6 ms·
Sutskever: "You can call it (a coup), and I can understand why you chose this word, but I disagree with this. This was the board doing its duty to the mission
by convexstrictly 3y ago
Sutskever: "You can call it (a coup), and I can understand why you chose this word, but I disagree with this. This was the board doing its duty to the mission of the nonprofit, which is to make sure that OpenAI builds AGI that benefits all of humanity."
Scoop: theinformation.com
https://twitter.com/GaryMarcus/status/1725707548106580255 https://twitter.com/GaryMarcus/status/1725707548106580255
- junofan 3y agoVery unprofessional way to approach this disagreement.
- strikelaserclaw 3y agoWhen two people have different ideologies and neither is willing to backdown or compromise, one person must "go".
- smoldesu 3y agoOr you introduce an authoritative third party that mediates their interactions. This feels like it wouldn't be a problem if so many high-ranking employees didn't feel so radically different about the same technology.
- fsckboy 3y agowhen did a board or CEO ever introduce an authoritative 3rd party to mediate between them? the board is the authoritative 3rd party.
- oivey 3y agoAltman’s job was to be a go between for the business and engineering sides of the house. If the chief engineer who was driving the company wasn’t going to communicate with him anymore, then he wouldn’t serve much of a purpose.
- junofan 3y agoThere’s no indication that any sort of discussion took place. Major stakeholders like Microsoft appear uninformed.
- strikelaserclaw 3y agoin a power struggle, you have to act quickly
- fsckboy 3y agoI don't think it's that dramatic. In a board meeting, you have to act while the board is meeting. They don't meet every day, and it's a small rigamarole to pull a meeting together, so if you're meeting... vote.
- vanjajaja1 3y agoare you suggesting they brought up a vote on a whim at a board meeting and acted on it same day
- fsckboy 3y agono, I was replying to a comment that said it was a power struggle in which the board needed to act quickly before they lost power. The board may very well have met for this very reason, or perhaps it was at this meeting that the lack of candor was found or discussed, but to hold a board meeting there is overhead, and if the board is already in agreement at the meeting, they vote. It only seems sudden to outsiders, and that suddenness does not mean a "night of the long knives".
- lazide 3y agoHow would the board have lost power?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bushbaba 3y agoThere's more graceful ways to do this though.
- TeMPOraL 3y agoYou've summed AI X-risk in a single sentence. (I.e. an AGI would be one of the two people here.)
- anonymouskimmer 3y agoHow so? It's just another firing and being escorted out the door.
- jdminhbg 3y agoIt's not "just another firing," the statement accused Altman of lying to the board. Either he did and it's a justified extraordinary firing, or he didn't and it's hugely unprofessional to insinuate he did.
- chasd00 3y agoOh man the lawyers have to be so happy I bet they can hardly count.
- anonymouskimmer 3y agoI read that word as not being forthcoming moreso than actively lying. But I don't read many firing press releases.
- adastra22 3y agoHugely unprofessional and a billion dollar liability.
- janejeon 3y agoThe wording is very clearly hostile and aggressive, especially for a formal statement, and the wording, again, makes it very clear that they are burning all bridges with Sam Altman, and it is very clear that 1. it was done extremely suddenly, 2. with very little notice or discussion with any other stakeholder (e.g. Microsoft being completely blindsided, not even waiting 30 minutes for the stock market to close, doing this shortly before Thanksgiving break, etc). You don't really see any of this in most professional settings.
- fsckboy 3y agoboards give reasons for transparency, and they said he had not been fully candid. You are interpreting that as hostile and aggressive because you are reading into it what other boards have said in other disputes and whatever you are imagining, but if the board learned some things not from Altman that it felt they should have learned from Altman, less than candid is a completely neutral way to describe it, and voting him out is not an indication of hostility. Would you like to propose some other candid wording the board could have chosen, a wording that does not lack candor?
- rdtsc 3y agoIt was actually a great move. Unusual, but it goes with the mission and nonprofit idea. I think it was designed to draw attention and stir controversy on purpose.
- kcb 3y agoIs it a winning move though? The biggest loser in this seems to be the company that was bankrolling their endeavor, Microsoft.
- rdtsc 3y agoAt this stage, no publicity is bad publicity. If they really believe they are in it to change the future of humanity, and the kool-aid got to their heads, might as well show it off by stirring some controversy. Microsoft is bankrolling them but OpenAI probably can replace Microsoft easier than Microsoft can replace OpenAI.
- MrMan 3y ago[dead]
- toyg 3y agoThey don't need Microsoft anymore, they have a queue of potential funders.
- kcb 3y agoYou think those funders will stick with their insistence on the direction of not creating products and making money.
- toyg 3y agoIt's more about "making all the money" Vs "making some of the money", with that "some" still being pretty big. Maybe they won't get 100bn but will get 10bn just fine.
- mochomocha 3y agoIf you know anything about Ilya, it's definitely not out of character.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- junofan 3y agoHaving read up on some background not sure I want this guy in charge of any kind of superintelligence.
- dragonwriter 3y agoWell, I definitely wouldn't want Altman in charge of any superintelligence, so "I'm not sure" would be an improvement, if I expected an imminent superintelligence.
- TeMPOraL 3y agoWhat if - hear me out - what if the firing is the doing of an AGI? Maybe OpenAI succeeded and now the AI is calling the shots (figuratively, though eventually maybe literally too).
- ariym 3y agowhat are you referring to
- hindsightbias 3y agoNot if the AGI was making the decision. A bit demanding to think the Professionalism LLM module isn't a bit hallucinatory in this age. Give it a few more years.
- jdminhbg 3y agoSo basically a confirmation, but with a slight disagreement on the vocabulary used to describe it.
- davorak 3y agoI read it as Ilya Sutskever thinking the move is good non-profit governance grounds and that does not match what coup often means, unlawful seizure of power or maybe unprincipled/unreasonable seizure of power. Ilya Sutskever seems to think this is a reasonable principled move to seize power that is in line with the non-profits goals and governance, but does not seem to care too much if you call it a coup.
- username332211 3y agoThat's just spin. Which coup hasn't been a "reasonable and principled move to seize power" according to it's orchestrator? Do you think Napoleon or Pinochet made speeches to the effect of "Yes, it was a completely unprincipled power-grab, but what are you going to do about it, lol?"
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- cm2012 3y agoHuge scoop.
- Mistletoe 3y ago[flagged]
- resource0x 3y agoNo one in this company is "consistently candid" about anything.
- ProllyInfamous 3y agoYes, but Ilya is on the Board of Directors; and Sam is currently unemployed (although: not for long).
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- scrps 3y ago[dead]
- rchaud 3y agoIt's really none of Microsoft's business, they invested knowing they wouldn't have a seat on the board.
- epistasis 3y agoI typically interpret "pissing match" to be a power struggle based off of competition unrelated to the core business. It sounds like the "disagreement" you are responding to asserts the exact opposite of that. Are you saying that there can be no credibility to the assertion that there were substantive differences about the non-profit nature of OpenAI?
- scrps 3y agoYou can dress it up however you'd like, quite frankly I enjoy the show regardless of being right or wrong. The point is they made it a show. If I were say a senator I might be having second thoughts of putting "AGI" (it really is a useful boogeyman!) in their hands.
- WalterBright 3y ago[flagged]
- nradov 3y agoThe funny thing is that so far OpenAI has made zero demonstrable progress toward building a true AGI. ChatGPT is an extraordinary technical accomplishment and useful for many things, but there is no evidence that scaling up that approach will get to AGI. At least a few more major breakthroughs will probably be needed.
- mensetmanusman 3y agoIt’s impossible to predict. No one predicted feeding LLMs more GPUs would be as incredibly useful as it is.
- MVissers 3y agoNo-one knows, which makes this a classical scientific problem. Which is what Ilya wants to focus on, which I think is fair, give this alligns with the original mission of OpenAi. I think it’s also fair Sam starts something new with a for profit focus of the get-go.
- dr_dshiv 3y agoAGI is about definitions. By many definitions, it’s already here. Hence MSR’s “sparks of AGI” paper and Eric Schmidt’s article in Noema. But by the definition “as good or better than humans at all things”, it fails.
- nradov 3y agoThat "Sparks of AI" paper was total garbage, just complete nonsense and confirmation bias. Defining AGI is more than just semantics. The generally accepted definition is that it must be able to complete most cognitive tasks as well as an average human. Otherwise we could as well claim that ELIZA was AGI, which would obviously be ridiculous.
- pasabagi 3y agoTbh, I always thought the whole stuff about 'intelligence' was just marketing garbage. There are no really good rigorous descriptions of intelligence, so asking if a product exhibits intelligence is basically nonsense. There are two questions about LLMs that are good, though: 1. Are they useful? 2. Are they going to become more useful in the forseeable future? On 1, I would say, maybe? Like, somewhere between Microsoft Word and Excel? On 2, I would say, sure - an 'AGI' would be tremendously useful. But it's also tremendously unlikely to grow somehow out of the current state of the art. People disagree on that point, but I don't think there are even compelling reasons to believe that LLMs can evolve beyond their current status as bullshit generators.
- smharris65 3y agoSome insider details that seem to agree with this: https://www.reddit.com/user/Anxious_Bandicoot126/ https://www.reddit.com/user/Anxious_Bandicoot126/
- jzl 3y agoWow, all the comments and responses to that person's comments are a gold mine. Not saying anything should be taken as gospel, either from that poster or the people replying. But certainly a lot of food for thought.
- tucnak 3y agoReads like lesswrong fan-fiction
- ipaddr 3y agoBased on the amount of comments in that time period that is probably a fake insider.
- marvin 3y agoAltman risking his role as CEO of the new industrial revolution for a book deal is implausible.
- leobg 3y ago> This was about stopping a runaway train before it flew off a cliff with all of us on board. Believe me, the board and I gave him tons of chances to self-correct. But his ego was out of control. > Don't let the media hype fool you. Sam wasn't some genius visionary. He was a glory-hungry narcissist cutting every corner in some deluded quest to be the next Musk. That does align with Ilya’s tweet about ego being in the way of great achievements. And it does align with Sam’s statements on Lex’s podcast about his disagreements with Musk. He compared himself to Elon’s SpaceX being bullied by Elon’s childhood heroes. But he didn’t seem sad about it - just combative. Elon’s response to the NASA astronauts distrusting his company’s work was “They should come visit and see what we’re doing”. Sam’s reaction was very different. Like, “If he says bad things about us, I can say bad things about him too. It’s not my style. But maybe I will, one day”. Same sentiment as he is showing now (“if I go off the board can come after me for the value of my shares”). All of that does paint a picture where it really isn’t about doing something necessary for humanity and future generations, and more about being considered great. The odd thing is that this should get you fired, especially in SF, of all places.
- anon291 3y agoRealistically, this reflects more poorly on Sutskever. No one wants to work with a backstabber. It's one thing to be like 'well we had disagreements so we decided to move on.' However the board claimed Altman lied. If it turns out the firing was due to strategic direction, no one would ever want to work with Sutskever again. I certainly would not. That's an incredibly defamatory statement about a man who did nothing wrong, other than have a professional disagreement.