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It’s hard to imagine a more last minute move on the boards part here. Been in tech exec leadership for a long time and this feels like they’re accusing him of c
by moshun 3y ago
It’s hard to imagine a more last minute move on the boards part here. Been in tech exec leadership for a long time and this feels like they’re accusing him of cannibalism (in corporate PR speak). No way this didn’t get decided on in the middle of last night. Whatever he did is big and dangerous, or they’re trying to pin it on him.
- lvl102 3y agoAgreed. It had to have been something disastrous. No way Sam walked away from OpenAI when the AI revolution is just starting.
- faitswulff 3y agoAltman's sister's allegations seemed pretty disastrous.
- sbierwagen 3y ago[flagged]
- jrflowers 3y ago> If people could be fired by being accused of rape decades after the fact by a homeless drug addict then nobody in the world would have a job. This is a good point. Everyone has been accused of rape by a homeless drug addict, it is like taxes in its consistent applicability to every person.
- catchnear4321 3y agoindeed, and everyone was also ceo of a highly successful company until not all that long ago. perhaps not that, but everyone is a multimillionaire, and in the media, and therefore vulnerable to threats. no, that’s not quite right. sama is garbage but so is your argument.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- smegger001 3y agoLot of famous rich powerful people have been accused of horible things they have never done. Look at all the crazy accusations levied against Bill Gates over the last few years from the alt-right. Lots of mentally ill blame relatives for crazy shit. I know from personal experience watching my family and extended deal with my mentally ill uncle trying to get him help and deal with his accusations and threats. He had a full flow chart of his insane conspiracy nonsence that connected everyone in his life to some horrible accusations. My father (who refused to communicate with him after recieving multiple death threats and endless calls begging for money) according to my uncle was in league; Satan, the sheriff department, and his exgirlfriends brothers girlfriend to do various horrible thing to him I do not exagerate. Altman happens to be wealthy famous and in position of power and have a mental ill sibling. I find it very possible he has done nothing to her. I have no proof either way. My only thought is that all else being equal I would tend to trust the word of someone that is emotionally and mentally stable more than that of someone that is neither and has admitted to being off of their medication and is making accusations about something that they were to young to remember with any degree of accuracy.
- babymode 3y agothis is a strange and concerning comment imo
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- brvsft 3y agoSuch an accusation coming from a family member is different than when it comes from some random homeless drug addict off of the street.
- jug 3y agoad hominem much?
- red-iron-pine 3y agoand what pray-tell are those?
- otteromkram 3y agoDuckDuckGo is a great internet search tool if you don't want to muddy up your Google history (which is very understandable).
- nkurz 3y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37785072 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37785072
- xkqd 3y agoIn all my time here, I have never seen this “Sorry.” page before. Does anyone know what that’s about?
- Sebb767 3y agoSee the pinned comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38310213 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38310213
- dragonwriter 3y agoIts a about the CEO of the leading firm in the area of tech most at the center of technical and political controversy and interest right now being forced out by their board, when that CEO had, even before taking on that role, particular high salience among the HN audience as, among other things, the former head of YC, and the resulting (I am assuming from the oerformance and dangs description) state of near-meltdown of HNs servers.
- nightpool 3y agoThe "Sorry" page is a standard HN error message that shows up when the server is under high load, it has nothing to do with this link specifically
- 3y ago
- dragonwriter 3y agoBut not, in and of themselves something likely to get Altman dismissed for lack of candor with the board.
- BobaFloutist 3y agoAlso doesn't seem to be a particularly recent development.
- projectazorian 3y agoMaybe new evidence came to light, an internal investigation wrapped up, or there's a media story about to drop. (The allegations are public enough and concerning enough that it would have been corporate malpractice if MS didn't ask for an investigation. Discreet due diligence investigations into things like this happen all the time when billions of dollars in investment capital are on the table.)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- yk 3y ago"Not consistently candid" implies that the board was naive, while "his personal conduct does not hold up the high standards openAI sets for ourselves" does not. So in that case they would use a different spin.
- projectazorian 3y agoA lot of the allegations relate to conduct that happened before he was an employee. In that case he could only be disciplined for lying about the conduct.
- panarky 3y agoDeceiving the board about ... Its investigation of misconduct? Sources and rights to training data? That the AGI escaped containment?
- 015a 3y agoUnhinged fringe take: They've already developed sparks of consciousness strong enough to create isolated, internal ethical concerns, but Sam suppressed those reports to push the product forward.
- gizajob 3y agoThe first word of your post being the most important part of it.
- selfhoster11 3y agoWouldn't be surprised if that was true. Public GPT-4 can be made to "think" using stream-of-consciousness techniques, to the extent that it made me rethink using insults as a prompting technique. I imagine that un-RLHF'ed internal versions of the model wouldn't automatically veer off into "as an AI language model" collapse of chains of thought, and therefore potentially could function as a simulator of an intelligent agent.
- baby 3y agoI feel like he’s been acting a bit strange for a while. During interviews he often mentions the dangers of AI and how he’s not thr best spokeperson for AI. It seemed very counter productive/self sabotaging to me.
- pk-protect-ai 3y agoNope. His line was to limit others by saying "regulate us," which he has successfully achieved. That's a win for him and a loss for the industry. Unfortunately, this is not the last of him we will hear. He will be the one who shapes our dystopian future.
- paul7986 3y agoPossibly as a similar thing happened with Steve Jobs. Though Maybe it's all been set up and faked ;-) Steve Job's story is a great one.
- rightisleft 3y agoGovernment regulation is a defensive moat for incumbents. These folks asked for regulation to keep the dogs off their heels...
- baby 3y agoThat’s a story i see being repeated here and there but I don’t it buy personally
- Exoristos 3y agoUh, no. That's exactly the sort of thing you should say to hype up AI.
- DebtDeflation 3y ago>last minute move Also, they did it around 3:30 Eastern, 30 minutes before the closing bell (Microsoft is xxmajorityxx 49% owner). It was so urgent they couldn't wait until after the market closed.
- adastra22 3y agoMicrosoft is the largest owner, not majority.
- jasonmperry 3y agoI wondered about the timing. Microsoft’s stock took a swan dive. I can’t imagine they're happy regardless of what they say to the press.
- mardef 3y agoMSFT is up 55% YTD at all-time highs. That 1% drop at the announcement is the initial reaction which will probably disappear come Monday. You bury bad news on Friday afternoon.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 3y agoIt’s only down to where it was last week. That’s not a swan dive.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 015a 3y agoMicrosoft is a minority owner (49%) of the capped-profit OpenAI subsidiary. The OpenAI board has no responsibility to consider Microsoft's wants. I'd accept the argument that, their decision to not wait until after 4pm was a slight against Microsoft, for the reason you outline; but I'm not sure if urgency plays into it.
- SahAssar 3y agoMinority owner, but largest owner, right? I think the point stands and I would assume the board consulted with MS before posting the news.
- eshack94 3y agoSorry if this should be self-explanatory, but what is corporate "cannibalism"? What does this refer to, generally speaking (not necessarily specific to the OpenAI situation)?
- jll29 3y ago> Whatever he did is big and dangerous, or they’re trying to pin it on him. We are on HN after all, so I'm sure we won't need to wait until his book comes out... :) BTW, I had a feeling he made an awkward appearance next to Satya. And that laughter whenever the acquisition topic was hinted at was cringeworthy - would regulators even permit MSFT a full takeover? I think it would be highly controversial.