4 ms·

This isn’t believable. You don’t fire a CEO and put out a press release accusing them of lying over Dev day. Unless he told them he wasn’t going to announce it

This isn’t believable. You don’t fire a CEO and put out a press release accusing them of lying over Dev day. Unless he told them he wasn’t going to announce it and then did.

yieldcrv 3y ago
I dont get the impression that everyone involved was that mature, given Greg’s tweet I get the clout everyone has but this was to be a non profit that was already coup de tat into a for profit that grew extremely quickly into uncharted territory This isnt a multi decade old fortune 500 company with mature C-Suite and boards, it just masquerades as one with a stacked deck, which apparently is part of the problem
- Cacti 3y ago
  Right?! Anyone paying attention back when Sam was brought on is not surprised. Sam and his investors _were_ the coup. They took an org specifically set up to do open research for the good of humanity, and Sam literally did the opposite. He monetized the work, sold it, didn’t reinvest as promised, reduced transparency, and put the weights under lock and key. He rode in after the hard work had been done, took credit for it, and sold it to lol the fucking Borg of all people. And many people here who should know better fell for it.
brigadier132 3y ago
Reading about Ilya, it seems like he is fully bought into AI hysteria.
- strikelaserclaw 3y ago
  he seems like a more credible source than random people with no real ml experience
  - reducesuffering 3y ago
    That’s the funny thing isn’t it? Hinton, Bengio, and Sutskever, chief scientist of the tech behind OpenAI, all have strong opinions one way, but HN armchair experts handwave it away as fear mongering. Reminds me of climate change deniers. People just viscerally hate staring down upcoming disasters.
    - rchaud 3y ago
      Not surprising when you consider the volume of posts on GPT threads hand-wringing about "free speech" because the chatbot won't use slurs.
      - mardifoufs 3y ago
        The only hand wringing is coming from white privileged liberals from SV who absolutely cannot fathom that the rest of the world does not want them to control what AI can and cannot say. You can try framing it as some sort of "bad racists" versus the good and virtuous gatekeepers, but the reality is that it's a bunch of nerds with sometimes super insane beliefs (the SF AI field is full of effective altruists who think AI is the most important issue in the world and weirdos in general) that will have an oversized control on what can and can't be thought. It's just good old white saviorism but worse. Again, just saying "stop caring about muh freeze peach!!" just doesn't work coming from one of the most privileged groups in the entire world (AI techbros and their entourage). Not when it's such a crucial new technology
    - ianbutler 3y ago
      Yann LeCunn is a strong counter to the doomerism as one example. Jeremy Howard is another example. There are plenty of high profile, and distinguished researchers who don't buy into that line of thinking. None of them are eschewing safety taking into account the realities of how the technology can be used, but they aren't running the AI will kill us all line up the flagpole.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
- wmf 3y ago
  Did he buy into it after he took the money from Microsoft? Because it seems like there's no turning back after that point.
  - hollerith 3y ago
    That must be it because obviously no knowledgeable person could honestly come to believe that the technology is dangerous.
    - wmf 3y ago
      I think he's telling the truth about his beliefs. But if he always believed that AI is dangerous they should have never done the Microsoft deal.
      - aamoyg 3y ago
        Taking the Microsoft deal was incredibly smart. Microsoft acts as their shield and commercializes their technology (so that they do not need to worry about it) and in turn gives them nigh unlimited resources to innovate. Microsoft builds the products it wants, and OpenAI gets to innovate. This sort of investment for wealth generation is pretty close to ideal capitalism where people do not care about short term profit. I wouldn't be surprised if Satya Nadella orchestrated this, because it's OpenAI's role to innovate responsibly and Microsoft's job to sell to essentially fund their innovation. So wtf is Altman for?
lumost 3y ago
Alternate possibility would be that openAI faces core technical challenges delivering dev day features/promises. If deals were signed, they could be forced to deliver even if the board et al weren’t aligned on investment.
aliston 3y ago
This is actually a semi-plausible angle. Given Sam's personality, I could see a scenario where there was disagreement about whether something in particular would be announced at demo day. He may have told some people he would keep in under wraps, but ended up going forward with it anyway. I don't understand how that escalates to the point that he gets fired over it, though, unless there was something deeper implied by what was announced at demo day. Edit: Theres a rumor floating around that "it" was the GPT store and revenue sharing. If that's the case, that's not even remotely a safety issue. It's just a disagreement about monetization, like how Larry and Sergey didn't want to put ads on Google.
- woeirua 3y ago
  It’s not a big enough issue for a normal board to fire the CEO over. Now maybe Ilya made a power play as a result, but that would be insane.

This isn’t believable. You don’t fire a CEO and put out a press release accusing them of lying over Dev day. Unless he told them he wasn’t going to announce it and then did.

yieldcrv 3y ago

I dont get the impression that everyone involved was that mature, given Greg’s tweet I get the clout everyone has but this was to be a non profit that was already coup de tat into a for profit that grew extremely quickly into uncharted territory This isnt a multi decade old fortune 500 company with mature C-Suite and boards, it just masquerades as one with a stacked deck, which apparently is part of the problem

Cacti 3y ago
Right?! Anyone paying attention back when Sam was brought on is not surprised. Sam and his investors _were_ the coup. They took an org specifically set up to do open research for the good of humanity, and Sam literally did the opposite. He monetized the work, sold it, didn’t reinvest as promised, reduced transparency, and put the weights under lock and key. He rode in after the hard work had been done, took credit for it, and sold it to lol the fucking Borg of all people. And many people here who should know better fell for it.

brigadier132 3y ago

Reading about Ilya, it seems like he is fully bought into AI hysteria.

strikelaserclaw 3y ago
he seems like a more credible source than random people with no real ml experience
- reducesuffering 3y ago
  That’s the funny thing isn’t it? Hinton, Bengio, and Sutskever, chief scientist of the tech behind OpenAI, all have strong opinions one way, but HN armchair experts handwave it away as fear mongering. Reminds me of climate change deniers. People just viscerally hate staring down upcoming disasters.
  - rchaud 3y ago
    Not surprising when you consider the volume of posts on GPT threads hand-wringing about "free speech" because the chatbot won't use slurs.
    - mardifoufs 3y ago
      The only hand wringing is coming from white privileged liberals from SV who absolutely cannot fathom that the rest of the world does not want them to control what AI can and cannot say. You can try framing it as some sort of "bad racists" versus the good and virtuous gatekeepers, but the reality is that it's a bunch of nerds with sometimes super insane beliefs (the SF AI field is full of effective altruists who think AI is the most important issue in the world and weirdos in general) that will have an oversized control on what can and can't be thought. It's just good old white saviorism but worse. Again, just saying "stop caring about muh freeze peach!!" just doesn't work coming from one of the most privileged groups in the entire world (AI techbros and their entourage). Not when it's such a crucial new technology
  - ianbutler 3y ago
    Yann LeCunn is a strong counter to the doomerism as one example. Jeremy Howard is another example. There are plenty of high profile, and distinguished researchers who don't buy into that line of thinking. None of them are eschewing safety taking into account the realities of how the technology can be used, but they aren't running the AI will kill us all line up the flagpole.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
wmf 3y ago
Did he buy into it after he took the money from Microsoft? Because it seems like there's no turning back after that point.
- hollerith 3y ago
  That must be it because obviously no knowledgeable person could honestly come to believe that the technology is dangerous.
  - wmf 3y ago
    I think he's telling the truth about his beliefs. But if he always believed that AI is dangerous they should have never done the Microsoft deal.
    - aamoyg 3y ago
      Taking the Microsoft deal was incredibly smart. Microsoft acts as their shield and commercializes their technology (so that they do not need to worry about it) and in turn gives them nigh unlimited resources to innovate. Microsoft builds the products it wants, and OpenAI gets to innovate. This sort of investment for wealth generation is pretty close to ideal capitalism where people do not care about short term profit. I wouldn't be surprised if Satya Nadella orchestrated this, because it's OpenAI's role to innovate responsibly and Microsoft's job to sell to essentially fund their innovation. So wtf is Altman for?

lumost 3y ago

Alternate possibility would be that openAI faces core technical challenges delivering dev day features/promises. If deals were signed, they could be forced to deliver even if the board et al weren’t aligned on investment.

aliston 3y ago

This is actually a semi-plausible angle. Given Sam's personality, I could see a scenario where there was disagreement about whether something in particular would be announced at demo day. He may have told some people he would keep in under wraps, but ended up going forward with it anyway. I don't understand how that escalates to the point that he gets fired over it, though, unless there was something deeper implied by what was announced at demo day. Edit: Theres a rumor floating around that "it" was the GPT store and revenue sharing. If that's the case, that's not even remotely a safety issue. It's just a disagreement about monetization, like how Larry and Sergey didn't want to put ads on Google.

woeirua 3y ago
It’s not a big enough issue for a normal board to fire the CEO over. Now maybe Ilya made a power play as a result, but that would be insane.