
| trying to uphold the moral compass.
| saalweachter wrote:
| And when the CEO's other thing is a cryptocurrency?
| lacrimacida wrote:
| Sama's moral compass clearly has north pointing at money
| and that will definitely get him to a different
| destination.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| No, this is the part of the show where the patronizing
| rhetoric gets trotted out to rationalize discarding the
| principles that have suddenly become inconvenient for the
| people with power.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| No worries. The same kind of people who devoted their
| time and energy to creating open-source operating systems
| in the era of Microsoft and Apple are now devoting their
| time and energy to doing the same for non-lobotomized
| LLMs.
|
| Look at these clowns (Ilya & Sam and their angry talkie-
| bot), it's a revelation, like Bill Gates on Linux in
| 2000:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N36wtDYK8kI
| hinkley wrote:
| I get a lostredditor vibe way too often here. Oddly more
| than Reddit.
|
| I think people forget sometimes that comments come with a
| context. If we are having a conversation about Deep Water
| Horizon someone will chime in about how safe deep sea oil
| exploration is and how many failsafes blah blah blah.
|
| "Do you know where you are right now?"
| Juicyy wrote:
| Its a more technical space then reddit. Youre gonna have
| more know it alls spewing
| jachee wrote:
| You know that know-it-all should be hyphenated, right?
|
| ...
|
| ;)
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| >I think people forget sometimes that comments come with
| a context.
|
| I mean, this is definitely one of my pet peeves, but the
| wider context of this conversation is _specifically a
| board doing stupid shit_ , so that's a very relevant
| counterexample to the thing being stated. Board members
| _in general_ often do stupid /short-sighted shit
| (especially in tech), and I don't know of any examples of
| corporate board members recusing themselves.
| mhluongo wrote:
| Common example of recusal is CEO comp when the CEO is on
| the board.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| That's what I would term a black-and-white case. I don't
| think there's anyone with sense who would argue in good
| faith that a CEO should get a vote on their own salary.
| There are many degrees of grey between outright
| corruption and this example, and I think the concern lies
| within.
| mhh__ wrote:
| So?
| alsetmusic wrote:
| I get what you're saying, but I also live in the world
| and see the mechanics of capitalism. I may be a person
| who's interested in tech, science, education, archeology,
| etc. That doesn't mean that I don't also have political
| views that sometimes overlap with a lot of other very-
| online people.
|
| I think the comment to which you replied has a very
| reddit vibe, no doubt. But also, it's a completely valid
| point. Could it have been said differently? Sure. But I
| also immediately agreed with the sentiment.
| hinkley wrote:
| Oh I wasn't complaining about the parent, I was
| complaining it needed to be said.
|
| We are talking about a failure of the system, in the
| context of a concrete example. Talking about how the
| system actually works is only appropriate if you are
| drawing specific arguments up about how this situation is
| an anomaly, and few of them do that.
|
| Instead it often sounds like "it's very unusual for the
| front to fall off".
| iandanforth wrote:
| I apologize, the comment's irony overwhelmed my snark
| containment system.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| This comment is perfectionXD
| freedomben wrote:
| You need to be able to separate macro-level and micro-
| level. GP is responding to a comment about the IRS caring
| about the conflict-of-interest on paper. The IRS has to
| make and follow rules at a _macro_ level. Micro-level
| events obviously can affect the macro view, but you don 't
| completely ignore the macro because something bad happened
| at the micro level. That's how you get knee-jerk
| reactionary governance, which is highly emotional.
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| Yes, and we were also watching the thousands and thousands
| of companies where these types of conflicts are handled
| easily by decent people and common sense. Don't confuse the
| outlier with the silent majority.
| ip26 wrote:
| Reminds me of the "revolving door" problem. Obvious risk of
| corruption and conflict of interest, but at the same time
| experts from industry are the ones with the knowledge to be
| effective regulators. Not unlike how many good patent
| attorneys were previously engineers.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| A corporation acting (due to influence from a conflicted
| board member that doesn't recuse) contrary to the interests
| of its stockholders and in the interest of the conflicted
| board member or who they represent potentially creates
| liability of the firm to its stockholders.
|
| A charity acting (due to the influence of a conflicted board
| member that doesn't recuse) contrary to its charitable
| mission in the interests of the conflicted board member or
| who they represent does something similar with regard to
| liability of the firm to various stakeholders with a legally-
| enforceable interest in the charity and its mission, _but
| also_ is also a _public_ civil violation that can lead to IRS
| sanctions against the firm up to and including monetary
| penalties and loss of tax exempt status _on top of_ whatever
| private tort liability exists.
| fouc wrote:
| OpenAI isn't a typical corporation but a 501(c)(3), so bylaws
| & protections that otherwise might exist appear to be lacking
| in this situation.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| 501c3's also have governing internal rules, and the threat
| of penalties and loss of status imposed by the IRS gives
| them additional incentive to safeguard against even the
| appearance of conflict being manifested into how they
| operate (whether that's avoiding conflicted board members
| or assuring that they recuse where a conflict is relevant.)
|
| If OpenAI didn't have adequate safeguards, either through
| negligence or becauase it was in fact being run
| deliberately as a fraudulent charity, that's a particular
| failure of OpenAI, not a "well, 501c3's inherently don't
| have safeguard" thing.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Trump Foundation was a 501c3 that laundered money for 30
| years without the IRS batting an eye.
| hnbad wrote:
| The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is a 501c3 and I'd
| expect that even the most techno-futurist free-market
| types on HN would agree that no matter what alleged
| impact it has, it is also in practice creating profitable
| overseas contracts for US corporations that ultimately
| provide downstream ROI to the Gates estate.
|
| Most people just tend to go about it more intelligently
| than Trump but "charitable" or "non-profit" doesn't mean
| the organization exists to enrich the commons rather than
| the moneyed interests it represents.
| throwaway-blaze wrote:
| No conflict, no interest.
| dizzydes wrote:
| Larry Summers practically invented this stuff...
| hackernewds wrote:
| Not to mention, the mission of the Board cannot be "build safe
| AGI" anymore. Perhaps something more consistent with expanding
| shareholder value and capitalism, as the events of this weekend
| has shown.
|
| Delivering profits and shareholder value is the sole and
| dominant force in capitalism. Remains to be seen whether that
| is consistent with humanity's survival
| boh wrote:
| Whenever there's an obvious conflict, assume it's not enforced
| or difficult to litigate or has relatively irrelevant
| penalties. Experts/lawyers who have a material stake in getting
| this right have signed off on it. Many (if not most) people
| with enough status to be on the board of a fortune 500 company
| tend to also be on non-profit boards. We can go out on a limb
| and suppose the mission of the nonprofit is not their top
| priority, and yet they continue on unscathed.
| hinkley wrote:
| Do you remember before Bill Gates got into disease prevention
| he thought that "charity work" could be done by giving away
| free Microsoft products? I don't know who sat him down and
| explained to him how full of shit he was but they deserve a
| Nobel Peace Prize nomination.
|
| Just because someone says they agree with a mission doesn't
| mean they have their heads screwed on straight. And my thesis
| is that the more power they have in the real world the worse
| the outcomes - because powerful people become progressively
| immune to feedback. This has been working swimmingly for me
| for decades, I don't need humility in a new situation.
| Xelynega wrote:
| > Experts/lawyers who have a material stake in getting this
| right have signed off on it.
|
| How does that work when we're talking about non-profit
| motives? The lawyers are paid by the companies benefitting
| from these conflicts, so how is it at all reassuring to hear
| that the people who benefit from the conflict signed off on
| it?
|
| > We can go out on a limb and suppose the mission of the
| nonprofit is not their top priority, and yet they continue on
| unscathed.
|
| That's the concern. They've just replaced people who "maybe"
| cared about the mission statement with people who you've
| correctly identified care more about profit growth than the
| nonprofit mission.
| jklein11 wrote:
| I'm a little bit confused, are you saying that the IRS would
| have some sort of beef with employees of Microsoft serving on
| the board of a 501(c)(3)?
| zerohalo wrote:
| OpenAI's charter is dead. I expect future boards to amend it.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Its useful PR pretext for their regulatory advocacy, and
| subjective enough that if they are careful not to be too
| obvious about specifically pushing one company's commercial
| interest, they can probably get away with it forever, so why
| would it be any deader than when Sam was CEO before and not
| substantively guided by it.
| ric2b wrote:
| People keep saying this but is there any evidence that any of
| this was related to the charter?
| Xelynega wrote:
| The only evidence I have is that the board members that
| were removed had less business connections than the ones
| that replaced them.
|
| The point of the board is to ensure the charter is being
| followed, when the biggest concern is "is our
| commercialization getting in the way of our charter" what
| else does it mean to replace "academics" with
| "businesspeople"?
| augustulus wrote:
| how can they not remain a charity?
| 627467 wrote:
| I don't get the drama with "conflict of interests"... Aren't
| board members generally (always?) in representation of major
| shareholders? Isn't it obvious that shareholders have interests
| that are likely to be in conflict with each other or even the
| own organization? Thats why board members are supposed to check
| each other, right?
| Xelynega wrote:
| OpenAI is a non profit and the board members are not allowed
| to own shares in the for profit.
|
| That means the remaining conflicts are when the board has to
| make a decisions between growing the profit or furthering the
| mission statement. I wouldn't trust the new board appointed
| by investors to ever make the correct decision in these
| cases, and they already kicked out the "academic" board
| members with the power to stop them.
| mattmcknight wrote:
| The non-profit could sell off its interest in the for-profit
| company and use the money for AGI research.
| bvan wrote:
| All involved have clearly demonstrated the lack of credibility in
| self-governance or the ability to make big-boy decisions. All
| reassurances from now on will sound hollow.
| NorwegianDude wrote:
| Why is people so interested in this? Why exactly was he fired? I
| did not get why when I read the news, so I find it strange that
| people care if they don't even know what it's about. Do we know
| for sure what this was/is about?
| minzi wrote:
| I would be surprised if the original board's reasons for caving
| in were not influenced by personal factors. They must've been
| receiving all kinds of threats from those involved and from
| random twitter extremists.
|
| It is troubling because it shows that this "external" governance
| meant to make decisions for the good of humanity is unable to
| enforce decisions. The internal employees were obviously swayed
| by financial gain as well. I don't think that I would behave
| differently were I in their shoes honestly. However, this does
| definitively mean that they are a product and profit driven
| group.
|
| I think that Sam Altman is dishonest and a depressing example of
| what modern Americans idealize. He has all these ideals he
| preaches but will happily turn on if it upsets his ego. On top of
| that he is held up as some star innovator when in reality he
| built nothing himself. He just identified one potential
| technological advancement and threw money at it with all his
| billionaire friends.
|
| Gone are the days of building things in a garage with a mission.
| Founders are no longer visionary engineers and designers. The
| path now is clear. Convince some rich folks you're worthy of
| being rich too. When they adopt you into wealth you can start
| throwing shit at the wall until something sticks. Eventually
| something will and you can claim visionary status. Now your
| presence in the billionaire club is beyond reproach because
| you're a "founder".
| InCityDreams wrote:
| >They must've been receiving all kinds of threats from those
| involved and from random twitter extremists.
|
| Oooh, yeah. "Must have".
| dangerface wrote:
| Keeping D'Angelo on the board is an obvious mistake, he has too
| much conflicting interest to be level headed and has demonstrated
| that. The only people that benefited from all this are Microsoft
| and D'Angelo. Give it a year and we will see part 2 of all this.
|
| Further where is the public accountability? I thought the board
| was to act in the interests of the public but they haven't
| communicated anything. Are we all just supposed to pretend this
| never happend and that the board will now act in the public
| interest?
|
| We need regulations to hold these boards which hold so much power
| accountable to the public. No reasonable AI regulations can be
| made until the public are included in a meaningful way, anyone
| that pushes for regulations without the public is just trying to
| control the industry and establish a monopoly.
| EarthAmbassador wrote:
| Larry effing Summers?!
|
| Really?
|
| Was Henry Kissinger unavailable?
| alienicecream wrote:
| High Street salesman takes over Frankenstein's lab. Can't wait to
| see what's going to happen next.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| Why have OpenAI take to poaching employees from M$ now?
| nojvek wrote:
| What this proves is that OpenAI interests are now entrenched with
| profit.
|
| I'm assuming most of the researchers there probably realize there
| is a loooot of money to be made and they have to optimize for
| that.
|
| They are deffo pushing the frontier of AI.
|
| However I wish OpenAI doesn't get to AGI first.
|
| I don't think it will be the best for all of humanity.
|
| I'm scared.
| pimpampum wrote:
| So Altman started it and ended up winning it, clearly his coup.
| Sad how employees were duped into standing behind him.
| donohoe wrote:
| Larry Summers!?
| throwaway74852 wrote:
| So OpenAI's board is now exclusively white men, and predominantly
| tech insiders? Lovely to have such a diverse group behind this
| technology Could this be more comical?
| iteratethis wrote:
| Sam's power was tested and turned out to be absolute.
|
| Sam was doing whatever he wanted, got caught, and now can
| continue to do what he wants with even more backing.
| nomaD_ wrote:
| Hiring engineers at 900K salary & pretending to be non-profit
| does not work. Turns out, 97% of them wanted to make money.
|
| Government should have banned big tech investment in AI companies
| a year ago. If they want, they can create their own AI but buying
| one should be off the table.
| Pigalowda wrote:
| Shows over I guess. Feels like the ending to GoT. I'm not sure I
| even care what happened to begin it all anymore.
| rceDia wrote:
| The "giveaway" is the fact that "Microsoft is happy" with the
| return of Mr. Altman. Can't wait for the former boards tell-all
| story. Bets on: how a founder of cutting edge tech company wanted
| world peace and no harm but outside capital forces steered him to
| other "unfathomable riches" option. It happens.
| Mrirazak1 wrote:
| The Steve jobs of our TikTok generation. Came back very quickly
| in comparison to the 12 years but still.
| ChoGGi wrote:
| I'm sure that first meeting will be... Interesting.
| lysecret wrote:
| Fascinating, I see a lot of VC/Msfot has overthrown our NPO
| governing structure because of profit incentives narrative.
|
| I don't think this is what really happened at all. The reason
| this decision was made was because 95% of employees sided with
| Sam on this issue, and the board didn't explain themselves in any
| way at all. So it was Sam + 95% of employees + All investors
| against the board. In which case the board should lose (since
| they are only governing for themselves here).
|
| I think in the end a good and fair outcome. I still think their
| governing structure is decent to solve the AGI problem, this
| particular board was just really bad.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| next time, can't wait to see what happens when capital is on
| the opposite side of the 95% of employees.
| r_thambapillai wrote:
| Of course, the profit incentive also applies to all the
| employees (which isn't necessarily a bad thing, its good to
| align the company's goals with those of the employees). But
| when the executives likely have 10s of millions of dollars on
| the line, and many of the IC's will likely have single digit
| millions on the line as well, it doesn't seem exactly
| straightforward to view this as the employees are unbiased
| adjudicators of what's in the interest of the non-profit
| entity, which is _supposed_ to be what 's in charge.
|
| It is sort of strange that our communal reaction is to say
| "well this board didn't act anything like a normal corporate
| board": of course it didn't, that was indeed the _whole_ point
| of not having a normal corporate board in charge.
|
| Whatever you think of Sam, Adam, Ilya etc, the one conclusion
| that seems safe to reach is that in the end, the
| profit/financial incentives ended up being far more important
| than the NGOs mission, no matter what legal structure was in
| place.
| jkaplan wrote:
| 1. Microsoft was heavily involved in orchestrating the 95% of
| employees to side with Sam -- through promising them money/jobs
| and through PR/narrative 2. The profit incentives apply to
| employees too
|
| Bigger picture, I don't think the
| "money/VC/MSFT/commercialization faction destroyed the
| safety/non-profit faction" is mutually exclusive with "the
| board fucked up." IMO, both are true
| campbel wrote:
| I don't think the board was big enough for starters. Of the
| folks on their, only one (Adam) had experience as a leader of a
| for profit venture. Helen probably lacks the leadership
| background to make any progress pushing her priorities.
| BryantD wrote:
| We're not gonna see it but I'd love to see Sam's new contract and
| particularly any restraints on outside activities.
| geniium wrote:
| This was a nice ride. Nice story to follow
| theGnuMe wrote:
| Larry Summers is an interesting choice. Any ideas why? I know he
| was Sheryl Sandberg's mentor/professor which gives him a tech
| connection. However, I've watched him debate Paul Krugman on
| inflation in some economic lectures and it almost felt like Larry
| was out of his element as in Larry was outgunned by Paul... but
| maybe he was having an off day or it was a topic he is not an
| expert in. But I don't know the history, haven't read either of
| their books and I am not an economist. But it was something I
| noticed.. almost like he was out of touch.
|
| That has nothing to do with AI though.
| jafitc wrote:
| OpenAI's Future and Viability
|
| - OpenAI has damaged their brand and lost trust, but may still
| become a hugely successful company if they build great products
|
| - OpenAI looks stronger now with a more professional board, but
| has fundamentally transformed into a for-profit focused on
| commercializing LLMs
|
| - OpenAI still retains impressive talent and technology assets
| and could pivot into a leading AI provider if managed well
|
| ---
|
| Sam Altman's Leadership
|
| - Sam emerged as an irreplaceable CEO with overwhelming employee
| loyalty, but may have to accept more oversight
|
| - Sam has exceptional leadership abilities but can be
| manipulative; he will likely retain control but have to keep
| stakeholders aligned
|
| ---
|
| Board Issues
|
| - The board acted incompetently and destructively without clear
| reasons or communication
|
| - The new board seems more reasonable but may struggle to govern
| given Sam's power
|
| - There are still opposing factions on ideology and
| commercialization that will continue battling
|
| ---
|
| Employee Motivations
|
| - Employees followed the money trail and Sam to preserve their
| equity and careers
|
| - Peer pressure and groupthink likely also swayed employees more
| than principles
|
| - Mission-driven employees may still leave for opportunities at
| places like Anthropic
|
| ---
|
| Safety vs Commercialization
|
| - The safety faction lost this battle but still has influential
| leaders wanting to constrain the technology
|
| - Rapid commercialization beat out calls for restraint but may
| hit snags with model issues
|
| ---
|
| Microsoft Partnership
|
| - Microsoft strengthened its power despite not appearing involved
| in the drama
|
| - OpenAI is now clearly beholden to Microsoft's interests rather
| than an independent entity
| qualifiedai wrote:
| No structure or organization is stronger when their leader
| emerged as "irreplaceable".
| rmbyrro wrote:
| In this case, I don't see as a flaw, but really as Sam's
| abilities to lead a highly cohesive group and keep it highly
| motivated and aligned.
|
| I don't personally like him, but I must admit he displayed a
| lot more leadership skills than I'd recognize before.
|
| It's inherently hard to replace someone like that in any
| organization.
|
| Take Apple, after losing Jobs. It's not that Apple was a
| "weak" organization, but really Jobs that was extraordinary
| and indeed irreplaceable.
|
| No, I'm not comparing Jobs and Sam. Just illustrating my
| point.
| prh8 wrote:
| What's the difference between leadership skills and cult of
| following?
| spurgu wrote:
| I think an awesome leader would naturally create some
| kind of cult following, while the opposite isn't true.
| Popeyes wrote:
| Just like former President Trump?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| There are two possible ways to read "the opposite" from
| the GP.
|
| "A cult follower does not make an exceptional leader" is
| the one you are looking for.
| 0perator wrote:
| While cult followers do not make exceptional leaders,
| cult leaders are almost by definition exceptional
| leaders, given they're able to lead the un-indoctrinated
| into believing an ideology that may not be upheld against
| critical scrutiny.
|
| There is no guarantee or natural law that an exceptional
| leader's ideology will be exceptional. Exceptionality is
| not transitive.
| thedaly wrote:
| Results
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Leadership Gets Shit Done. A cult following wastes
| everyone's time on ineffectual grandstanding and ego
| fluffing while everything around them dissolves into
| incompetence and hostility.
|
| They're very orthogonal things.
| rvnx wrote:
| I also imagine the morale of the people who are currently
| implementing things, and getting tired of all these
| politics about who is going to claim success for their
| work.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| Have you ever seen a useful product produced by a cult?
| pk-protect-ai wrote:
| Can't you imagine a group of people motivated to conduct AI
| research? I don't understand... All nerds are highly
| motivated in their areas of passion, and here we have AI
| research. Why do they need leadership instead of simply
| having an abundance of resources for the passionate work
| they do?
| DSingularity wrote:
| As far as it goes for me the only endorsements that
| matter are those of the core engineering and research
| teaches of OpenAI.
|
| All these opinions of outsiders don't matter. It's
| obvious that most people don't know Sam personally or
| professionally and are going off of the combination of:
| 1. PR pieces being pushed by unknown entities 2. positive
| endorsements from well known people who are likely know
| him
|
| Both those sources are suspect. We don't know the
| motivation behind their endorsements and for the PR
| pieces we know the author but we don't know commissioner.
|
| Would we feel as positive about Altman if it turns out
| that half the people and PR pieces endorsing him are
| because government officials pushing for him? Or if the
| celebrities in tech are endorsing him because they are
| financially incentivized?
|
| The only endorsements that matter are those of OpenAI
| employees (ideally those who are not just in his camp
| because he made them rich).
| gcanyon wrote:
| Someone has to set direction. The more people that are
| involved in that decision process, the slower it will go.
|
| Having no leadership at all guarantees failure.
| jjk166 wrote:
| It's not hard to motivate them to do the fun parts of the
| job, the challenge is in convincing some of those highly
| motivated and passionate nerds to not work on the fun
| thing they are passionate about and instead do the boring
| and unsexy work that is nevertheless critical to overall
| success; to get people with strong personal opinions
| about how a solution should look to accept a different
| plan just so that everyone is on the same page, to ensure
| that people actually have access to the resources they
| need to succeed without going so overboard that the
| endeavor lacks the reserves to make it to the finish
| line, and to champion the work of these nerds to the non-
| nerds who are nevertheless important stakeholders.
| scythe wrote:
| Jobs was really unusual in that he was not only a good
| leader, but also an ideologue with the right obsession at
| the right time. (Some people like the word "visionary".)
| That obsession being "user experience". Today it's a
| buzzword, but in 2001 it was hardly even a term.
|
| The leadership moment that first comes to mind when I think
| of Steve Jobs isn't some clever hire or business deal, it's
| "make it smaller".
|
| There have been a very few people like that. Walt Disney
| comes to mind. Felix Klein. Yen Hongchang [1]. (Elon Musk
| is maybe the ideologue without the leadership.)
|
| 1: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/01/20/145360447/
| the-...
| osigurdson wrote:
| Seriously, even in a small group of a few hundred people?
| catapart wrote:
| I dunno, seems like a pretty self-evident theory? If your
| leader is irreplaceable, regardless of group size, that's a
| single point of failure. I can't figure how a single point
| of failure could ever make something "stronger". I can see
| arguments for necessity, or efficiency, given contrivances
| and extreme contexts. But "stronger" doesn't seem like the
| assessment for whatever necessitating a single point of
| failure would be.
| vipshek wrote:
| "Stronger" is ambiguous. If you interpret it as
| "resilience" then I agree having a single point of
| failure is usually more brittle. But if you interpret it
| as "focused", then having a single charismatic leader can
| be superior.
|
| Concretely, it sounds like this incident brought a lot of
| internal conflicts to the surface, and they got more-or-
| less resolved in some way. I can imagine this allows
| OpenAI to execute with greater focus and velocity going
| forward, as the internal conflict that was previously
| causing drag has been resolved.
|
| Whether or not that's "better" or "stronger" is up to
| individual interpretation.
| hughw wrote:
| I guess though, a lot of organizations never develop a
| cohesive leader at all, and the orgs fall apart. They
| never had an irreplaceable leader though!
| osigurdson wrote:
| A company is essentially an optimization problem, meant
| to minimize / maximize some set of metrics. Usually a
| companies goal is simply to maximize NPV but in OpenAI's
| case the goal is to maximize AI while minimizing harm.
|
| "Failure" in this context essentially means arriving at a
| materially suboptimal outcome. Leaders in this situation,
| can easily be considered "irreplaceable" particularly in
| the early stages as decisions are incredibly impactful.
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| This is false, and I see the corollary as a project having a
| BDIF, especially if the leader is effective. Sam is
| unmistakably effective.
| acchow wrote:
| Have you or anyone close to you ever had to take multiple
| years of leave from work from a car accident or health
| condition?
| slingnow wrote:
| Nope, I've never even __heard__ of someone having to take
| multiple years of leave from work for any reason. Seems
| like a fantastically rare event.
| thingification wrote:
| Not sure if that's intended as irony, but of course, if
| somebody is taking multiple years off work, you would be
| less likely hear about it because by definition they're
| not going to join the company you work for.
|
| I don't think long-term unemployment among people with a
| disability or other long-term condition is "fantasticaly
| rare", sadly. This is not the frequency by length of
| unemployment, but:
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/1219257/us-
| employment-ra...
| yeck wrote:
| In my immediate family I have 3 people that have taken
| multi-year periods away from work for health reasons. Two
| are mental health related and the other severe arthritis.
| 2 of those 3 will probably never work again for the rest
| of their lives.
|
| I've worked with a contractor that went into a coma
| during covid. Nearly half a year in a coma, then rehab
| for many more months. Guy is working now, but not shape.
|
| I don't know the stats, but I'd be surprised if long
| medical leaves are as rare as you think.
| filleduchaos wrote:
| Yeah, there are thousands of hospitals across the US and
| they don't run 24/7 shifts just to treat the flu or
| sprained ankles. Disabling events happen a _lot_.
|
| (A seriously underrated statistic IMO is how many women
| leave the workforce due to pregnancy-related disability.
| I know quite a few who haven't returned to full-time work
| for years after giving birth because they're still
| dealing with cardiovascular and/or neurological issues.
| If you aren't privy to their medical history it would be
| very easy to assume that they just decided to be stay-at-
| home mums.)
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| Have you ever worked with someone who treats their work
| as their life? They are borderline psychopaths. As if a
| health condition or accident will stop them. They'll be
| taking work calls on the hospital bed.
| rvnx wrote:
| And correlation does not imply causality.
|
| Example: Put a loser as CEO of a rocket ship, and there is a
| huge chance that the company will still be successful.
|
| Put a loser as CEO of a sinking ship, and there is a huge
| chance that the company will fail.
|
| The exceptional CEOs are those who turn failures into
| successes.
|
| The fact this drama has emerged is the symptom of a failure.
|
| In a company with a great CEO this shouldn't be happening.
| Aunche wrote:
| I don't think Sam is necessarily irreplaceable. It's just
| that Helen Toner and co were so detached from the rest of the
| organization they might as well been on Mars, as demonstrated
| by their interim CEO pick instantly turning against them.
| nurumaik wrote:
| Gpt-generated summary?
| Mistletoe wrote:
| That was my first thought as well. And now it is the top
| comment on this post. Isn't this brave new world OpenAI made
| wonderful?
| nickpp wrote:
| If it's a good comment, does it really matter if a human or
| an AI wrote it?
| makeworld wrote:
| Yes.
| nickpp wrote:
| Please expand on that.
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| This is the most cogent argument against AI I've seen so
| far.
|
| https://youtu.be/iGJcF4bLKd4?si=Q_JGEZnV-tpFa1Tb
| nickpp wrote:
| I am sorry, I greatly respect and admire Nick Cave, but
| that letter sounded to me like the lament of a scribe
| decrying the invention of the printing press.
|
| He's not wrong, something _is_ lost and it has to do with
| what we call our "humanity", but the benefits greatly
| outweigh that loss.
| makeworld wrote:
| If you think humanity being lost is acceptable, then it's
| hard to discuss anything else on this topic.
| nickpp wrote:
| > you think humanity being lost is acceptable
|
| I never said that.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| I think this summarizes it pretty well. Even if you don't
| mind the garbage, the future AI will feed on this
| garbage, creating AI and human brain gray goo.
|
| https://ploum.net/2022-12-05-drowning-in-ai-generated-
| garbag...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_goo
| nickpp wrote:
| Is this a real problem model trainers actually face or is
| it an imagined one? The Internet is already full of
| garbage - 90% of the unpleasantness of browsing these
| days is filtering through mounts and mounds of crap. Some
| is generated, some is written, but still crap full of
| wrong and lies.
|
| I would've imagined training sets were heavily curated
| and annotated. We already know how to solve this problem
| for training humans (or our kids would never learn
| anything useful) so I imagine we could solve it similarly
| for AIs.
|
| In the end, if it's quality content, learning it is
| beneficial - no matter who produced it. Garbage needs to
| be eliminated and the distinction is made either by human
| trainers or already trained AIs. I have no idea how to
| train the latter but I am no expert in this field - just
| like (I suspect) the author of that blog.
| makeworld wrote:
| The value of a creation cannot be solely judged by its
| output. It's hard to explain, it's better to intuit it.
| miohtama wrote:
| > Employees followed the money trail and Sam to preserve their
| equity and careers
|
| Would you not when the AI safety wokes decide the torch the
| rewards of your hard work of grinding for years? I feel there
| is less groupthink and everyone saw the board as it is and
| their inability lead, or even act rationally. OpenAI did not
| just become a sinking ship, but it was unnecessary sunk by
| someone not skin in the game and your personal wealth and
| success was tied to the ship.
| brookst wrote:
| Yeah, this is like using "groupthink" to describe people
| fleeing a burning building. There's maybe some measure of
| literal truth, but it's an odd way to frame it.
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| How do you know the "wokes" aren't the ones who were grinding
| for years?
|
| I suspect OpenAI has an old guard that is disproportionately
| ideological about AI, and a much larger group of people who
| joined a rocket ship led by the guy who used to run YC.
| seydor wrote:
| who would want to work for an irreplaceable CEO long term
| rvnx wrote:
| Desperate people who have no choice than to wait for someone
| to remove their golden handcuffs.
| paulddraper wrote:
| > Peer pressure and groupthink likely also swayed employees
| more than principles
|
| What makes this "likely"?
|
| Or is this just pure conjecture?
| mrfox321 wrote:
| What would you do if 999 employees openly signed a letter and
| you are the remaining holdout.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Is your argument that the 1 employee operated on peer
| pressure, or the other 999?
|
| Could it possibly be that the majority of OpenAI's
| workforce sincerely believed a midnight firing of the CEO
| were counterproductive to their organization's goals?
| dymk wrote:
| It's almost certain that all employees did not behave the
| same way for the exact same reasons. And I don't see
| anyone making an argument about what the exact numbers
| are, nor does it really matter. Just that some portion of
| employees were swayed by pressure once the letter reached
| some critical signing mass.
| paulddraper wrote:
| > some portion
|
| The logic being that if any opinion has above X% support,
| people are choosing it based on peer pressure.
| mrfox321 wrote:
| The key is that the support is not anonymous.
| mrfox321 wrote:
| Doing the math, it is extremely unlikely for a lot of
| coin flips to skew from the weight of the coin.
|
| To that end, observing unanimous behavior may imply some
| bias.
|
| Here, it could be people fearing being a part of the
| minority. The minority are trivially identifiable, since
| the majority signed their names on a document.
|
| I agree in your stance that a majority of the workforce
| disagreed with the way things were handled, but that
| proportion is likely a subset of the proportion who
| signed their names on the document, for the reasons
| stated above.
| paulddraper wrote:
| > it is extremely unlikely for a lot of coin flips to
| skew from the weight of the coin
|
| So clearly this wasn't a 50/50 coin flip.
|
| The question at hand is whether the skew against the
| board was sincere or insincere.
|
| Personally, I assume that people are acting in good
| faith, unless I have evidence to the contrary.
| mrfox321 wrote:
| I'm not saying it's 50/50.
|
| But future signees are influenced by previous signees.
|
| Acting in good faith is different from bias.
| orsenthil wrote:
| > - Mission-driven employees may still leave for opportunities
| at places like Anthropic
|
| Which might have an oversight from AMZN instead of MSFT ?
| sam0x17 wrote:
| > Peer pressure and groupthink likely also swayed employees
| more than principles
|
| Chilling to hear the corporate oligarchs completely disregard
| the feelings of employees and deny most of the legitimacy
| behind these feelings in such a short and sweeping statement
| DSingularity wrote:
| Honestly he has a point -- but the bigger point to be made is
| financial incentives. In this case it matters because of the
| expressed mission statement of OpenAI.
|
| Let's say there was some non-profit claiming to advance the
| interests of the world. Let's say it paid very well to hire
| the most productive people but they were a bunch of
| psychopaths who by definition couldn't care less about
| anybody but themselves. Should you care about their opinions?
| If it was a for profit company you could argue that their
| voice matter. For a non-profit, however, a persons opinion
| should only matter as far as it is aligned with the non-
| profit mission.
| ensocode wrote:
| Good points. Anyway I guess nobody will remember the drama in
| some months so I think the damage done is very manageable for
| OAI.
| jxi wrote:
| Was this really motivated by AI safety or was it just Helen
| Toner's personal vendetta against Sam?
|
| It doesn't feel like anything was accomplished besides wasting
| 700+ people's time, and the only thing that has changed now is
| Helen Toner and Tasha McCauley are off the board.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| As someone who was very critical of _how_ the board acted, I
| strongly disagree. I felt like this Washington Post article
| gave a very good, balanced overview. I think it sounds like
| there were substantive issues that were brewing for a long
| time, though no doubt personal clashes had a huge impact on
| how it all went down:
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/22/sam-
| alt...
| cbeach wrote:
| Curious how a relatively unknown academic with links to China
| [1] attained a board seat on America's hottest and most
| valuable AI company.
|
| Particularly as she openly expressed that "destroying" that
| company might be the best outcome. [2]
|
| > During the call, Jason Kwon, OpenAI's chief strategy
| officer, said the board was endangering the future of the
| company by pushing out Mr. Altman. This, he said, violated
| the members' responsibilities. Ms. Toner disagreed. The
| board's mission was to ensure that the company creates
| artificial intelligence that "benefits all of humanity," and
| if the company was destroyed, she said, that could be
| consistent with its mission.
|
| [1] https://www.chinafile.com/contributors/helen-toner [2]
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/21/technology/openai-
| altman-...
| Zpalmtree wrote:
| Wow, very surprised this is the first I'm hearing of this,
| seems very suspect
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Oh lord, spare me with the "links to China" idiocy. I once
| ate a fortune cookie, does that mean I have "links to
| China" too?
|
| Toner got her board seat because she was basically Holden
| Karnofsky's designated replacement:
|
| > Holden Karnofsky resigns from the Board, citing a
| potential conflict because his wife, Daniela Amodei, is
| helping start Anthropic, a major OpenAI competitor, with
| her brother Dario Amodei. (They all live(d) together.) The
| exact date of Holden's resignation is unknown; there was no
| contemporaneous press release.
|
| > Between October and November 2021, Holden was quietly
| removed from the list of Board Directors on the OpenAI
| website, and Helen was added (Discussion Source). Given
| their connection via Open Philanthropy and the fact that
| Holden's Board seat appeared to be permanent, it seems that
| Helen was picked by Holden to take his seat.
|
| https://loeber.substack.com/p/a-timeline-of-the-openai-
| board
| cbeach wrote:
| Perhaps you're not aware. Living in Beijing is not
| equivalent to "once eating a fortune cookie"
|
| > it seems that Helen was picked by Holden to take his
| seat.
|
| So you can only speculate as to how she got the seat.
| Which is exactly my point. We can only speculate. And
| it's a question worth asking, because governance of
| America's most important AI company is a very important
| topic right now.
| jkaplan wrote:
| > was it just Helen Toner's personal vendetta against Sam
|
| I'm not defending the board's actions, but if anything, it
| sounds like it may have been the reverse? [1]
|
| > In the email, Mr. Altman said that he had reprimanded Ms.
| Toner for the paper and that it was dangerous to the
| company... "I did not feel we're on the same page on the
| damage of all this," he wrote in the email. "Any amount of
| criticism from a board member carries a lot of weight."
| Senior OpenAI leaders, including Mr. Sutskever... later
| discussed whether Ms. Toner should be removed
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/21/technology/openai-
| altman-...
| jxi wrote:
| Right, so getting Sam fired was retaliation for that.
| amalcon wrote:
| _> - Microsoft strengthened its power despite not appearing
| involved in the drama_
|
| Depending on what you mean by "the drama", Microsoft was very
| clearly involved. They don't appear to have been in the loop
| prior to Altman's firing, but they literally offered jobs to
| everyone who left in solidarity with same. Do we really think
| things like that were not intended to change people's minds?
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> but they literally offered jobs to everyone who left in
| solidarity with same_
|
| Offering people jobs is neither illegal nor immoral, no? And
| wasn't HN also firmly on the side of abolishing non-competes
| and non-soliciting from employment contracts to facilitate
| freedom of employment movement and increase industry wages in
| the process?
|
| Well then, there's your freedom of employment in action. Why
| be unhappy about it? I don't get it.
| spankalee wrote:
| > Offering people jobs is neither illegal nor immoral
|
| The comment you responded to made neither of those claims,
| just that they were "involved".
| notahacker wrote:
| I'm pretty sure there's a middle ground between _recruiters
| for Microsoft should be banned from approaching other
| companies ' staff to fill roles_ and _Microsoft should be
| able to dictate decisions made by other companies ' boards
| by publicly announcing that unless they change track it
| will attempt to hire every single one of their employees to
| newly created roles_.
|
| Funnily enough a bit like there's a middle ground between
| _Microsoft should not be allowed to create browsers or have
| license agreements_ and _Microsoft should be allowed to
| dictate bundling decisions made by hardware vendors to
| control access to the Internet_
|
| It's not freedom of employment when funnily enough those
| jobs aren't actually available to any AI researchers not
| working for an organisation Microsoft is trying to control.
| malfist wrote:
| The GP looks to me like an AI summary. Which would fit with
| the hallucination that microsoft wasn't involved.
| chankstein38 wrote:
| That's a good callout. I was reading over it and confused
| who this person was and why they were summarizing but yeah
| they might've just told ChatGPT to summarize the events of
| what happened.
| gcanyon wrote:
| I'd go further than just saying "they were involved" --- by
| offering jobs to everyone who wanted to come with Altman,
| they were effectively offering to acquire OpenAI, which is
| worth ~$100B, for (checks notes) zero dollars.
| breadwinner wrote:
| You mean zero _additional_ dollars. They already gave
| (checks notes) $13 Billion dollars and own half of the
| company.
| rvnx wrote:
| + according to the rumors on Bloomberg.com / CNBC:
|
| The investment is refundable and has high priority:
| Microsoft has a priority to receive 75% of the profit
| generated until the 10B USD have been paid back
|
| + _(checks notes)_ in addition (!) OpenAI has to spend
| back the money in Microsoft Cloud Services (where
| Microsoft takes a cut as well).
| gsuuon wrote:
| How has the valuation of OpenAI increased by $20B since
| this weekend? I feel like every time I see that number it
| goes up by $10B.
| tacoooooooo wrote:
| you're off by a bit, the announcement of Sam returning as
| CEO actually increased OpenAI valuation to $110B last
| night
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| $110B? Where are you getting this valuation of $120B?
| theptip wrote:
| If the existing packages are worth more than MSFT pay AI
| researchers (they are, by a lot) then it's not acquiring
| OAI for $0. Plausibly it could cost in the $B to buy put
| every single equity holder, at a $80B+ valuation.
|
| Still a good deal, but your accounting is off.
| RationalDino wrote:
| The one piece of this that I question is the employee
| motivations.
|
| First, they had offers to walk to both Microsoft and Salesforce
| and be made good. They didn't have to stay and fight to have
| money and careers.
|
| But more importantly, put yourself in the shoes of an employee
| and read
| https://web.archive.org/web/20231120233119/https://www.busin...
| for what they apparently heard.
|
| I don't know about anyone else. But if I was being asked to
| choose sides in a he-said, she-said dispute, the board was
| publicly hinting at really bad stuff, and THAT was the
| explanation, I know what side I'd take.
|
| Don't forget, when the news broke, people's assumption from the
| wording of the board statement was that Sam was doing shady
| stuff, and there was potential jail time involved. And they
| justify smearing Sam like that because two board members
| thought they heard different things from Sam, and he gave what
| looked like the same project to two people???
|
| There were far better stories that they could have told. Heck,
| the Internet made up many far better narratives than the board
| did. But that was the board's ACTUAL story.
|
| Put me on the side of, "I'd have signed that letter, and money
| would have had nothing to do with it."
| TheGRS wrote:
| I was thinking the same. The letter symbolized a deep
| distrust with leadership over the mission and direction of
| the company. I'm sure financial motivations were involved,
| but the type of person working at this company can probably
| get a good paycheck at a lot of places. I think many work at
| OpenAI for some combination of opportunity, prestige, and
| altruism, and the weekend probably put all 3 into question.
| neonbjb wrote:
| As an employee of OpenAI: fuck you and your condescending
| conclusions about my peers and my motivations.
| jprete wrote:
| I'm curious about your perceptions of the (median)
| motivations of OpenAI employees - although of course I
| understand if you don't feel free to say anything.
| alextheparrot wrote:
| Users here often get the narrative and motivations deeply
| wrong, I wouldn't take it too personally (Speaking as a peer)
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| "condescending conclusions" - ask anyone outside of tech how
| they feel when we talk to them...
| windowshopping wrote:
| This comment bugs me because it reads like a summary of an
| article, but it's just your opinions without any explanations
| to justify them.
| scooke wrote:
| Many are still going to use this; few will bother to ponder and
| break the event down like this.
| account-5 wrote:
| Farse, plain and simple.
| orsenthil wrote:
| What's even the lesson learnt here?
|
| 1. Keep doing your work, and focus on building your product. 2.
| Ignore the noise, go back to 1.
| rennsport_eth wrote:
| I love you, but you are not serious people.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Yeah I don't know. I think you'd be kind of nuts to build
| anything on their APIs anymore.
|
| Sure I'll keep using ChatGPT in a personal capacity/as search.
| But no way I'd trust my business to them
| campbel wrote:
| Working out nicely for Msft then. You can use GPT4 via Azure
| already.
| kibwen wrote:
| This will be remembered as the biggest waste of time and energy
| since the LK-99 fiasco.
| evan_ wrote:
| What a waste of time
| bmitc wrote:
| What a gigantic mess. Everyone looks bad in this: Altman,
| Microsoft, the OpenAI board, OpenAI employees, etc.
|
| It also has confirmed that greed and cult of personality win in
| the end.
| voiceblue wrote:
| For some reason this reminds me of the Coke/New Coke fiasco,
| which ended up popularizing Coke Classic more than ever before.
|
| > Consumers were outraged and demanded their beloved Coke back -
| the taste that they knew and had grown up with. The request to
| bring the old product back was so loud that soon journalists
| suggested that the entire project was a stunt. To this accusation
| Coca-Cola President Don Keough replied on July 10, 1985:
| "We are not that dumb, and we are not that smart."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Coke
| freedomben wrote:
| That is one of the greatest lines of all time. Classic
| jdlyga wrote:
| I tried New Coke when it was re-released for Stranger Things.
| It really is a lot better than Coca Cola Classic. It's a shame
| that it failed.
| tacocataco wrote:
| Thanks for sharing.
|
| I would have guessed the stunt was to hide the switch from
| sugar to High Fructose Corn syrup.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| When the first CEO appeared on the earth he got tied to cliff so
| the birds could eat him. It seems like that was a good call.
| incahoots wrote:
| Cue the "it's a Christmas Miracle!"
| diamondfist25 wrote:
| Adam D'Angelo keeping everyone straight on the mission of OpenAI.
| What a true boss in the face of woke mob
| iamleppert wrote:
| So dangerous on so many levels. Just let him start his own AI
| group, competition is good!
|
| Instead he will come away with this untouchable. He'll get to
| stack the board like he wanted to. Part of being on a board of
| directors is sticking to your decisions. They are weak and
| weren't prepared for the backlash of one person.
| melvinmelih wrote:
| "You could parachute Sam into an island full of cannibals and
| come back in 5 years and he'd be the king." - Paul Graham
| rsanek wrote:
| http://paulgraham.com/fundraising.html
| gsuuon wrote:
| At least they'll be operating under the original charter - it
| sounds like the mission continues. Not sure about this new board
| but hard to imagine they'd make the same sort of mistake.
| archsurface wrote:
| I'm not American - I'm unclear what all this fuss is about? From
| where I am it looks like some arbitrary company politics in a
| hyped industry with a guy whose name I've seen mentioned on this
| site occasionally but really comes across as just a SV or San
| Fran cult of personality type. Am I missing something? Is there
| some substance to this story or is it just this week's industry
| soap opera?
| jcutrell wrote:
| I wonder what Satya will say here; will the AI CEO position there
| just evaporate?
| carapace wrote:
| So it's the Osiris myth?
| hackerlight wrote:
| So OpeNAI charter still in place? Once OpenAI reaches AGI,
| Microsoft won't be able to access the tech. Then what will happen
| to Microsoft when other commercial competitors catch up and also
| reach AGI one or two years later?
| taway1874 wrote:
| Some perspective ...
|
| One developer (Ilya) vs. One businessman (Sam) -> Sam wins
|
| Hundreds of developers threaten to quit vs. Board of Directors
| (biz) refuse to budge -> Developers win
|
| From the outside it looks like developers held the power all
| along ... which is how it should be.
| rexarex wrote:
| Money won.
| jessenaser wrote:
| Yes, 95% agreement in any company is unprecedented but:
|
| 1. They can get equivalent position and pay at the new
| Microsoft startup during that time, so their jobs are not at
| risk.
|
| 2. Sam approved each hire in the first place.
|
| 3. OpenAI is selecting for the type of people who want to work
| at a non-profit with a goal in mind instead of another company
| that could offer higher compensation. Mission driven vs profit
| driven.
|
| Either way on how they got to that conclusion of banding
| together to quit, it was a good idea, and it worked. And it is
| a check on power for a bad board of directors, when otherwise a
| board of directors cannot be challenged. "OpenAI is nothing
| without its people".
| andersa wrote:
| > OpenAI is selecting for the type of people who want to work
| at a non-profit with a goal in mind instead of another
| company that could offer higher compensation. Mission driven
| vs profit driven.
|
| Maybe that was the case at some point, but clearly not
| anymore ever since the release of ChatGPT. Or did you not see
| them offer completely absurd compensation packages, i.e. to
| engineers leaving Google?
|
| I'd bet more than half the people are just there for the
| money.
| brrrrrm wrote:
| > 1. They can get equivalent position and pay at the new
| Microsoft startup during that time, so their jobs are not at
| risk.
|
| citation?
| davio wrote:
| https://x.com/kevin_scott/status/1726971608706031670?s=20
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| Are you sure Ilya was the root of this.
|
| He backed it and then signed the pledge to quit if it wasn't
| undone.
|
| What's the evidence he was behind it and not D'Angelo?
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| If we only look at the outcomes (dismantling of board),
| Microsoft and Sam seem to have the most motive.
| __loam wrote:
| I'm not sure I buy the idea that Ilya was just some hapless
| researcher who got unwillingly pulled into this. Any one of
| the board could have voted not to remove Sam and stop the
| board coup, including Ilya. I'd bet he only got cold feet
| after the story became international news and after most of
| the company threatened to resign because their bag was in
| jeopardy.
| Xelynega wrote:
| That's a strange framing. In that scenario would it not be
| that he made the decision he thought was right and aligned
| with openais mission initially, then when seeing the public
| support Sam had he decided to backtrack so he had a future
| career?
| jiveturkey wrote:
| wake up people! (said rhetorically, not accusatory or any
| other way)
|
| This is Altman's playbook. He did a similar ousting at
| Reddit. This was planned all along to overturn the board.
| Ilya was in on it.
|
| I'm not normally a conspiracy theorist. But fool me ... you
| can't be fooled again. As they say in Tennessee
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| What's the backstory on Reddit?
| occamsrazorwit wrote:
| Yishan (former Reddit CEO) describes how Altman
| orchestrated the removal of Reddit's owner: https://www.r
| eddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the...
|
| Note that the response is Altman's, and he seems to
| support it.
|
| As additional context, Paul Graham has said a number of
| times that Altman is one of the most power-hungry and
| successful people he know (as praise). Paul Graham, who's
| met hundreds if not thousands of experienced leaders in
| tech, says this.
| bossyTeacher wrote:
| what happenned in reddit?
| adverbly wrote:
| There are three dragons:
|
| Employees, customers, government.
|
| If motivated and aligned, any of these three could end you if
| they want to.
|
| Do not wake the dragons.
| pdntspa wrote:
| The Board is another one, if you're CEO.
| elliotec wrote:
| I think the parent comment's point is that the board is not
| one, since the board was defeated (by the employee dragon).
| pdntspa wrote:
| I think the analogy is kind of shaky. The board tried to
| end the CEO, but employees fought them and won.
|
| I've been in companies where the board won, and they
| installed a stoolie that proceeded to drive the company
| into the ground. Anybody who stood up to that got fired
| too.
| davesque wrote:
| I have an intuition that OpenAI's mid-range size gave the
| employees more power in this case. It's not as hard to
| coordinate a few hundred people, especially when those
| people are on top of the world and want to stay there. At
| a megacorp with thousands of employees, the board
| probably has an easier time bossing people around.
| Although I don't know if you had a larger company in mind
| when you gave your second example.
| pdntspa wrote:
| No, I'm thinking a smaller company, like 50 people, $20m
| ARR. Engineering-focused, but not tech
| adverbly wrote:
| My comment was more of a reflection of the fact that you
| might have multiple different governance structures to your
| organization. Sometimes investors are at the top. Sometimes
| it's a private owner. Sometimes there are separate kinds of
| shares for voting on different things. Sometimes it's a
| board. So you're right, the depending on the governance
| structure you can have additional dragons. But, you can
| never prevent any of these three from being a dragon. They
| will always be dragons, and you can never wake them up.
| bossyTeacher wrote:
| Or tame the dragons. AFAIK Sam hired the employees. Hence
| they are loyal to him
| sokoloff wrote:
| Is your first "-> Sam wins" different than what you intended?
| hsavit1 wrote:
| seems like the union of developers is stronger than the company
| itself. hence why unions are so frowned upon by big tech
| corporate leadership
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| And yet, this union was threatening to move to a company
| without unions.
| jejeyyy77 wrote:
| $$$ vs. Safety -> $$$ wins.
|
| Employees who have $$$ incentive threaten to quit if that is
| taken away. News at 8.
| baby wrote:
| Why are you assuming employees are incentivized by $$$ here,
| and why do you think the board's reason is related to safety
| or that employees don't care about safety? It just looks like
| you're spreading FUD at this point.
| jejeyyy77 wrote:
| of course the employees are motivated by $$$ - is that even
| a question?
| Xelynega wrote:
| No, it's just counter to the idea that it was "employee
| power" that brought sam back.
|
| It was capital and the pursuit of more of it.
|
| It always is.
| hackerlight wrote:
| The large majority of people are motivated by $$$ (or fame)
| and if they all tell me otherwise I know many of them are
| lying.
| mi_lk wrote:
| It's you who are naive if you really think the majority of
| those 7xx employees care more about safe AGI than their own
| equity upside
| nh23423fefe wrote:
| Why would anyone care about safe agi? its vaporware.
| mecsred wrote:
| Everything is vaporware until it gets made. If you wait
| until a new technology definitively exists to start
| caring about safety, you have guaranteed it will be
| unsafe.
|
| Lucky for us this fiasco has nothing to do with AGI
| safety, only AI technology. Which only affects automated
| decision making in technology that's entrenched in every
| fact of our lives. So we're all safe here!
| superturkey650 wrote:
| > If you wait until a new technology definitively exists
| to start caring about safety, you have guaranteed it will
| be unsafe.
|
| I don't get this perspective. The first planes, cars,
| computers, etc. weren't initially made with safety in
| mind. They were all regulated after the fact and
| successfully made safer.
|
| How can you even design safety into something if it
| doesn't exist yet? You'd have ended up with a plane where
| everyone sat on the wings with a parachute strapped on if
| you designed them with safety first instead of letting
| them evolve naturally and regulating the resulting
| designs.
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| The difference between unsafe AGI and an unsafe plane or
| car is that the plane/car are not existential risks.
| optymizer wrote:
| How is it an 'existential risk'? Its body of knowledge is
| publicly available, no?
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| What do you mean by "its"? There isn't any AGI yet.
| ChatGPT is far from that level.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| The US government got involved in regulating airplanes
| long before there were any widely available commercial
| offerings:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_government_ro
| le_...
|
| If you're trying to draw a parallel here then safety and
| the federal government needs to catch up. There's already
| commercial offerings that any random internet user can
| use.
| superturkey650 wrote:
| I agree, and I am not saying that AI should be
| unregulated. At the point the government started
| regulating flight, the concept of an airplane had existed
| for decades. My point is that until something actually
| exists, you don't know what regulations should be in
| place.
|
| There should be regulations on existing products (and
| similar products released later) as they exist and you
| know what you're applying regulations to.
| mecsred wrote:
| I understand where you're coming from and I think that's
| reasonable in general. My perspective would be: you can
| definitely iterate on the technology to come up with
| safer versions. But with this strategy you have to make
| an unsafe version first. If you got in one of the first
| airplanes ever made the likely hood of crashing is pretty
| high.
|
| At some point, our try it until it works approach will
| bite us. Consider the calculations done to determine if
| fission bombs would ignite the atmosphere. You don't want
| to test that one and find out. As our technology improves
| exponentially we're going to run into that situation more
| and more frequently. Regardless if you think it's AGI or
| something else, we will eventually run into some
| technology where one mistake is a cataclysm. How many
| nuclear close calls have we already experienced.
| jononor wrote:
| The principles, best practices and tools of safety
| engineering can be applied to new projects. We have
| decades of experience now. Not saying it will be perfect
| on the first try, or that we know everything that is
| needed. But the novel aspects of AI are not an excuse to
| not try.
| stillwithit wrote:
| Exactly what an OpenAI developer would understand. All
| the more reason to ride the grift that brought them this
| far
| concordDance wrote:
| Uh, I reckon many do. Money is easy to come by for that
| type of person and avoiding killing everyone matters to
| them.
| DirkH wrote:
| Assuming employees are not incentivized by $$$ here seems
| extraordinary and needs a pretty robust argument to show it
| isn't playing a major factor when there is this much money
| involved.
| dylan604 wrote:
| It's not like this is the first:
|
| One developer (Woz) vs One businessman (Jobs) -> Jobs wins
| zerohalo wrote:
| more like $$ wins.
|
| It's clear most employees didn't care much about OpenAI's
| mission -- and I don't blame them since they were hired by the
| __for-profit__ OpenAI company and therefore aligned with
| __its__ goals and rewarded with equity.
|
| In my view the board did the right thing to stand by OpenAI's
| original mission -- which now clearly means nothing. Too bad
| they lost out.
|
| One might say the mission was pointless since Google, Meta,
| MSFT would develop it anyway. That's really a convenience
| argument that has been used in arms races (if we don't build
| lots of nuclear weapons, others will build lots of nuclear
| weapons) and leads to ... well, where we are today :(
| joewferrara wrote:
| Where we are today is a world where people do not generally
| worry about nuclear bombs being dropped. So seems like a
| pretty good outcome in that example.
| Xelynega wrote:
| The nuclear arms race lead to the cold war, not a "good
| outcome" IMO. It wasn't until nations started imposing
| those regulations that we got to the point we're at today
| with nuclear weapons.
| Quentincestino wrote:
| OpenAI developers are redefining the state-of-the-art of AI
| each 6 months, if the company lose them they already can go
| bankrupt
| m00x wrote:
| Ilya signed the letter saying he would resign if Sam wasn't
| brought back. Looks like he regretted his decision and
| ultimately got played by the 2 departing board members.
|
| Ilya is also not a developer, he's a founder of OpenAI and was
| the CSO.
| awb wrote:
| It's a cost / benefit analysis.
|
| If people are easily replaceable then they don't hold nearly as
| much power, even en mass.
| nikcub wrote:
| The employees rapidly and effectively formed a quasi-union to
| grant themselves a very powerful seat at the table.
| dang wrote:
| All: there are over 1800 comments in this thread. If you want to
| read them all, click More at the bottom of each page, or like
| this: (edit: er, yes they do have to be wellformed don't they):
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38375239&p=2
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38375239&p=3
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38375239&p=4 (...etc.)
| macrael wrote:
| What a delightful shit show. I don't even personally care whether
| Sam Altman is running OpenAI but it brings me no end of
| schadenfreude to see a bunch of AI Doomers make asses of
| themselves. Ethical Altruism truly believes that AI could destroy
| all of human life on the planet which is a preposterous belief.
| There are so many better things to worry about, many of which are
| happening right now! These people are not serious and should not
| hold serious positions of power. It's not hard to see the dangers
| of AI: replacing a lot of make-work that exists in the world,
| giving shoddy answers with high confidence, taking humans out of
| the loop of responsible decision making, but I cannot believe
| that it will become so smart that it becomes an all powerful god.
| These people worship intelligence (hence why they believe that
| with infinite intelligence comes infinite power) but look what
| happens when they actually have power! Ridiculous.
| rashidae wrote:
| Could someone do a sentiment analysis from the comments and share
| it with all of us who can't read all the 1,700+ comments?
| Ruq wrote:
| that fast huh?
| daveguy wrote:
| Hi dang,
|
| Seeing a bug in your comment here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38382563
|
| You reference the pages like this:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38375239?p=2
|
| The second ? should be an & like this:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38375239&p=2
|
| Please feel free to delete this message after you've received it.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Also, while we're at it:
|
| "Nobody will be happier than I when this bottleneck (edit: the
| one in our code--not the world) is a thing of the past" [1]
|
| HN plans to be multi-core?!?! A bigger scoop than OpenAI
| governance!
|
| Anything more you can share?
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38351005
| saliagato wrote:
| Why do you (dang) always write a comment specifying that people
| can read more and even providing some links when it's clear
| that when you reach the bottom of the page you have to click
| "read more" to indeed read more. Isn't it a bit useless?
| bartread wrote:
| Because people don't, that's why.
| pvg wrote:
| _when it 's clear_
|
| It isn't that clear. People missing ui elements they have to
| scroll to is one of the most common ways of missing ui
| elements.
| pvg wrote:
| If you want to reach the mods just email hn@ycombinator.com
| daveguy wrote:
| Thank you for the advice. I will do that in the future.
| zerohalo wrote:
| Google, Meta and now OpenAI. So long, responsible and safety AI
| guardrails. Hello, big money.
|
| Disappointed by the outcome, but perhaps mission-driven AI
| development -- the reason OpenAI was founded -- was never
| possible.
|
| Edit: I applaud the board members for (apparently, it seems)
| trying to stand up for the mission (aka doing the job that they
| were put on the board to do), even if their efforts were doomed.
| risho wrote:
| you just don't understand how markets work. if openai slows
| down then they will just be driven out by competition. that's
| fine if that's what you think they should do, but that won't
| make ai any safer, it will just kill openai and have them
| replaced by someone else.
| zerohalo wrote:
| you're right about market forces, however:
|
| 1) openAI was explicitly founded to NOT develop AI based on
| "market forces"; it's just that they "pivoted" (aka abandoned
| their mission) once they struck gold in order to become
| driven by the market
|
| 2) this is exactly the reasoning behind nuclear arms races
| WanderPanda wrote:
| You can still be a force for decentralization by creating
| actually open ai. For now it seems like Meta AI research is
| the real open ai
| insanitybit wrote:
| What does "actually open" mean? And how is that more
| responsible? If the ethical concern of AI is that it's too
| powerful or whatever, isn't building it in the open
| _worse_?
| WanderPanda wrote:
| Depends on how you interpret the mission statement of
| building ai for all of humanity. It's questionable that
| humanity is better off if ai only accrues to one or a few
| centralised entities?
| paulddraper wrote:
| > I applaud the board members for (apparently, it seems) trying
| to stand up for the mission
|
| What about this is apparent to you?
|
| What statement has the board made on how they fired Altman "for
| the mission"?
|
| Have I missed something?
| alsetmusic wrote:
| To me, commentary online and on podcasts universally leans on
| the idea that he appears to be very focused on money (from
| the outside) in seeming contradiction to the company charter:
|
| > Our primary fiduciary duty is to humanity.
|
| Also, the language of the charter has watered down a stronger
| commitment that was in the first version. Others have quoted
| it and I'm sure you can find it on the internet archive.
| paulddraper wrote:
| > commentary online and on podcasts
|
| :/
| nbzso wrote:
| Stop dreaming about alignment. All bets are off. This is the
| start of AI arms race. Think globally for a second. Yes,
| everybody wants to be a millionaire or billionaire. This is the
| current culture we are living in. Corporations have unprecedented
| power waved into the governments, but governments still have a
| monopoly on violence. People cannot switch to the new abstraction
| layer (UBI, Social Rating) for two or five years. They will keep
| a consumer-oriented mindset before the option to have one is
| erased. Where you think this is going? To a better Democracy?
| This is the Cold War V.2 scenario unfolding.
| jacquesm wrote:
| 49% stock (lower bound) + 90% of employees (upper bound) > board.
|
| To be updated as more evidence rolls in.
| jrflowers wrote:
| This here is what we call a load-bearing "in principle"
| xyst wrote:
| OpenAI board f'd around and found out the consequences of their
| poor decisions. The decision to back pedal from previous position
| just shows the level of disconnect between these 2 entities.
|
| If I was an investor. I would be scared.
| zerohalo wrote:
| I think we now have an idea of what will happen if AGI is
| actually reached and efforts are made to contain or restrain it.
| nbzso wrote:
| Larry Summers? Microsoft? Alignment? Bye, bye humanity.
| joduplessis wrote:
| There is so much vagueness around this whole OpenAI thing that
| it's difficult taking anything seriously anymore - it's almost
| hearsay at this point. Yesterday it was Altman's personal
| interests, now it's a breakthrough model, tomorrow it's something
| else. At the very least it's fantastic marketing (albeit at the
| expense of their customers).
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| Is this the most famous post?
| carapace wrote:
| One of the oldest AGI jokes:
|
| Q: What's AGI?
|
| A: When the machine wakes up and asks, "What's in it for me?"
|
| - - - -
|
| So long, and thanks for all the fish.
| toasted-subs wrote:
| Seems so strange all of this happened
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