[HN Gopher] Mira Murati leaves OpenAI
___________________________________________________________________
Mira Murati leaves OpenAI
Author : brianjking
Score : 367 points
Date : 2024-09-25 19:35 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| extr wrote:
| The politics of leadership at OpenAI must be absolutely insane.
| "Leaving to do my own exploration"? Come on. You have Sam making
| blog posts claiming AI is going to literally be the second coming
| of Christ and then this a day later.
| Imnimo wrote:
| It is hard for me to square "This company is a few short years
| away from building world-changing AGI" and "I'm stepping away to
| do my own thing". Maybe I'm just bad at putting myself in someone
| else's shoes, but I feel like if I had spent years working
| towards a vision of AGI, and thought that success was finally
| just around the corner, it'd be very difficult to walk away.
| orionsbelt wrote:
| Maybe she thinks the _world_ is a few short years away from
| building world-changing AGI, not just limited to OpenAI, and
| she wants to compete and do her own thing (and easily raise $1B
| like Ilya).
| xur17 wrote:
| Which is arguably a good thing (having AGI spread amongst
| multiple entities rather than one leader).
| tomrod wrote:
| The show Person of Interest comes to mind.
| tempodox wrote:
| Samaritan will take us by the hand and lead us safely
| through this brave new world.
| HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
| How is that good? An arms race increases the pressure to go
| fast and disregard alignment safety, non proliferation is
| essential.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| I think that train left some time ago.
| zooq_ai wrote:
| I can't imagine investor pouring money on her. She has zero
| credibility both hardcore STEM like Ilya or a visionary like
| Jobs/Musk
| phatfish wrote:
| "Credibility" has nothing to do with how much money rich
| people are willing to give you.
| KoftaBob wrote:
| She was the CTO, how does she not have STEM credibility?
| jsheard wrote:
| > It is hard for me to square "This company is a few short
| years away from building world-changing AGI"
|
| Altmans quote was that "it's possible that we will have
| superintelligence in a few thousand days", which sounds a lot
| more optimistic on the surface than it actually is. A few
| thousand days could be interpreted as 10 years or more, and by
| adding the "possibly" qualifier he didn't even really commit to
| that prediction.
|
| It's hype with no substance, but vaguely gesturing that
| something earth-shattering is coming does serve to convince
| investors to keep dumping endless $billions into his
| unprofitable company, without risking the reputational damage
| of missing a deadline since he never actually gave one. Just
| keep signing those 9 digit checks and we'll totally build
| AGI... eventually. Honest.
| z7 wrote:
| >Altmans quote was that AGI "could be just a few thousand
| days away" which sounds a lot more optimistic on the surface
| than it actually is.
|
| I think he was referring to ASI, not AGI.
| umeshunni wrote:
| Isn't ASI > AGI?
| CaptainFever wrote:
| Is the S here referring to Sentient or Specialised?
| romanhn wrote:
| Super, whatever that means
| ben_w wrote:
| Super(human).
|
| Old-school AI was already specialised. Nobody can agree
| what "sentient" is, and if sentience includes a capacity
| to feel emotions/qualia etc. then we'd only willingly
| choose that over non-sentient for brain uploading not
| "mere" assistants.
| jrflowers wrote:
| Scottish.
| ben_w wrote:
| Both are poorly defined.
|
| By all the standards I had growing up, ChatGPT is already
| AGI. It's almost certainly not as economically
| transformative as it needs to be to meet OpenAI's stated
| definition.
|
| OTOH that may be due to limited availability rather than
| limited quality: if all the 20 USD/month for Plus gets
| spent on electricity to run the servers, at $0.10/kWh,
| that's about 274 W average consumption. Scaled up to the
| world population, that's approximately the entire global
| electricity supply. Which is kinda why there's also all
| the stories about AI data centres getting dedicated power
| plants.
| Spivak wrote:
| Don't know why you're being downvoted, these models meet
| the definition of AGI. It just looks different than
| perhaps we expected.
|
| We made a thing that exhibits the emergent property of
| intelligence. A level of intelligence that trades blows
| with humans. The fact that our brains do lots of other
| things to make us into self-contained autonomous beings
| is cool and maybe answers some questions about what being
| sentient means but memory and self-learning aren't the
| same thing as intelligence.
|
| I think it's cool that we got there before simulating an
| already existing brain and that intelligence can exist
| separate from consciousness.
| bottlepalm wrote:
| Given that ChatGPT is already smarter and faster than
| humans in many different metrics. Once the other metrics
| catch up with humans it will still be better than humans in
| the existing metrics. Therefore there will be no AGI, only
| ASI.
| ben_w wrote:
| Between 1 and 10 thousands of days, so 3 to 27 years.
|
| A range I'd agree with; for me, "pessimism" is the shortest
| part of that range, but even then you have to be very
| confident the specific metaphorical horse you're betting on
| is going to be both victorious in its own right and not,
| because there's no suitable existing metaphor, secretly an
| ICBM wearing a patomime costume.
| zooq_ai wrote:
| 1 you use 1
|
| 2 (or even 3) you use "a couple"
|
| A few is almost always > 3 and one could argue that upper
| limit 15
|
| So, 10 years to 50 years
| ben_w wrote:
| Personally speaking, above 10 thousand I'd switch to
| saying "a few tens of thousands".
|
| But the mere fact you say 15 is arguable does indeed
| broaden the range, just as me saying 1 broadens it in the
| opposite extent.
| fvv wrote:
| You imply that he knows exactly when which imo is not and
| could even be next year for what we knows.. Who know
| every paper yet to be published??
| vasco wrote:
| OpenAI is a Microsoft play to get into power generation
| business, specifically nuclear, which is a pet interest of
| Bill Gates for many years.
|
| There, that's my conspiracy theory quota for 2024 in one
| comment.
| petre wrote:
| > it's possible that we will have superintelligence in a few
| thousand days
|
| Sure, a few thousand days and a few trillion $ away. We'll
| also have full self driving next month. This is just like the
| fusion is the energy of the future joke: it's 30 years away
| and it will always be.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Now it's 20 years away! It took 50 years for it to go from
| 30 to 20 years away. So maybe, in another 50 years it will
| be 10 years away?
| aresant wrote:
| I think the much more likely scenario than product roadmap
| concerns is that Murati (and Ilya for that matter) took their
| shot to remove Sam, lost, and in an effort to collectively
| retain billion$ of enterprise value have been playing nice, but
| were never seriously going to work together again after the
| failed coup.
| amenhotep wrote:
| Failed coup? Altman managed to usurp the board's power, seems
| pretty successful to me
| xwowsersx wrote:
| I think OP means the failed coup in which they attempted to
| oust Altman?
| jordanb wrote:
| Yeah the GP's point is the board was acting within its
| purview by dismissing the CEO. The coup was the
| successful counter-campaign against the board by Altman
| and the investors.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Let's be honest: in large part by Microsoft.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| The successful coup was led by Satya Nadella.
| bg24 wrote:
| This is the likely scenario. Every conflict at exec level
| comes with a "messaging" aspect, with there being a comms
| team, and board to manage that part.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >but were never seriously going to work together again after
| the failed coup.
|
| Just to clear one thing up, the designated function of a
| board of directors is to appoint or replace the executive of
| an organisation, and openAI in particular is structured such
| that the non-profit part of the organisation controls the
| LLC.
|
| The coup was the executive, together with the investors,
| effectively turning that on its head by force.
| nopromisessir wrote:
| Highly speculative.
|
| Also highly cynical.
|
| Some folks are professional and mature. In the best
| organisations, the management team sets the highest possible
| standard, in terms of tone and culture. If done well, this
| tends to trickle down to all areas of the organization.
|
| Another speculation would be that she's resigning for
| complicated reasons which are personal. I've had to do the
| same in my past. The real pro's give the benefit of the
| doubt.
| dfgtyu65r wrote:
| This feels naive, especially given what we now know about
| Open AI.
| nopromisessir wrote:
| If you care to detail supporting evidence, I'd be keen to
| see.
|
| Please no speculative pieces, rumor nor hearsay.
| apwell23 wrote:
| Well why was sam altman fired. it was never revealed.
|
| CEOs get fired all the time and company puts out a
| statement.
|
| I've never seen "we won't tell you why we fired our CEO"
| anywhere.
|
| now he is back making totally ridiculous statments like
| 'AI is going to solve all of physics' or that 'AI is
| going to clone my brain by 2027'
|
| This is a strange company.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > This is a strange company.
|
| Because the old guard wanted it to remain a cliquey non-
| profit filled to the brim with EA, AI Alignment, and
| OpenPhilanthropy types, but the current OpenAI is now an
| enterprise company.
|
| This is just Sam Altman cleaning house after the
| attempted corporate coup a year ago.
| sverhagen wrote:
| Did you also try to oust the CEO of a multi-billion dollar
| juggernaut?
| nopromisessir wrote:
| Sure didn't.
|
| Neither did she though... To my knowledge.
|
| Can you provide any evidence that she tried to do that? I
| would ask that it be non-speculative in nature please.
| alephnerd wrote:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/17/technology/openai-sam-
| alt...
| itsoktocry wrote:
| What leads you to believe that OpenAI is one of the best
| managed organizations?
| nopromisessir wrote:
| Many hours of interviews.
|
| Organizational performance metrics.
|
| Frequency of scientific breakthroughs.
|
| Frequency and quality of product updates.
|
| History of consistently setting the state of the art in
| artificial intelligence.
|
| Demonstrated ability to attract world class talent.
|
| Released the fastest growing software product in the
| history of humanity.
| kranke155 wrote:
| We have to see if they'll keep executing in a year,
| considering the losses in staff and the non technical
| CEO.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| "When you strike at a king, you must kill him." -- Emerson
| sllewe wrote:
| or an alternate - "Come at the king - you best not miss" --
| Omar Little.
| ionwake wrote:
| the real OG comment here
| deepGem wrote:
| Why is it so hard to just accept this and be transparent
| about motives ? It's fair to say 'we were not aligned with
| Sam, we tried an ouster, didn't pan out so the best thing for
| us to do is to leave and let Sam pursue his path", which the
| entirely company has vouched for.
|
| Instead, you get to see grey area after grey area.
| widowlark wrote:
| id imagine that level of honesty could still lead to
| billions lost in shareholder value - thus the grey area.
| Market obfuscation is a real thing.
| stagger87 wrote:
| It's in nobodies best interest to do this especially when
| there is so much money at play.
| rvnx wrote:
| A bit ironic for a non-profit
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| As I understand they are going to be stop being non-
| profit soonish now?
| startupsfail wrote:
| "the entire company has vouched for" is inconsistent with
| what we see now. Low/mid ranking employees were obviously
| tweeting in alignment with their management and by request.
| jjulius wrote:
| Because, for some weird reason, our culture has
| collectively decided that, even if most of us are capable
| of reading between the lines to understand what's _really_
| being said or is happening, it 's often wrong and bad to be
| honest and transparent, and we should put the most positive
| spin possible on it. It's everywhere, especially in
| professional and political environments.
| FactKnower69 wrote:
| McKinsey MBA brain rot seeping into all levels of culture
| cedws wrote:
| That's giving too much credit to McKinsey. I'd argue it's
| systemic brainrot. Never admit mistakes, never express
| yourself, never be honest. Just make up as much bullshit
| as possible on the fly, say whatever you have to pacify
| people. Even just say bullshit 24/7.
|
| Not to dunk on Mira Murati, because this note is pretty
| cookie cutter, but it exemplifies this perfectly. It says
| nothing about her motivations for resigning. It bends
| over backwards to kiss the asses of the people she's
| leaving behind. It could ultimately be condensed into two
| words: "I've resigned."
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| Because if you are a high level executive and you are
| transparent on those things, and if it backfires, it will
| backfire hard for your future opportunities, since all the
| companies will view you as a potential liability. So it is
| always safer and wiser option to not say anything in case
| of any risk of it backfiring. So you do the polite PR
| messaging every single time. There's nothing to be gained
| on the individual level of being transparent, only to be
| risked.
| golergka wrote:
| Among other perfectly reasonable theories mentioned here,
| people burn out.
| optimalsolver wrote:
| This isn't a delivery app we're talking about.
|
| "Burn out" doesn't apply when the issue at hand is AGI (and,
| possibly, superintelligence).
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| That isn't fair. People need a break. "AGI" /
| "superintelligence" is not a cause with so much potential
| we should just damage a bunch of people on the route to it.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Why would you think burnout doesn't apply? It should be a
| possibility in pretty much any pursuit, since it's
| primarily about investing too much energy into a direction
| that you can't psychologically bring yourself to invest any
| more into it.
| minimaxir wrote:
| Software is developed by humans, who can burn out for any
| reason.
| agentcoops wrote:
| Burnout, which doesn't need scare quotes, very much still
| applies for the humans involved in building AGI -- in fact,
| the burnout potential in this case is probably an order of
| magnitude higher than the already elevated chances when
| working through the exponential growth phase of a startup
| at such scale ("delivery apps" etc) since you'd have an
| additional scientific or societal motivation to ignore
| bodily limits.
|
| That said, I don't doubt that this particular departure was
| more the result of company politics, whether a product of
| the earlier board upheaval, performance related or simply
| the decision to bring in a new CTO with a different skill
| set.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| A few short years is a prediction with lots of ifs and
| unknowns.
| romanovcode wrote:
| Maybe she has inside info that it's not "around the corner".
| Making bigger and bigger models does not make AGI, not to
| mention exponential increase in power requirements for these
| models which would be basically unfeasible for mass market.
|
| Maybe, just maybe, we reached diminishing returns with AI, for
| now at least.
| steinvakt wrote:
| People have been saying that we reached the limits of AI/LLMs
| since GPT4. Using o1-preview (which is barely a few weeks
| old) for coding, which is definitely an improvement, suggests
| there's still solid improvements going on, don't you think?
| samatman wrote:
| Continued improvement is returns, making it inherently
| compatible with a diminishing returns scenario. Which I
| also suspect we're in now: there's no comparing the jump
| between GPT3.5 and GPT4 with GPT4 and any of the subsequent
| releases.
|
| Whether or not we're leveling out, only time will tell.
| That's definitely what it looks like, but it might just be
| a plateau.
| xabadut wrote:
| + there are many untapped sources of data that contain
| information about our physical world, such as video
|
| the curse of dimensionality though...
| tomrod wrote:
| My take is that Altman recognizes LLM winter is coming and is
| trying to entrench.
| chinathrow wrote:
| Looking at ChatGPT or Claude coding output, it's already
| here.
| criticalfault wrote:
| Bad?
|
| I just tried Gemini and it was useless.
| andrewinardeer wrote:
| Google ought to hang its head in utter disgrace over the
| putrid swill they have the audacity to peddle under the
| Gemini label.
|
| Their laughably overzealous nanny-state censorship,
| paired with a model so appallingly inept it would
| embarrass a chatbot from the 90s, makes it nothing short
| of highway robbery that this digital dumpster fire is
| permitted to masquerade as a product fit for public
| consumption.
|
| The sheer gall of Google to foist this steaming pile of
| silicon refuse onto unsuspecting users borders on
| fraudulent.
| mnk47 wrote:
| Starting to wonder why this is so common in LLM
| discussions at HN.
|
| Someone says "X is the model that really impressive. Y is
| good too."
|
| Then someone responds "What?! I just used Z and it was
| terrible!"
|
| I see this at least once in practically every AI thread
| dartos wrote:
| I don't think we're gonna see a winter. LLMs are here to
| stay. Natural language interfaces are great. Embeddings are
| incredibly useful.
|
| They just won't be the hottest thing since smartphones.
| eastbound wrote:
| It's a glorified grammar corrector?
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| Not really.
|
| I think actually the best use case for LLMs is
| "explainer".
|
| When combined with RAG, it's fantastic at taking a
| complex corpus of information and distilling it down into
| more digestible summaries.
| bot347851834 wrote:
| Can you share an example of a use case you have in mind
| of this "explainer + RAG" combo you just described?
|
| I think that RAG and RAG-based tooling around LLMs is
| gonna be the clear way forward for most companies with a
| properly constructed knowledge base but I wonder what you
| mean by "explainer"?.
|
| Are you talking about asking an LLM something like "in
| which way did the teams working on project X deal with Y
| problem?" and then having it breaking it down for you? Or
| is there something more to it?
| nebula8804 wrote:
| I'm not the OP but I got some fun ones that I think are
| what you are asking? I would also love to hear others
| interesting ideas/findings.
|
| 1. I got this medical provider that has a webapp that
| downloads graphql data(basically json) to the frontend
| and shows _some_ of the data to the template as a result
| while hiding the rest. Furthermore, I see that they hide
| even more info after I pay the bill. I download all the
| data, combine it with other historical data that I have
| downloaded and dumped it into the LLM. It spits out
| interesting insights about my health history, ways in
| which I have been unusually charged by my insurance, and
| the speed at which the company operates based on all the
| historical data showing time between appointment and the
| bill adjusted for the time of year. It then formats
| everything into an open format that is easy for me to
| self host. (HTML + JS tables). Its a tiny way to wrestle
| back control from the company until they wise up.
|
| 2. Companies are increasingly allowing customers to
| receive a "backup" of all the data they have on
| them(Thanks EU and California). For example Burger
| King/Wendys allow this. What do they give you when you
| request data? A zip file filled with just a bunch of crud
| from their internal system. No worries: Dump it into the
| LLM and it tells you everything that the company knows
| about you in an easy to understand format (Bullet points
| in this case). You know when the company managed to track
| you, how much they "remember", how much money they got
| out of you, your behaviors, etc.
| stocknoob wrote:
| TIL Math Olympiad problems are simple grammar exercises.
| ben_w wrote:
| If you consider responding to this:
|
| "oi i need lik a scrip or somfing 2 take pic of me screen
| evry sec for min, mac"
|
| with an actual (and usually functional) script to be
| "glorified grammar corrector", then sure.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| They're useful in some situations, but extremely expensive
| to operate. It's unclear if they'll be profitable in the
| near future. OpenAI seems to be claiming they need an extra
| $XXX billion in investment before they can...?
| xtracto wrote:
| I just made a (IMHO) cool test with OpenAI/Linux/TCL-TK:
|
| "write a TCL/tk script file that is a "frontend" to the ls
| command: It should provide checkboxes and dropdowns for the
| different options available in bash ls and a button "RUN"
| to run the configured ls command. The output of the ls
| command should be displayed in a Text box inside the
| interface. The script must be runnable using tclsh"
|
| It didn't get it right the first time (for some reason
| wants to put a `mainloop` instruction) but after several
| corrections I got an ugly but pretty functional UI.
|
| Imagine a Linux Distro that uses some kind of LLM generated
| interfaces to make its power more accessible. Maybe even
| "self healing".
|
| LLMs don't stop amazing me personally.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| The issue (and I think what's behind the thinking of AI
| skeptics) is previous experience with the sharp edge of
| the Pareto principle.
|
| Current LLMs being 80% to being 100% useful doesn't mean
| there's only 20% effort left.
|
| It means we got the lowest-hanging 80% of utility.
|
| Bridging that last 20% is going to take a ton of work.
| Indeed, maybe 4x the effort that getting this far
| required.
|
| And people also overestimate the utility of a solution
| that's randomly wrong. It's exceedingly difficult to
| build reliable systems when you're stacking a 5% wrong
| solution on another 5% wrong solution on another 5% wrong
| solution...
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Thank You! You have explained the exact issue I (and
| probably many others) are seeing trying to adopt AI for
| work. It is because of this I don't worry about AI taking
| our jobs for now. You still need somewhat foundational
| knowledge in whatever you are trying to do in order to
| get that remaining 20%. Sometimes this means pushing back
| against the AI's solution, other times it means reframing
| the question, and other times its just giving up and
| doing the work yourself. I keep seeing all these
| impressive toy demos and my experience (Angular and Flask
| dev) seem to indicate that it is not going to replace any
| subject matter expert anytime soon. (And I am referring
| to all the three major AI players as I regularly and
| religiously test all their releases).
|
| >And people also overestimate the utility of a solution
| that's randomly wrong. It's exceedingly difficult to
| build reliable systems when you're stacking a 5% wrong
| solution on another 5% wrong solution on another 5% wrong
| solution...
|
| I call this the merry go round of hell mixed with a cruel
| hall of mirrors. LLM spits out a solution with some
| errors, you tell it to fix the errors, it produces other
| errors or totally forgets important context from one
| prompt ago. You then fix those issues, it then introduces
| other issues or messes up the original fix. Rinse and
| repeat. God help you if you don't actually know what you
| are doing, you'll be trapped in that hall of mirrors for
| all of eternity slowly losing your sanity.
| therouwboat wrote:
| Why make tool when you can just ask AI to give you
| filelist or files that you need?
| Yizahi wrote:
| LLMs as programs are here to stay. The issue is with
| expenses/revenue ratio all these LLM corpos have. According
| to Sequoia analyst (so not some anon on a forum) there is a
| giant money hole in that industry, and "giant" doesn't even
| begins to describe it (iirc it was 600bln this summer).
| That whole industry will definitely see winter soon, even
| if all things Altman says would be true.
| hnthrowaway6543 wrote:
| It's likely hard for them to look at what their life's work is
| being used for. Customer-hostile chatbots, an excuse for
| executives to lay off massive amounts of middle class workers,
| propaganda and disinformation, regurgitated SEO blogspam that
| makes Google unusable. The "good" use cases seem to be limited
| to trivial code generation and writing boilerplate marketing
| copy that nobody reads anyway. Maybe they realized that if AGI
| were to be achieved, it would be squandered on stupid garbage
| regardless.
|
| Now I am become an AI language model, destroyer of the
| internet.
| f0e4c2f7 wrote:
| There is one clear answer in my opinion:
|
| There is a secondary market for OpenAI stock.
|
| It's not a public market so nobody knows how much you're making
| if you sell, but if you look at current valuations it must be a
| lot.
|
| In that context, it would be quite hard not to leave and sell
| or stay and sell. What if oai loses the lead? What if open
| source wins? Keeping the stock seems like the actual hard thing
| to me and I expect to see many others leave (like early
| googlers or Facebook employees)
|
| Sure it's worth more if you hang on to it, but many think "how
| many hundreds of M's do I actually need? Better to derisk and
| sell"
| chatcode wrote:
| What would you do if
|
| a) you had more money than you'll ever need in your lifetime
|
| b) you think AI abundance is just around the corner, likely
| making everything cheaper
|
| c) you realize you still only have a finite time left on this
| planet
|
| d) you have non-AGI dreams of your own that you'd like to
| work on
|
| e) you can get funding for anything you want, based on your
| name alone
|
| Do you keep working at OpenAI?
| Apocryphon wrote:
| What if she believes AGI is imminent and is relocating to a
| remote location to build a Faraday-shielded survival bunker.
| wantsanagent wrote:
| This is now my head-canon.
| tempodox wrote:
| Laputan machine!
| ben_w wrote:
| Then she hasn't ((read or watched) and (found plausible)) any
| of the speculative fiction about how that's not enough to
| keep you safe.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| No one knows how deep the bunker goes
| ben_w wrote:
| We can be reasonably confident of which side of the
| Mohorovicic discontinuity it may be, as existing tools
| would be necessary to create it in the first place.
| paxys wrote:
| Regardless of where AI currently is and where it is going, you
| don't simply quit as CTO of the company that is leading the
| space _by far_ in terms of technology, products, funding,
| revenue, popularity, adoption and just about everything else.
| She was fired, plain and simple.
| rvnx wrote:
| You can leave and be happy with 30M+ USD in stocks and
| prospects of easy to find a job also.
| lacker wrote:
| It's easy to have missed this part of the story in all the
| chaos, but from the NYTimes in March:
|
| _Ms. Murati wrote a private memo to Mr. Altman raising
| questions about his management and also shared her concerns
| with the board. That move helped to propel the board's decision
| to force him out._
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/07/technology/openai-executi...
|
| It should be no surprise if Sam Altman wants executives who
| opposed his leadership, like Mira and Ilya, out of the company.
| When you're firing a high-level executive in a polite way, it's
| common to let them announce their own departure and frame it
| the way they want.
| startupsfail wrote:
| Greg Brockman, OpenAI President and co-founder is also on
| extended leave of absence.
|
| And John Schulman, and Peter Deng are out already. Yet the
| company is still shipping, like no other. Recent multimodal
| integrations and benchmarks of o1 are outstanding.
| fairity wrote:
| Quite interesting that this comment is downvoted when the
| content is factually correct and pertinent.
|
| It's a very relevant fact that Greg Brockman recently left
| on his own volition.
|
| Greg was aligned with Sam during the coup. So, the fact
| that Greg left lends more credence to the idea that Murati
| is leaving on her own volition.
| frakkingcylons wrote:
| > It's a very relevant fact that Greg Brockman recently
| left on his own volition.
|
| Except that isn't true. He has not resigned from OpenAI.
| He's on extended leave until the end of the year.
|
| That could become an official resignation later, and I
| agree that that seems more likely than not. But stating
| that he's left for good as of right now is misleading.
| meiraleal wrote:
| > Quite interesting that this comment is downvoted when
| the content is factually correct and pertinent.
|
| >> Yet the company is still shipping, like no other.
|
| this is factually wrong. Just today Meta (which I
| despise) shipped more than openAI in a long time.
| vasco wrote:
| > Yet the company is still shipping, like no other
|
| If executives / high level architects / researchers are
| working on this quarter's features something is very wrong.
| The higher you get the more ahead you need to be working,
| C-level departures should only have an impact about a year
| down the line, at a company of this size.
| ttcbj wrote:
| This is a good point. I had not thought of it this way
| before.
| FactKnower69 wrote:
| >Recent multimodal integrations and benchmarks of o1 are
| outstanding.
|
| this is the model that says there are 2 Rs in "strawberry"?
| fjdjshsh wrote:
| Is that your test suite?
| mckirk wrote:
| To be fair, that question is one of the suggested
| questions that OpenAI shows themselves in the UI, for the
| o1-preview model.
|
| (Together with 'Is a hot dog a sandwich?', which I
| confess I will have to ask it now.)
| magxnta wrote:
| If you have a sandwich and cut it in half, do you have
| one or two sandwiches?
| ac29 wrote:
| > the company is still shipping, like no other
|
| Meta, Anthropic, Google, and others all are shipping state
| of the art models.
|
| I'm not trying to be dismissive of OpenAI's work, but they
| are absolutely not the only company shipping very large
| foundation models.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| _> When you 're firing a high-level executive in a polite
| way, it's common to let them announce their own departure and
| frame it the way they want._
|
| You also give them some distance in time from the drama so
| the two appear unconnected under cursory inspection.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| most of the people seem to be leaving due to the direction
| where Altman is taking OpenAI. It went from a charity to him
| seemingly doing everything possible to monetize it for himself
| both directly and indirectly by him trying to raise funds for
| AI adjacent traditionally structured companies he controlled
|
| probably not coincidence that she resigned at almost the same
| time the rumors about OpenAI completely removing the non-profit
| board are getting confirmed -
| https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/o...
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Afaik, he's exceedingly driven to do that, because if they
| run out of money Microsoft gets to pick the carcass clean.
| elAhmo wrote:
| It would be definitely difficult thing to walk away.
|
| This is just one more in a series of massive red flags around
| this company, from the insanely convoluted governance scheme,
| over the board drama, to many executives and key people leaving
| afterwards. It feels like Sam is doing the cleanup and anyone
| who opposes him has no place at OpenAI.
|
| This, coming around the time where there are rumors of possible
| change to the corporate structure to be more friendly to
| investors, is an interesting timing.
| shmatt wrote:
| I feel like this is stating the obvious - but i guess not to
| many - but a probabilistic syllable generator is not
| intelligence, it does not understand us, it cannot reason, it
| can only generate the next syllable
|
| It makes us feel understood in the same ways John Edward used
| to in daytime tv, its all about how language makes us feel
|
| true AGI...unfortunately we're not even close
| CooCooCaCha wrote:
| I'm not saying you're wrong but you could use this reductive
| rhetorical strategy to dismiss any AI algorithm. "It's just
| X" is frankly shallow criticism.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| And there's nothing wrong about that: the fact that
| _artificial intelligence_ will never lead to general
| intelligence isn't exactly a hot take.
| CooCooCaCha wrote:
| That's both a very general and very bold claim. I don't
| think it's unreasonable to say that's too strong of a
| claim given how we don't know what is possible yet and
| there's frankly no good reason to completely dismiss the
| idea of artificial general intelligence.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| It's almost trolling at this point, though.
| paxys wrote:
| > to dismiss any AI algorithm
|
| Or even human intelligence
| timr wrote:
| And you can dismiss any argument with your response.
|
| "Your argument is just a reductive rhetorical strategy."
| CooCooCaCha wrote:
| Sure if you ignore context.
|
| "a probabilistic syllable generator is not intelligence,
| it does not understand us, it cannot reason" is a strong
| statement and I highly doubt it's backed by any sort of
| substance other than "feelz".
| HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
| This overplayed knee jerk response is so dull.
| svara wrote:
| I truly think you haven't really thought this through.
|
| There's a huge amount of circuitry between the input and the
| output of the model. How do you know what it does or doesn't
| do?
|
| Humans brains "just" output the next couple milliseconds of
| muscle activation, given sensory input and internal state.
|
| Edit: Interestingly, this is getting downvotes even though 1)
| my last sentence is a precise and accurate statement of the
| state of the art in neuroscience and 2) it is completely
| isomorphic to what the parent post presented as an argument
| against current models being AGI.
|
| To clarify, I don't believe we're very close to AGI, but
| parent's argument is just confused.
| ttul wrote:
| While it's true that language models are fundamentally based
| on statistical patterns in language, characterizing them as
| mere "probabilistic syllable generators" significantly
| understates their capabilities and functional intelligence.
|
| These models can engage in multistep logical reasoning, solve
| complex problems, and generate novel ideas - going far beyond
| simply predicting the next syllable. They can follow
| intricate chains of thought and arrive at non-obvious
| conclusions. And OpenAI has now showed us that fine-tuning a
| model specifically to plan step by step dramatically improves
| its ability to solve problems that were previously the domain
| of human experts.
|
| Although there is no definitive evidence that state-of-the-
| art language models have a comprehensive "world model" in the
| way humans do, several studies and observations suggest that
| large language models (LLMs) may possess some elements or
| precursors of a world model.
|
| For example, Tegmark and Gurnee [1] found that LLMs learn
| linear representations of space and time across multiple
| scales. These representations appear to be robust to
| prompting variations and unified across different entity
| types. This suggests that modern LLMs may learn rich
| spatiotemporal representations of the real world, which could
| be considered basic ingredients of a world model.
|
| And even if we look at much smaller models like Stable
| Diffusion XL, it's clear that they encode a rich
| understanding of optics [2] within just a few billion
| parameters (3.5 billion to be precise). Generative video
| models like OpenAI's Sora clearly have a world model as they
| are able to simulate gravity, collisions between objects, and
| other concepts necessary to render a coherent scene.
|
| As for AGI, the consensus on Metaculus is that it will arrive
| in 2023. But consider that before GPT-4 arrived, the
| consensus was that full AGI was not coming until 2041 [3].
| The consensus for the arrival date of "weakly general" AGI is
| 2027 [4] (i.e AGI that doesn't have a robotic physical world
| component). The best tool for achieving AGI is the
| transformer and its derivatives; its scaling keeps going with
| no end in sight.
|
| Citations:
|
| [1] https://paperswithcode.com/paper/language-models-
| represent-s...
|
| [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/15he3f4
| /el...
|
| [3] https://www.metaculus.com/questions/5121/date-of-
| artificial-...
|
| [4] https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3479/date-weakly-
| general...
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| > Generative video models like OpenAI's Sora clearly have a
| world model as they are able to simulate gravity,
| collisions between objects, and other concepts necessary to
| render a coherent scene.
|
| I won't expand on the rest, but this is simply nonsensical.
|
| The fact that Sora generates output that matches its
| training data doesn't show that it has a concept of
| gravity, collision between object, or anything else. It has
| a "world model" the same way a photocopier has a "document
| model".
| svara wrote:
| My suspicion is that you're leaving some important parts
| in your logic unstated. Such as belief in a magical
| property within humans of "understanding", which you
| don't define.
|
| The ability of video models to generate novel video
| consistent with physical reality shows that they have
| extracted important invariants - physical law - out of
| the data.
|
| It's probably better not to muddle the discussion with
| ill defined terms such as "intelligence" or
| "understanding".
|
| I have my own beef with the AGI is nigh crowd, but this
| criticism amounts to word play.
| Erem wrote:
| The only useful way to define an AGI is based on its
| capabilities, not its implementation details.
|
| Based on capabilities alone, current LLMs demonstrate many of
| the capabilities practitioners ten years ago would have
| tossed into the AGI bucket.
|
| What are some top capabilities (meaning inputs and outputs)
| you think are missing on the path between what we have now
| and AGI?
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| What top executives write in these farewell letters often has
| little to do with their actual reasons for leaving.
| letitgo12345 wrote:
| Maybe it is but it's not the only company that is
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| People still believe that a company that has only delivered
| GenAI models is anywhere close to AGI?
|
| Success in not around any corner. It's pure insanity to even
| believe that AGI is possible, let alone close.
| HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
| What can you confidently say AI will not be able to do in
| 2029? What task can you declare, without hesitation, will not
| be possible for automatic hardware to accomplish?
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| Easy: doing something that humans don't already do and
| program it to do.
|
| AI is incapable of any innovation. It accelerates human
| innovation, just like any other piece of software, but
| that's it. AI makes protein folding more efficient, but it
| can't ever come up with the concept of protein folding on
| its own. It's just software.
|
| You simply cannot have general intelligence without self-
| driven innovation. Not improvement, innovation.
|
| But if we look at much more simple concepts, 2029 is only 5
| years (not even) away, so I'm pretty confident that
| anything that it cannot do right now it won't be able to do
| in 2029 either.
| goodluckchuck wrote:
| I could see it being close, but also feeling an urgency to get
| there first / believing you could do it better.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| easy for me to relate to that, my time is more interesting than
| that
|
| being in San Francisco for 6 years and success means getting
| hauled in front of Congress and European Parliament
|
| cant think of a worse occupational nightmare after having an
| 8-figure nest egg already
| apwell23 wrote:
| Her rise didn't make sense to me. Product manager at tesla to
| CTO at openAI with no technical background and a deleted
| profile ?
|
| This is a very strange company to say the least.
| alephnerd wrote:
| A significant portion of the old guard at OpenAI was part of
| the Effective Altruism, AI Alignment, and Open Philanthropy
| movement.
|
| Most hiring in the foundational AI/model space is very
| nepotistic and biased towards people in that clique.
|
| Also, Elon Musk used to be the primary patron for OpenAI
| before losing interest during the AI Winter in the late
| 2010s.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| >Product manager at tesla to CTO at openAI with no technical
| background and a deleted profile ?
|
| Doesn't she have a dual bachelors in Mathematics and
| Mechanical Engineering?
| jappgar wrote:
| I'm sure this isn't the actual reason, but one possible
| interpretation is "I'm stepping away to enjoy my life+money
| before it's completely altered by the singularity."
| ikari_pl wrote:
| unless you didn't see it as a success, and want to abandon the
| ship before it gets torpedoed
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| It's corporate bullcrap, you're not supposed to believe it.
| What really matters in these statement is what is not said.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| I doubt she's leaving to do her own thing, I don't think she
| could. She probably got pushed out.
| rvz wrote:
| > "Leaving to do my own exploration"
|
| Lets write this chapter and take some guesses, it's either going
| to be:
|
| 1. Anthropic.
|
| 2. SSI Inc.
|
| 3. Own AI Startup.
|
| 4. Neither.
|
| Only one is correct.
| mikelitoris wrote:
| The only thing your comment says is she won't be working
| simultaneously for more than one company in {1,2,3}.
| motoxpro wrote:
| I know what I am going to say isn't of much value but the GPs
| post is the most twitter comment ever and it made me chuckle.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Premium wallpaper app.
| VeejayRampay wrote:
| that's a lot of core people leaving, especially since they're
| apparently so close to a "revolution in AGI"
|
| I feel like either they're not close at all and the people know
| it's all lies or they're seeing some shady stuff and want nothing
| to do with it
| paxys wrote:
| A simpler explanation is that SamA is consolidating power at
| the company and pushing out everyone who hasn't been loyal to
| him from the start.
| rvz wrote:
| And it also explains what Mira (and everyone else who left)
| saw; the true cost of a failed coup and what Sam Altman is
| really doing since he is consolidating power at OpenAI (and
| getting equity)
| steinvakt wrote:
| So "What did Ilya see" might just be "Ilya actually saw
| Sam"
| aresant wrote:
| It is unsuprising that Murati is leaving, she was reported to be
| one of the principal advocates for pushing Sam out (1)
|
| Of course everybody was quick to play nice once OpenAI insiders
| got the reality check from Satya that he'd just crush them by
| building an internal competing group, cut funding, and instantly
| destroy lots of paper millionaires.
|
| I'd imagine that Mira and others had 6 - 12 month agreeements in
| place to let the dust settle and finish their latest round of
| funding without further drama
|
| The OpenAI soap opera is going to be a great book or movie
| someday
|
| (1) https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/07/technology/openai-
| executi...?
| mcast wrote:
| Trent Reznor and David Fincher need to team up again to make a
| movie about this.
| fb03 wrote:
| I'd not complain if William Gibson got into the project as
| well.
| throwaway314155 wrote:
| I've forgotten, did she play a role in the attempted Sam Altman
| ouster?
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| She wasn't on the board right? So if she did play a role, it
| wasn't through a vote I'd guess.
| paxys wrote:
| She was picked by the board to replace Sam in the interim after
| his ouster, so we can draw some conclusions from that.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| It doesn't make sense to me that someone in such a position at a
| place like OpenAI would leave. So I assume that means she was
| forced out, maybe due to underperformance, or the failed coup, or
| something else. Anyone know what the story is on her background
| and how she got into that position and what she contributed? I've
| heard interesting stories, some positive and some negative, but
| can't tell what's true. It seems like there generally is just a
| lot of controversy around this "nonprofit".
| mewse-hn wrote:
| There are some good articles that explain what happened with
| the coup, that's the main thing to read up on. As for the
| reason she's leaving, you don't take a shot at the leader of
| the organization, miss, and then expect to be able to remain at
| the organization. She's probably been on house leave since it
| happened for the sake of optics at OpenAI.
| muglug wrote:
| It's Sam's Club now.
| paxys wrote:
| Always has been
| grey-area wrote:
| Altman was not there at the start. He came in later, as he
| did with YC.
| paxys wrote:
| He became CEO later, but was always part of the founding
| team at OpenAI.
| TMWNN wrote:
| Murati and Sutskever discovered the high Costco of challenging
| Altman.
| romanovcode wrote:
| It's CIA`s club since 2024.
| Jayakumark wrote:
| At this point no one except Sam from founding team is in the
| company.
| bansheeps wrote:
| Mira wasn't a part of the founding team.
|
| Wojicech Zaremba and Jakub are still at the company.
| alexmolas wrote:
| They can't spend more than 6 months without a drama...
| Reimersholme wrote:
| ...and Sam Altman once again posts a response including
| uppercase, similar to when Ilya left. It's like he wants to let
| everyone know that he didn't actually care enough to write it
| himself but just asked chatGPT to write something for him.
| pshc wrote:
| I think it's just code switching. Serious announcements warrant
| a more serious tone.
| layer8 wrote:
| Plain-text version for those who can't read images:
|
| " _Hi all,
|
| I have something to share with you. After much reflection, I have
| made the difficult decision to leave OpenAI.
|
| My six-and-a-half years with the OpenAI team have been an
| extraordinary privilege. While I'll express my gratitude to many
| individuals in the coming days, I want to start by thanking Sam
| and Greg for their trust in me to lead the technical organization
| and for their support throughout the years.
|
| There's never an ideal time to step away from a place one
| cherishes, yet this moment feels right. Our recent releases of
| speech-to-speech and OpenAI o1 mark the beginning of a new era in
| interaction and intelligence - achievements made possible by your
| ingenuity and craftsmanship. We didn't merely build smarter
| models, we fundamentally changed how AI systems learn and reason
| through complex problems. We brought safety research from the
| theoretical realm into practical applications, creating models
| that are more robust, aligned, and steerable than ever before.
| Our work has made cutting-edge AI research intuitive and
| accessible, developing technology that adapts and evolves based
| on everyone's input. This success is a testament to our
| outstanding teamwork, and it is because of your brilliance, your
| dedication, and your commitment that OpenAI stands at the
| pinnacle of AI innovation.
|
| I'm stepping away because I want to create the time and space to
| do my own exploration. For now, my primary focus is doing
| everything in my power to ensure a smooth transition, maintaining
| the momentum we've built.
|
| I will forever be grateful for the opportunity to build and work
| alongside this remarkable team. Together, we've pushed the
| boundaries of scientific understanding in our quest to improve
| human well-being.
|
| While I may no longer be in the trenches with you, I will still
| be rooting for you all. With deep gratitude for the friendships
| forged, the triumphs achieved, and most importantly, the
| challenges overcome together.
|
| Mira_"
| squigz wrote:
| I appreciate this, thank you.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Not a big deal if you don't look too closely
| seydor wrote:
| They will all be replaced by ASIs soon, so it doesn't matter who
| s coming and going
| codingwagie wrote:
| My bet is all of these people can raise 20-100M for their own
| startups. And they are already rich enough to retire. OpenAI is
| going corporate
| keeptrying wrote:
| If you keep working past $10M net worth (as all these people
| undoubtedly are) its usually always for legacy.
|
| I actually think Sam's vision probably scares them.
| hiddencost wrote:
| $10M doesn't go as far as you'd think in the Bay Area or NYC.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| ...the only two places on Earth.
| _se wrote:
| $10M is never work again money literally anywhere in the
| world. Don't kid yourself. Buy a $3.5M house outright and
| then collect $250k per year risk free after taxes. You're
| doing whatever you want and still saving money.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| The problem is if you are the type of person able to get
| to $10M, you'll probably want more, since the motivation
| that got you there in the first place will keep you
| unsatisfied with anything less. You'll constantly crave
| for more in terms of magnitudes.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| Maybe it doesn't if you think you're just going to live off
| $10M in your checking account... but that's generally not
| how that works.
| fldskfjdslkfj wrote:
| at 5% rate that's a cushy 500k a year.
| talldayo wrote:
| Which is why smart retirees don't fucking live there.
| FactKnower69 wrote:
| hilarious logical end progression of all those idiotic
| articles about $600k dual income households in the bay
| living "paycheck to paycheck"
| brigadier132 wrote:
| > its usually always for legacy
|
| Legacy is the dumbest reason to work and does not explain the
| motivation of the vast majority of people that are wealthy.
|
| edit: The vast majority of people with more than $10million
| are completely unknown so the idea that they care about
| legacy is stupid.
| squigz wrote:
| What do you think their motivations might be?
| mr90210 wrote:
| Speaking for myself, I'd keep working even if I had 100M.
| As long as I am healthy, I plan to continue on being
| productive towards something I find interesting.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| There's also addiction to success. If you don't keep
| getting the success in magnitudes you did before, you
| will get bored and depressed, so you have to keep going
| and get it since your brain is wired to seek for that.
| Your brain and emotions are calibrated to what you got
| before, it's kind of like drugs.
|
| If you don't have the 10M you won't understand, you would
| think that "oh my if only I had the 10M I would just
| chill", but it never works like that. Human appetite is
| infinite.
|
| The more highs you get from success, the more you expect
| from the future achievements to get that same feeling,
| and if you don't get any you will feel terrible. That's
| it.
| keeptrying wrote:
| If OpenAI is the foremost in solving the AGI - possibly the
| biggest invention of mankind - it's a little weird that
| everyone's dropping out.
|
| Does it not look like that no one wants to work with Sam in the
| long run?
| paxys wrote:
| Or is it Sam who doesn't want to work with them?
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Open AI fired her. She didn't drop out.
| lionkor wrote:
| Maybe its marketing and LLMs are the peak of what they are
| capable of.
| uhtred wrote:
| Artificial General Intelligence requires a bit more than
| parsing and predicting text I reckon.
| stathibus wrote:
| at the very least you could say "parsing and predicting text,
| images, and audio". and you would be correct - physical
| embodiment and spatial reasoning are missing.
| ben_w wrote:
| Just spatial resoning, people have already demonstrated it
| controlling robots.
| ben_w wrote:
| Yes, and transformer models can do more than text.
|
| There's almost certainly better options out there given it
| looks like we don't need so many examples to learn from,
| though I'm not at all clear if we need those better ways or
| if we can get by without due to the abundance of training
| data.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Doesn't (dyst)OpenAI have a clause that you can't say anything
| bad about the company after leaving?
|
| I'm not convinced these board members are able to say what they
| want when leaving.
| imjonse wrote:
| I am glad most people do not talk in real life using the same
| style this message was written in.
| antoineMoPa wrote:
| To me, this looks like something chatgpt would write.
| squigz wrote:
| Or, like, any PR person from the past... forever.
| redbell wrote:
| Sutskever [1], Karpathy [2], Schulman [3], and Murati today!
| Who's next? _Altman_?!
|
| _________________
|
| 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40361128
|
| 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39365935
|
| 3. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41168904
| ren_engineer wrote:
| you've also got Brockman taking a sabbatical, who knows if he
| comes back at the end of it
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| She'll pop up working with Ilya
| fairity wrote:
| Everyone postulating that this was Sam's bidding is forgetting
| that Greg also left this year, clearly on his own volition.
|
| That makes it much more probable that these execs have simply
| lost faith in OpenAI.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Or that they are losing a power struggle against Sam
| jordanb wrote:
| People are saying this is coup-related but it could also be due
| to this horrible response to the a question about what they used
| to train their Sora model:
|
| https://youtu.be/mAUpxN-EIgU?feature=shared&t=263
| ruddct wrote:
| Related (possibly): OpenAI to remove non-profit control and give
| Sam Altman equity
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41651548
| Recursing wrote:
| Interesting that gwern predicted this as well yesterday
|
| > Translation for the rest of us: "we need to fully privatize
| the OA subsidiary and turn it into a B-corp which can raise a
| lot more capital over the next decade, in order to achieve the
| goals of the nonprofit, because the chief threat is not
| anything like existential risk from autonomous agents in the
| next few years or arms races, but inadequate commercialization
| due to fundraising constraints".
|
| > It's about laying the groundwork for the privatization and
| establishing rhetorical grounds for how the privatization of OA
| is consistent with the OA nonprofit's legally-required mission
| and fiduciary duties. Altman is not writing to anyone here, he
| is, among others, writing to the OA nonprofit board and to the
| judge next year.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41629493
| reducesuffering wrote:
| With multiple correct predictions, do you think the rest of
| HN will start to listen to Gwern's beliefs about OpenAI / AGI
| problems?
|
| Probably not.
| johnneville wrote:
| maybe they offered her little to no equity
| teamonkey wrote:
| That post seems to be in free-fall for some reason
| textlapse wrote:
| Maybe OpenAI is trying to enter a new enterprise phase past its
| startup era?
|
| They have hired CTO like figures from ex MSFt and so on ... which
| would mean a natural exit for the startup era folks that we have
| seen recently?
|
| Every company wants to sell itself as some grandiose savior
| initially 'organize the world's information and make it
| universally accessible', 'solve AGI' but I guess the investors
| and the top level people in reality are motivated by dollar signs
| and ads and enterprise and so on.
|
| Not that that's a bad thing but really it's a Potemkin village
| though...
| abecedarius wrote:
| Gwern predicting this in March:
|
| > Sam Altman has won. [...] Ilya Sutskever and Mira Murati will
| leave OA or otherwise take on some sort of clearly diminished
| role by year-end (90%, 75%; cf. Murati's desperate-sounding
| internal note)
|
| https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KXHMCH7wCxrvKsJyn/openai-fac...
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Yup. Poor Mira. Fired from OpenAI.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| I mean no disrespect, but to me, she always felt like an interim
| hire for her current role, like someone filling a position
| because there wasn't anyone else.
| elAhmo wrote:
| Yes, for the CEO role, but she has been with the company for
| more than six years, two and a half as a CTO.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| Most comments posit that if OpenAI is so close to AGI, why leave
| and miss that payoff?
|
| It's possible that the competitors to OpenAI have rendered future
| improvements (yes even to the fabled AGI) less and less
| profitable to the point that the more profitable thing to do
| would be capitalize on your current fame and raise capital.
|
| That's how I'm reading this. If the competition can be just as
| usable as OpenAI's SOA models and free or close to it, the profit
| starts vanishing in most predictions
| hall0ween wrote:
| I appreciate your insightful thoughts here :)
| user90131313 wrote:
| How many big names are still working on OpenAI at this point?
| They lost all the edge this year. That drama from last year
| literally broke all the core team.
| isodev wrote:
| Can someone share a non twitter link? For those of us who can't
| access it.
| hoherd wrote:
| I actually had the same thought because I DNS block xitter.
|
| Somebody else archived it before me: https://archive.li/0Mea1
| simbas wrote:
| https://x.com/miramurati/status/1726542556203483392
| nopromisessir wrote:
| She might just be stressed out. Happens all the time. She's in a
| very demanding position.
|
| She's a pro. Lots to learn from watching how she operates.
| moralestapia wrote:
| The right way to think about this is that every persona on that
| team has a billion-dollar size blank check from VCs in front of
| them.
|
| OpenAI made them good money, yes; but if at some point there's a
| new endeavor in the horizon with _another_ guaranteed billion-
| dollar payout, they 'll just take it. Exhibit A: Ilya.
|
| New razor: never attribute to AGI that which is adequately
| explained by greed.
| neom wrote:
| Lots of speculation in the comments. Who knows, but if it was me,
| I wouldn't be keeping all my eggs in the OpenAI basket, 6 years
| and well vested with a long run of AI companies you could go to?
| I'd start buying a few more lottery tickets personally
| (especially at 35).
| joshdavham wrote:
| That was actually my first thought as well. If you've got your
| vesting and don't wanna work in a large company setting
| anymore, why not go do something else?
| carimura wrote:
| Once someone is independently wealthy, personal priorities
| change. I guarantee she'll crop up again as founder CEO/CTO where
| she calls the shots and gets the chance (even if slim) to turn
| millions into billions.
| paxys wrote:
| I will never understand why people still take statements like
| these at face value. These aren't her personal thoughts and
| feelings. The letter was carefully crafted by OpenAI's PR team
| under strict direction from Sam and the board. Whatever the real
| story is is sitting under many layers of NDAs and threats of
| clawing back/diluting her shares, and we will not know it for a
| long time. What I can say for certain is no executive in her
| position ever willingly resigns to pursue different
| passions/spend more time with their family/enjoy retirement or
| whatever else.
| tasuki wrote:
| > What I can say for certain is no executive in her position
| ever willingly resigns to pursue different passions/spend more
| time with their family/enjoy retirement or whatever else.
|
| Do you think that's because executives are so exceedingly
| ambitious, or because pursuing different passions is for some
| reason less attractive?
| paulcole wrote:
| It's because they can't imagine themselves doing it so they
| imagine that everyone must be like that. It's part hubris and
| part lack of creativity/empathy.
|
| Think about if you've ever known someone you've been envious
| of for whatever reason who did something that just perplexed
| you. "They dumped their gorgeous partner, how could they do
| that?" "They quit a dream job, how could they do that?" "They
| moved out of that awesome apartment, how could they do that?"
| "They dropped out of that elite school, how could they do
| that?"
|
| Very easily actually.
|
| You're seeing only part of the picture. Beautiful people are
| just as annoying as everybody else. Every dream job has a
| part that sucks.
|
| If you can't imagine that, you're not trying hard enough.
|
| You can see this in action in a lot of ways. One good one is
| the Ultimatum Game:
|
| https://www.core-econ.org/the-
| economy/microeconomics/04-stra...
|
| Most people will end up thinking that they have an ironclad
| logical strategy but if you ask them about it, it'll end up
| that their strategy is treating the other player as a carbon
| copy of themselves.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| I would say that reaching this type of position requires
| exceeding amount of ambition, drive and craving in the first
| place, and all and any steps during the process of getting
| there solidify that by giving the dopamine hits to be
| addicted to such success, so it is not a case where you can
| just stop and decide "I'll chill now".
| davesque wrote:
| > no executive in her position ever willingly resigns to pursue
| different passions/spend more time with their family/enjoy
| retirement or whatever else
|
| Especially when they enjoy a position like hers at the most
| important technology company in a generation.
| hshshshsvsv wrote:
| One possible explanation could be OpenAI has no clue on inventing
| AGI. And since she has now fuck you money she might as well live
| it instead of wasting away working for OpenAI.
| nojvek wrote:
| Prediction: OpenAI will implode by 2030 and become a smaller
| shell of current as they run out of money by spending too much.
|
| Prediction 2: Russia will implode by 2035, by also spending too
| much money.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Where is the magic lamp that summons thriftwy who will tell us
| which countries or companies Russia/OpenAI will absorb
| davesque wrote:
| Maybe I'm just a rotten person, but I always find these overly
| gracious exit letters by higher-ups to be pretty nauseating.
| meow_catrix wrote:
| Yada yada dump at ath
| charlie0 wrote:
| Will probably start her own company and raise a billy like her
| old pal Iyla. I wouldn't blame her, there's been so many articles
| that technical people should just start their own company instead
| of being CTO.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Former OpenAI interim CEO Emmett Shear on _this_ departure:
|
| "You should, as a matter of course, read absolutely nothing into
| departure announcements. They are fully glommerized as a default,
| due to the incentive structure of the iterated game, and contain
| ~zero information beyond the fact of the departure itself."
|
| https://x.com/eshear/status/1839050283953041769
| ford wrote:
| How bad of a sign is it that so many people have left over the
| last 12 months? Can anyone speak to how different things are?
| archiepeach wrote:
| When multiple senior people resign in protest, it's indicative
| that they're not happy with someone among their own ranks who
| they vehemently disagree with. John Schulman and Greg left in the
| same week. Greg, opting to choose to take a sabbatical, may have
| chosen that over full-on resigning which would align with how he
| acted during the board-ousting - standing by Sam till the end.
|
| If multiple key people were drastically unhappy with her, it
| would have shaken confidence in herself and everyone working with
| her. What else to do but let her go?
| w10-1 wrote:
| The disparity between size of the promise and the ambiguity of
| the business model creates both necessity and advantage for
| executives to leverage external forces to shape company
| direction. Everyone in the C-suite would be seeking a foothold,
| but it's unlikely any CTO or technologist would be the real nexus
| for partner and now investor relations. So while there might be
| circumstances, history, and personalities involved, OpenAI's
| current situation basically dictates this.
|
| With luck, Mr. Altman's overtures to bring in middle east
| investors will get locals on board; either way, it's fair to say
| he'll own whatever OpenAI becomes, whether he's an owner or not.
| And if he loses control in the current scrum, I suspect his
| replacement would be much worse (giving him yet another
| advantage).
|
| Best wishes to all.
| ein0p wrote:
| It was only a matter of time - IIRC she did try to stab Altman in
| the back when he was pushed out, and that likely sealed her fate.
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